After Much Footling, I'll Go With Avery

 It took a lot of thought and experimenting, but I think I've found what I'll write next.  To my surprise, the story of Avery Special, teenage necromancer, is in Penny's world, although I doubt she herself will appear at all.  I've run it through my alpha readers, and I'm pretty sure this is viable.  As usual, here is the sample first chapter if anyone wants to read and comment!

COUGH WHEEZE WHAT WAS THAT OH YEAH I WAS WRITING

The next Supervillain book is written!  I need beta readers!  If anyone sees this message under the six foot heap of dust that has accumulated on my blog, you can send an email to rrsupervillain at gmail.com and request to beta read!  OH THE HUMANITY.

I don't know if I even said, because I got so busy writing the damn book and of course QUARANTINE DEPRESSING BLAARG, but it's about Penny's classmate Magenta and she gets an after school job as a supervillain's errand girl.

HOODS

Woah.  Check it, I have reached that level of fame where people give me copies of books and ask for reviews!  Personally, I think he's crazy because I'm not that famous, but here is my review of Hoods by David Wilson!

Hoods is YA superheroes, of course.  Why else ask for my opinion?  It is way, way more serious than my Supervillain books.  The fictional town these kids live in is a series of slums so riddled with crime that the only question is which gang owns your streets.  Despite that, it's not too dark.  There's tension, but while the threat is ever present, the book avoids blood and murder and torture and trauma and stuff like that.

But what you want to know is how good it is!  Once I got past the wildly different tone, it was very good!  Great descriptions, fantastic action scenes, good tension.  It's definitely an action book, and pulls that off completely.  I know nothing of real street gangs, but they felt plausible.  The author set up a particularly cute system of super powers, where most of them are variations of a limited precognition brought on by specific superhuman analysis skills.  The fighting power character is superhuman not from strength and speed, but because he instinctively understands what his opponents are about to do, and what he needs to do.  The stealth girl isn't invisible, she just knows where to stand and how to move to not be noticed even if she's right next to you.  That sort of thing.

If you like serious YA superheroes, I definitely recommend Hoods, and apparently David Wilson thinks my recommendation matters.  Woo, I'm important!

YAY IT IS OUT

You Can Be A Cyborg When You're Older is released!  ALL HAIL THE BOOK.  Anyone who got to beta read, pleeeeeeeeeeease put up a review, because they define how Amazon markets me!

The Proactivity Trap

I have a problem with my books and writing style, one I'm increasingly aware of:  As much as I do m best to start with entertainment, there is very little tension early on.  The sense of threat and plot can take as long as halfway through the book to appear.  I work on it, but I never seem to solve the problem.

And now I've figured out why.  My characters are proactive.  Think about it.  That's rare.  In most books, things happen to the main character and they struggle to get out.  Monsters invade, a woman in a red dress shows up and hires them to investigate her own murder, some hairy guy breaks down the door and announces they're a wizard - the main character or the hairy guy, either way - and so on.

I like main characters with strong personalities, and aspirational characters.  They go looking for trouble.  They act.  That means there has to be build up time, especially if I'm going to get a relatable teenager into exotic trouble like super powers or angry AIs.

For now, I think I'm stuck with this problem, but I'm trying to learn to compensate and introduce some early tension to keep things running until the real trouble begins.  I'm happy with how I pulled that off with Vanity Rose, at least.

Poor Mirabelle

I have faced the dire and painful truth:  Mirabelle's book was not working.  I don't think it was a bad book, but it was too weird and difficult to get into for anyone who doesn't know the world intimately.  It doesn't have the relatability of Penny's books.  It doesn't have the same fun tone.  For the book that branches out off of Penny to the rest of my supervillain world, I need the story to be as easy to get into as possible.

So I switched to Magenta's story.  Here's chapter one of I'm Late For Alchemy Class.  Good luck.

Oh, and the paperbacks are already out for Vanity Rose!