The Man Called Claus: Celebrate Christmas with the world's first superhero!

I've made no secret that I'm a fan of fun Christmas tales or silly comic tropes. And that's why over the years I've edited an entire volume of pulp hero Doc Claus and his adventure team made of holiday heroes. It's also why I've written a couple Christmas tales of my own. 

Both of those stories are on Medium right now, but normally they are locked behind the Medium pay-wall. For you dear readers on this festive holiday though, I'm bringing both of these tales to you with "friends links" that allow free reading of both these stupendous tales filled with holiday cheer! 

Doc Claus by Teel James Glenn.

The Phantom Krampus was my holiday story from last year as an extradimensional issue goes awry and leaves Santa "Doc" Claus in a dangerous situation which threatens Christmas itself as he fights a dark manifestation of pure evil! 

Claus vs. Kong is my original holiday tale as the North Pole comes under the threat of a giant ape unleashed on the North Pole! It's got all the giant monster fighting action you could ask for in your holiday stories! 

If you like either of these tales, you might also want to check out the further adventures of Doc Claus with five stories by five stellar writers! 

I'm certainly not one to write a holiday tale every year, but I'm overjoyed to share this one with you and yours this holiday season. Have a wonderful and safe Christmas! 

Have you joined The Good Fight yet?

I'm going to get real here. I talked about my story in The Good Fight 5: The Golden Age already, but apparently that's not brought quite enough readers to our amazing anthology. Our classic era super-heroics aren't attracting the level of readership for our previous four volumes of the Pen & Cape Society's premiere superhero anthology. Each volume features new stories from a variety of authors and superheroic worlds, and I'm proud to make this my fourth appearance in one of these books.

I could conjecture a hundred reasons as to why the book hasn't found success, but I know one thing that's definitely hurting it: lack of reviews! After just over a month out, it still only has one review on Amazon and none on Smashwords. The digital edition is $3.99, a steal for a book featuring twelve new stories by yours truly and a host of talented authors including the late great James Hudnall.

In order to encourage more reviews and in return, I have five digital copies available for reading and review. If you receive a copy, you must be willing to read it and give it a starred Amazon review within one month of receipt. I will give these away to the first five people that respond to this post here, on social media or by emailing me at nick {at} superpoweredfiction {dot} com.

If you have even a fraction of the love for super powered fiction that I have, I know this is a deal too good to pass up! And even if you don't get a free copy, please buy the book and review it when you're done. Every single review helps immensely. I know you see that a lot, but it is incredibly true.

The Good Fight 5: The Golden Age is now available on Amazon, Smashwords and pretty much everywhere you buy books.

New Heroics 1: a look at new super powered fiction!

I've been quietly whiling away with my own works for years now, but with my focus on the Quadrant Universe, I've lost a lot of the places where I crossover with the other creators out there with superheroes in their fiction. To remedy that, I introduce New Heroics, a recurring column where I look at books coming in the wide world of stories out there. These are not meant as an endorsement of any writer's work, but a way to share new stuff from compatriots in the writing trenches.

Knightwatch: Invictus X is the first book in veteran scribe Mark Ellis's new superhero fiction series. With characters culled from the public domain, he uses the DC generational concept to form his own takes on several characters with familiar names. This one is actually on my Kindle right now and I can vouch that the adventures of Scarab, Magno, Lynx, Samson and Kismet get better with each page.

Friend of the site and all around swell guy Jeff Deischer is a writing machine. His latest novel is New World Order: Hero U.N.I.O.N. which focuses on a United Nations program to develop superhuman agents. With fifty years of history behind it, this looks like an interesting take on the classic THUNDER Agents concept, one which always needs more love.

I've known David Kachel for years, as the man helped me make the classic Metahuman Press site in the mid-aughts. He's since honed his craft and has released a collected edition of his Legacy: The Tale of the American Eagle. I can vouch for the quality of this one, so be sure to get out there and check it out.

Derek Borne is a name I've not yet read but he's been quickly releasing new works in his Ultimate Agent series over the last couple years. He's released a couple of shorts over the last few months featuring the Agent on the hunt for cryptids. His most recent is The Mothman Files, where if you haven't guessed, the Agent goes up against the legendary mothman.

Borne has been at it a couple years, but Yuri Jean-Baptiste just debuted his first book in January. He's got the right style down for modern publishing though, as five months later he's already got a prequel and a second book out in his Metamorphs series. The latest is the prequel, Legion's Gambit. The pull quote is a bit light on details but looks like it might set up the story of superhero students in the first volume of the series. It is free however, so anyone interested in checking out Yuri's work have no excuse not to do so.

