Foreward

Disclaimer: I do not in any way own or profit from the characters or settings of Thunderbirds. They were created by Gerry Anderson, and the copyright is held by Granada. This story is for my own entertainment and that of others.

The picture of the boy on a bicycle used in the Grandpa's Hat splashpage is by Stacy Braswell and is used with permission.

Many thanks to Liz Beers for betareading Burning Muses, and to Dena Lawless and Janet Simmons for being sounding boards on Grandpa's Hat.

April Fool's Day

Author's Note: What's April Fool's Day without a prank from Gordon? Here's a "Tracy's as kids" fic. Lucille is still alive as I'm going with the comic book timeline (she dies in an avalanche a year before Jeff decides to create IR). And my ages are the original ones from the series. I know that meatloaf is probably not what an up-and-coming millionaire/billionaire would eat; but I figure, hey, maybe they like it! John may be a touch OOC, but then, he's a teenager here, and kids can be bit more volatile at that age. This little story was published at FanFiction.net on April 1, 2005.

Burning Muses

Author's Notes: The first chapter was written for the Thunderbirds character challenge at the old fanfics.org, and was published first at FanFiction.net on September 14, 2004. The challenge was to write something for one of the second string characters, such as Brains, Kyrano, Tin-Tin or even Grandma. I chose Brains.

The idea that Brains might find himself bothered to sleeplessness by his own ideas was something I myself have experienced. The Muses as a theme was a simple idea, once I'd researched the classical Muses. Polyhymnia is the muse of Sacred Poetry, but is also considered the muse of geometry, which is as close as you can get to engineering. I chose her as Brains's muse.

Originally, I was not going to add to this story, the little bit about Brains is complete in itself. But as I looked at it, I saw that there might be others in the cast for whom the Muses might be a problem. That's when I got the idea about Virgil, and his obvious connection with Euterpe, the muse of Music. Then I decided that John might be similarly influenced by Urania, the muse of Astronomy. His story also partially based on my own oldest son, whose obsession with animals is legendary in our house.

I think Jeff's is the last one, but one can never tell. In the first posting, I didn't reveal who the last Tracy was. I felt he would be occasionally influenced by the muse of love poetry, Erato. The character doesn't come across as terribly romantic; he would find it difficult to do the stereotypical things a husband and lover were "required" to do... such as writing love poetry. His story reflects that.

Grandpa's Hat

Author's note: I seem to find inspiration in the strangest places. This one came about from a thread found on livejournal's fanficrants community on December 7, 2005. I have no idea where I made the connection, other than the original poster talked about drawing names from a hat. I wrote it in an attempt to break my writer's block on Overtures and The White Winds.

I kept to the 2065 timeline (as espoused by Chris Bentley in The Complete Book of Thunderbirds), but employed John Marriott's ages and birth order from his book, Thunderbirds Are Go. The year that Jeff goes to the moon corresponds with The Complete Thunderbirds Story as found in the 1990s comic books, where Virgil has been born not long before Jeff's lunar expedition. The name of Alan and Tin-Tin's daughter was taken from my story, The Retainer. I decided she was named for her maternal grandmother.

The story was published at FanFiction.net on December 30, 2005.