Today was mostly a family day, helping take the girls to swimming, feeding the ducks with Miya, accompanying her through the combined terrors and delights of The Big Slide, all that sort of fun stuff. Consequently I didn’t get much work done, except to work on something I’m going to be all mysterious about.
Something that I’m not going to be mysterious about at all is this:
A Kindle Can Ruin Your Night – Marion Harmon’s Blog Post About Charlotte Powers: Power Down
I haven’t had much feedback about Power Down–actually, I hadn’t had any. So it’s really nice that someone enjoyed it, especially someone who’s obviously well-versed in superhero lore. I have a terrible secret; I’m NOT well-versed in superhero lore. Oh, I know the big names and I’ve skirted the edges throughout my life, but the only superhero comics I own are the really huge hits like The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke. This comes partly from living in New Zealand, where growing up I was lucky to find the occasional stray copy of 2000AD, which would most likely contain the middle parts of five different stories which I’d never find any other parts of ever. And which I loved to death anyway. In any case, comics have always, to me, seemed to be this distant, wonderful, alien thing. Now that I’ve grown up I’ve explored some of the bigger titles, especially Batman comics, and of course I love superhero movies and cartoons just as much as anyone, and I think that even if I don’t have a background in actual superhero comic reading, that I do have a good understanding of what makes comics special, and what makes them work, and what makes superheroes so much fun and so interesting. In any case, creating the superhero/supervillain pantheon for Charlotte Powers, as well as the backstory and history of her world, is probably the single most fun thing I’ve done as a writer. Creating the different powers and setting out the rules and limitations for them is also almost too much fun, I have to stop myself before I get too carried away–especially with the second book, in which there are presently twenty-three distinct powers. Still, I think it’s important to establish these things early on and stick to the rules you’ve created–as a reader, there’s little that irritates me more than a writer just pulling things out of nowhere to fit the situation at hand. What I like to see is a character using their established abilities in creative and interesting ways.
To finish, something that I’ve been giggling at all day; Tyrion slaps Joffrey FOREVER:
Writing Is The Easy Part 