The third book in the Chronicles of Fid series and David Reiss continues his story of the supervillain Doctor Fid in Starfall. Villains going to the light has been used as a story trope for years, but it remains a highly untapped concept for a long term superhero story. It should be interesting to see how Reiss plays it out in his series.

Michael C. Bailey is a name I've seen on the superhero fiction pages for years on Facebook. His Action Figures series has become a strong seller over the years. The eight book in the series shares a title with a fantastic Doom Patrol collection: Crawling From the Wreckage. The story picks up with our lead Carrie Hauser returning from eight months in space to find her life... a wreck. She's got to rebuild her purpose from the ground up. But two opposing teams of super-villains will make it a lot less easy in what sounds like an action packed continuance of this series!

That wraps up the first installment of New Heroics! If you're a superhero fiction writer that wants your book featured here drop me a line at nick{at}superpoweredfiction{dot}com with your new work and it just might appear in our next column!

The past brings a new Second Life! The Good Fight 5: The Golden Age is here!

The Good Fight 5: The Golden Age came out last week. The book features stories with a pulp twist and set in the time period between the 1930s and 1950s. I was happy to be back for this one, though the nature of the book meant much like the third volume of the series, it didn't exactly work for a new story of The Second Life of D.B. Cooper, a character I always like to go back to in these volumes.

This time around though, it seemed like a great time to give a prequel to that series. Thus was born my story "The Second Life of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin."

I thought about putting Mignola's Rasputin here,
but he looks nothing like the real thing. So here's
Riley Rossmo's version from an equally oddball
take on the character. 

Grigori popped up in the first of Coop's story back in The Good Fight 2: Villains. His connection to Coop has never really been made clear, but the legendary Mad Monk now gets to live his own second life in a story set in the late 30s.

Though he's probably best known these days as a character in Hellboy, Rasputin's place in Russian history is the stuff of legend. The stories of his powers are all over the place and the insanity surrounding his death makes it clear he's just the kind of guy to have another life after the Bolshevik Revolution. Now he's in America, on the trail of a mysterious threat in a small Washington town.

I've always loved the legend of Rasputin. Much like D.B. Cooper, his legend is larger than reality and that makes him a perfect figure for super powered fiction. Yet more often than not, he's played usually as a villain or at best, an enigmatic meddler. Yet history showed him to have some history in Russian democracy, which certainly seems a noble cause to any American. I built my take on Rasputin with that in mind. After twenty years traveling the world, he's a very different individual, a man with a noble heart but a willingness to do bad things for the good of all.

The story serves as a prequel to the three existing Coop stories, but it will also have ties to an upcoming project as well. But I'll talk more about that in a future column.

The story's appearance in this volume will now serve as something of a bittersweet point in my career. The volume features the first Pen & Cape Society story by James Hudnall, a true inspiration to me as a writer. Sadly, it will also be his last as he passed away last month at the far too young age of 61. I knew James only through a few brief encounters online, but his work on ESPers directly inspired the idea of a psychic D.B. Cooper. I will talk about the meaning of his work more in a future column, but his death leaves me heartbroken for what could have been.

You'll be missed, Hud.

Goals achieved and worlds destroyed! My 7th Camp Nanowrimo is in the books!

Image by Javier Estaban via Unsplash.

Over the weekend, I hit my goal for my seventh Camp Nanowrimo event. The twice annual free-form writing event has always been a fun one for me, and while I developed some issues with my pacing midway through the month, it's been all engines forward for the last week or so.

The main focus was playing catch up on Quadrant and I managed that quite well. I'm fast working through the latter half of volume two, otherwise known as the time travel arc. I don't want to give away much on this one, but I will reassure everyone that it continues to prove how much fun developing new tales of the Morgan brothers is for me.

I'll have more on the future of Quadrant in updates very soon. Over the next year, I hope to make the brothers' saga as important as Lightweight currently is in my publishing schedule. With that in mind, I have big plans for the characters in the weeks and months ahead!

Before I wrap this blog up I wanted to remind everyone that The Good Fight 5: The Golden Age will be available to read as of tomorrow. Go get your copies pre-ordered now!

Kickstart the Week 73: The cat comes back! New Champions rise!

It's been awhile since we last checked in on Kickstarter. So it's time to check in on two current projects worth a look on the site!


Mike Grell has been producing great comics for four decades now. From Legion of Super-Heroes to Warlord to Jon Sable to Green Arrow and beyond, he's given the world tons of great comics (and even one really great novel.) Yet he left one series unfinished when comics plummeted into the abyss in the middle of the nineties. While meant to be an ongoing series, the empty market caused Maggie the Cat's cancellation after issue two in the middle of the first arc.Fast forward more than twenty years and Mike has moved to Kickstarter to finally bring Maggie the Cat.


