Theodore M. Cooper's Chaotic Workspace

Podcast

• Apocalypses (comedy/drama, ensemble cast) is a serialized radio drama which takes place in the modern day, and has absolutely no relation to the world depicted in The Psukordium, C'est La Vie, and Mr. Showboy. The premise revolves around a small group of survivors, seemingly woefully unprepared for whatever circumstances end up befalling them, who have suddenly been tasked with surviving in the aftermath of a world that has just experienced every single apocalypse that the human mind could possibly conceive of, all of which are happening at the exact same time. Characters consist of deeply flawed individuals who were already struggling to survive in a world before the apocalypses, and yet somehow find it easier to survive afterwards. Inspiration is drawn from shows such as Community, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and The Magnus Archives -- and as such, many tropes that one might recognize from these shows could also be expected to be found here (though I do try to be original).

Novels

• The Psukordium/C'est La Vie (horror, plot-driven) are two projected novels which take place in the same world -- an altered-history version of our own where many aspects of supernatural and Lovecraftian terror (by my own design) are not only real, but widely accepted and integrated into day-to-day life. The story takes place in 1600-1800s Europe, and revolves around a group of people called the Nightmare Dreamers. Due to the fact that certain aspects of their own bodies, and oftentimes even the world around them, will eventually become warped and twisted in horrific ways that reflect the person's own greatest fears and hatreds, the Nightmare Dreamers have recently been classified as subversive by The Great Church of Europe, and have therefore been exiled for public safety, like lepers, and sent to live in a small island called The Psukordium (which gets its name from the abandoned university that resides there). However, when Catholic powers begin to lose control of Europe, restrictions and security around The Psukordium and its residents that normally would have been easy to maintain have instead become difficult and cost-intensive, leaving the Nightmare Dreamers to be faced with an extraordinarily difficult decision: do they stay within the Psukordium and attempt to survive the clear and rising danger of their own nightmares without any outside help to speak of, or do they rebel against the Church and escape -- despite the fact that doing so would infect all of Europe with their terrors?

• Gods Be Damned (ensemble cast) is set in the Psukordium universe, in the late 1600s -- during the end of the scramble to claim the new world. The story follows a small group of outlaws who find themselves in the middle of a deadly conflict between Dictator Ameri, an Italian immigrant with strange and teary eyes who claims that he can "see destiny", and Father Buchannon, a hive-mind god of mercenaries and incest that was once a human but is no longer.

Graphic Novels

• Midizhunka and Dhrug (flash fiction series) is set in modern day [large city]. The story follows a former drug addict who is coping with his adopted father's death by alienating everyone around him, and depriving himself of all his basic needs -- most importantly of which is his sleep -- due to the increasingly realistic nightmares he's been having as a result. As his mental and physical health declines, he begins to struggle more and more with telling reality apart from his nightmares dreams -- and so, when the childhood teddy bear he receives from his father's inheritance begins to talk, he isn't entirely sure if it is an illusion. The teddy bear, named Dhrug, tells him that it can cure him of his nightmares for as long as he agrees to help make it "look more human", though he does not yet know what that entails.

• Mr. Showboy (horror, character-driven) is a novel which takes place in the same universe as The Psukordium and C'est La Vie -- however, unlike these two stories, Mr. Showboy instead takes place in late 1930s New York, just as the theatrical arts of Vaudeville and the Burlesque are beginning to become nothing more than nostalgia and memory for those who can even remember it at all. The main character, Mr. Showboy, is a second-generation Jewish immigrant and gangster, with a soft spot for art and theater despite no real creative talent of his own to speak of, as any attempts to foster it throughout his life have been met with crushing failure and heartbreaking defeat. This hidden passion of his, however, is exactly what one day motivates him to purchase a failing museum and Burlesque theater from an sleepy-eyed connection of his, whose good business-sense and amicable personality manage to convince Showboy that, while he might not be able to come up with any stories himself, his passion for art and history combined with his unique understanding of the criminal underworld is exactly what makes him perfect for managing the old building, and maybe even bringing the arts of Vaudeville and the Burlesque back to a more 'modern' audience at large. Mr. Showboy's life soon takes a turn for the horrific, however, when he begins to notice strange patterns emerging in the art that he adds to his theater, the true nature of which being something that only he can understand.

Text Adventure

• Tall Tales: Ekkura (first person/choice-based narrative) is set in a massive supercontinent called Ekkura, which is inhabited by a complex world of fantastical creatures and landscapes. The story revolves around an amateur adventurer who unexpectedly finds himself caught in the midst of a skirmish between two cities -- in this skirmish he dies, but soon after he finds himself resurrected and forced into servitude by a newborn god without a face, name, or any sort of identity to speak of. It has quite a bit of pre-established world building behind it, and draws heavy inspiration from the lore of Dungeons and Dragons. Please see the provided sample below.

Short Stories

• The Dream and the Nightmare

• A Bard's Family

• Lewis Laverick

• Just Another Job

• The Execution Of Baxter Lynch

Flash Fiction

• Sesquipidalian