Post-NaNoWrimo, pre-2018 shenanigans! (WIP Wednesday)

It was a crazy November. I wrote the first two-thirds of my new urban fantasy novel, the first book in a series I plan to call The Graymalkin Chronicles. It's been interesting to drop traditional super-heroics for this one, even if my character does have a decidedly superhero origin. Like many characters, Xander Graymalkin's origins were from short stories and comic pitches I wrote back in the 90s while still in high school. And like Lightweight before him, he's vastly changed since that origin. I'm still very excited for this tale to see the light of the day, but my plans are to hold off on publication of most of my work until the second half of next year. I will likely also shop the series around to a few publishers as well.

That move has been a long time coming, but with the closure of Metahuman Press, it feels like the right time to find others to publish most of my works. My hope is to start moving away from self-publishing on all my writing outside two core series.

Those series are Quadrant, which I will talk about more down the line and Lightweight. As I showed off yesterday across social media and on this blog, the next chapters of Lightweight have started as my new short story project. I'll be writing each chapter as a standalone, just as I did with previous volumes. I will likely alternate those stories with other shorts as I go along, but I am hoping to prep a new Lightweight by that aforementioned second half of next year.

I also quietly completed the third story in The Second Life of D.B. Cooper series. This one takes place way later in the continuity of Coop than the previous stories, but does build upon the first story as published in the Pen & Cape Society project, The Good Fight 2: Villains. I'll have more information on the project once I've confirmed a home for it, but I loved coming back to Coop after a couple years away.

Today's image is taken from the Graymalkin board on my Pinterest. It features one of the creatures that will make their presence known in that upcoming book, as drawn by a talented artist named Abigail L. Dela Cruz. Check out her great Tumblr.

Win the Lightweight books plus a whole lot more in the PCS Winter Giveaway!

I am a proud member of the Pen & Cape Society, the world's first (and maybe only) association of super powered fiction writers. The fine and astute members of the group have done wonderful things already to promote the ever burgeoning super powered fiction market, such as two great anthologies, The Good Fight (did I mention it's free?) and The Good Fight 2: Villains (did I mention it is for a great cause?)

Now the group has upped the ante with our next big event, the first ever Pen & Cape Society Winter Giveaway.

Click here to head to one amazing giveaway!

Over fifteen books, in both ebook and print format, t-shirts, an Amazon gift card and a bunch of other great prizes are all on the line as part of the giveaway. And I am definitely part of the giveaway with both volumes of Lightweight currently available, Lightweight: Senior Year and Lightweight: Black Death both free to the lucky winner!

So head over to Pen & Cape Society's official giveaway page for all the details on entering for your chance to win a ton of great sway.

Time for a brief hiatus

There is only so much time in this world.

Something about this image of Opale Suicide
 just perfectly encapsulates the fleeting
nature of time to me. Copyright SG.

As I continue to try and push for more time on my current writing projects (book three of Lightweight and my Kindle Worlds G.I. Joe release), I have found myself losing time to keep updating here and abroad. Because of that, I figured it was time to announce a few days away from posting on Super Powered Fiction.

Don’t worry too much though. My plan is to only be away for two weeks as on June 8 I will return to start ramping up for the release of the collected Lightweight: Black Death on June 12.

So keep reading. Keep loving superheroes. And keep fighting The Good Fight.

New at Pen & Cape Society: Helping Hud

The trades are out of print now, but I
highly recommend hunting down ESPers
second-hand.

I make no secret of my membership to the wonderful collection of writers known as the Pen & Cape Society. However I have not always been the best at regularly posting to their site.

Read about The Good Fight 2
& its charitable purpose at the
Pen & Cape Society.

That changes today as I talk a bit more about The Good Fight 2: Villains there as well as the importance to me of helping James Hudnall in his time of need. James Hudnall’s comic work inspired a lot of my outlook on super-writing, and I talk about that a bit more as well.

Read the whole Helping Hud post at Pen & Cape Society.

Kickstart the Week 10: Support James Hudnall

Usually I use this section to promote a new project I think needs more visibility or support on Kickstarter or IndieGoGo, but this time around I am going to hit you with two things you can do to help out one man.

James Hudnall is the former writer of Alpha Flight, Hardcase, The Psycho, ESPers and a bunch of other great comics. He recently lost a foot and in turn, a job and a home, to diabetic complications. Now he is back in the hospital again with another surgery necessary to take more of the already damaged leg. This means more expenses for an already strapped budget.

The fine folks at the Pen & Cape Society including yours truly have gathered together along with the legendary Mike Baron to produce The Good Fight 2: Villains as a charity anthology for James Hudnall. The book is currently available at Amazon and Smashwords for just under a dollar and every penny of profit goes straight to James.

But a dollar is only a dollar even if it comes with a great book. If you can afford more than just that dollar, please consider heading over to his Go Fund Me page and help James out. While he is currently unable to post updates due to a lack of internet access from the hospital, he is keeping folks apprised through Facebook.

So if you want to help, buy a book then donate whatever extra you can to a writer that desperately needs your support in these trying times.

Thanks all.

On D.B. Cooper

Treat Williams made an overly handsome Cooper in the 1981 Universal film.

I have a fascination with weird mysteries and strange characters from history. So when a man in 1971 (seven full years before my birth) stepped out of an airplane with a briefcase full of cash and disappeared into history, I cannot help but latch on to them.

Dan Cooper has floated in my head space for years. (The alias D.B. Cooper was never actually used by the hijacker, but is based on poor early reporting.) At one point in my life I thought about turning his later years into a crime series equally influenced by Magnum, P.I. and Spenser. But as the years past and I never put him to paper, I realized I wanted to develop him a bit more than that.

While Cooper was a weird start to the 1970s, much of the decade fell into a lot of interest in weird esoteric nonsense. The government even did psychic research in the era, through a project called Stargate. As I have slowly put development into the psychic side of the Quadrant Universe, the realization came that I could combine the famous hijacker and bits of the historical narrative of psychics in my shared universe and create something interesting.

"The Second Life of D.B. Cooper" follows the former hijacker as he tries to stay out of the sight of his former Stargate handlers and use the money he stole to start a new life for himself. The first tale picks up eleven years later in Key West, Florida, as a pair of figures from his past make their returns.

Of course, I am not alone in using the mysterious figure. From books to comics to film, he has loomed in pop culture. But I hope to make a new mark on a real man that has become far more of a legend.

The tale upcoming in The Good Fight 2: Villains is far from my last tale of Coop and this corner of the Quadrant Universe. In fact, I plan a few more anthology appearances over the next couple years with the character and related figures, one of which I will discuss a bit more early next week.

The Good Fight 2: Villains is available for pre-order at Amazon or Smashwords for just 99 cents. It will go on sale digitally on March 30.