Maggie's origins lay in the Jon Sable series and her own book followed events in that series and Shaman's Tears. The new book on Kickstarter will feature remastered versions of the two already published issues with extra remastered pages to streamline the story for new readers. It will be followed by a new issue sometime down the line where the arc finally comes to its finish!

Fans of great old school adventure should definitely check out Maggie the Cat on Kickstarter.

*

I'm always excited to see new superhero prose make its way onto Kickstarter. Blake Michael Nelson has been slowly building his own superhero universe over the last few years. The Signalverse takes its name from its main setting: Signal City. Nelson is now on Kickstarter looking to fund his sixth novel, Champions Weekly.

The new book revolves around a reporter for a news magazine of the same name. She's set out to uncover what happened to a hero that disappeared over a year ago, but she quickly falls into more trouble than she ever expected!

Nelson has even made the first chapter of the novel available for free. Go check that out and get a feel for his solid prose. After that, be sure to go support Champions Weekly on Kickstarter.

The Good Fight returns... to the past!

I've proudly been a member of the Pen and Cape Society for several years now as the group of superhero fiction writers have put together four great anthologies and worked together in all kinds of unique and fun ways. Now the fine folks at Local Hero Press have prepped the fifth edition of our shared anthology series The Good Fight and this one takes us back a few years. Previous themes have wrapped around villains, "the homefront" (supporting cast) and sidekicks. This time around, the series goes back a few years as the focus turns to "The Golden Age."

Twelve writers answered the call for new stories of World War II superheroes, pulp age adventurers and everything in between. For those that have followed my previous The Good Fight contributions, you know that I like to make my focus a new tale in my "The Second Life of D.B. Cooper" series of short stories.

How do I place a story about the later life of a 70s era plane hijackers into a thirties era setting? I will reveal that in a couple more weeks, but be reassured that the story's title does start with "The Second Life of."

And I'm not alone. I have a mega-talented eleven other creators in this book with me: Leonard Apa, Stephen T. Brophy, David Court, Jeff Deischer, Adrienne Dellwo, Psychopomp Gecko, Ian Thomas Healy, James Hudnall, T. Mike McCurley, Scott A. Story, and Tom Warin! If you're interested in supporting great new fiction, be sure to head over to Amazon or Smashwords and pre-order your copy! The book launches on April 30!

It's Camp Nanowrimo time!

Today is April 1st and while many will celebrate the fools of the world, I will instead be turning my focus to the twice-annual Camp Nanowrimo event. Unlike the 50,000 word sprint that is the November event, Camp Nanowrimo is far more free form with open project types and goals.

This year my effort is going into finishing up the current cycle of Quadrant stories, which have fallen behind the continued progress of Lightweight and Shockwave. If all goes as planned with this month and next, I should have pretty much every release I've got planned for 2019 done in the next two to three months

From there, I have more big plans for 2020. I'll write more about that soon though.

If anyone is interested in following along at Camp Nanowrimo, you can find my account here. And if you're a fellow writer of the super or heroic that's also participating in the event, let me know and I'll add you to our shared cabin!

The next month will feature weekly updates on the project as I work through first an editorial phase and then the completion of a year's worth of Quadrant tales. Those will hit every Wednesday, with other content already planned for Mondays and Fridays! So be sure to stay tuned into the blog as we get this show on the road!

It's a marvelous life! (WIP Wednesday)

Over the last three weeks, I've fought two head colds but still managed to get a decent amount of work done on the ongoing projects that have been debuting as part of Patreon. I clocked about five thousand words in the last week on Shockwave and Lightweight. Lightweight is just about done while Shockwave currently sits at four chapters of a planned six in the first book.

Next month will be my twice annual Camp Nanowrimo month, where several of my writing friends and I get together and push each other forward on writing projects. My plan is to complete the next three chapters of Quadrant over that month of writing. That will bring me right up to the finishing line with that one as well.

My big goal is to wrap all three novels by the end of May and set out on the next writing journey, which will include a short story or two plus the next phase of Lightweight!

I'm also working on a new scheduling format for Patreon releases, one that will see all the ongoing books update about every six weeks. That one will depend a bit on how things go as I move into the second half of 2019 however.

I went with my wife and the youngest to see Captain Marvel over the weekend. The family and I loved the very different take on the mythos of Mar-Vell and Carol Danvers. A lot of the negative reaction is confusing to me, as I felt it was the best use of Carol since the Brian Reed Ms. Marvel series of the mid-2000s. It gets a thumbs up from me, yet another in a solid string of really great Marvel movies in the last two years.

Today's image is of Carol in costume, drawn by the always amazing Sana Takeda, taken from a variant cover of Life of Captain Marvel. Character owned by Marvel.

The roller coaster ride of the writing life (WIP Wednesday)

February is done and March is here. It feels as though 2019 has flown by so far for this writer. I've published five stories so far with twenty plus still coming later this year. It's been good to bring new material out into the world once again, something I didn't do nearly enough of in the previous two years. I still have a lot of publishing ahead of me though, so other parts of the last month are a bit disappointing.

I managed just under 29,000 words for the month, shy for the second month in a row of my 35,000 word monthly target. It is still ahead of my January count however and probably would have came much closer to my goal if I had the three extra days of the previous month.

So I'm starting out March with a goal to pick up speed again. I've been working hard to start producing more content across the internet in the next few weeks as I start to stagger things a bit in the coming months. One of my goals is to make sure I'm releasing something new five days a week across my various sites. This site will remain an aggregate for where my current projects are coming and going however.

Right now, those projects include the final draft checks of Quadrant 7 and Lightweight 18 in preparation for their release later this month on Patreon. Like the previous stories, they will be up for pre-order at the same time with release dates about seven months from now.

I am also toying with a story idea to start out a new serial to be published on my Medium account. So far it has mostly been used as a hub for talking about the art of writing and deep dives into the world of comics. But I have a new narrative that I might test out as part of Medium's paid service, but more research will have to take place before a final decision is made on that one.

Sometimes the challenge feels like I'm staring up at a skyscraper that is the future. But much like King Kong, I'm going to make that climb.

So work remains in progress. I'm currently working on a future installment of Shockwave, one with major implications for the future of the series. Next up will be the final chapter of the current Lightweight saga plus the final three Quadrants for the next year. From there, I will start on some of the bonus stories I haven't even started to talk about for the second half of the Patreon in 2019...

Photo by Devon Divine on Unsplash.

Four stories and the man that loves them! (WIP Wednesday)

I've been publishing now for over ten years. It feels so much shorter than that as I type this. While I've published a lot of works of which I'm incredibly proud, I feel like I haven't done enough in that time.

Thankfully I still have the wherewithal to make up for lost time. Which is why right now, I've got four different works I've alternated between in the last few days.

The first is a short story for an upcoming charity anthology, which features the first meeting between Lightweight and the four brothers of Quadrant. That one was on an ultra-short deadline and clocks in at just under 2000 words, so when I say short, I'm not kidding. It will also likely see publication much sooner than a lot of my other works. It's set after the current volume of Lightweight and the upcoming volume of Quadrant, so it does feature an interesting glimpse into the future of the Quadrant Universe.

The second is the final pieces of Lightweight 17, which will debut on Patreon in one week. While the stories been in the books for months, I made a few final revisions and wrote the afterword that I include in all of my serialized stories. It's ready to go up next Wednesday for patrons and will be available in just over six months to everyone else. I'm very proud of "Arcana" and I hope my readers will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I'm hard at work on a future chapter of Shockwave in the scripting stage. I'm working hard to wrap the final chapters of the first arc as the mystery behind Noah's powers is finally revealed. Not a lot I can say about this one, but stay tuned for a lot more as Shockwave's adventures play out over the rest of the year.

Finally, I'm back at work at a long in gestation project featuring a seventies era superhero. It's one of the most fun and weird tales I've worked on, but I'm on a strict deadline to get this one in to the editor. I'll share more about it when it's wrapped up and contracts are signed. For now, we will simply call it by the code name DOGHOUSE.

So I am nothing if not busy at the writing game, even if my production levels aren't quite at the level I had hoped for so far in 2019. There's always time to get back on track though and start pumping out a lot more words for you to read as the year continues!

Today's featured image is a classic Jack Kirby illustration, one of many in a catalog of Kirby and Kirby inspired images I turn to when I need good reminders of how to design the worlds of Shockwave. Image copyright the Kirby Estate.

Kickstart the Week 71: the Thrilling Adventures of Zorro and zombies!

It's been a couple months since the last Kickstart the Week feature on this blog. It's been a long-standing mainstay that I like to focus attention on great new works over at that site. So I'm bringing it back as a part of a rotating set of features on Monday designed to bring attention to super powered fiction of all varieties. With this change, we're also be focusing on multiple Kickstarters, all of which I think are worth a look.


Robert Greenberger is a name recognizable to long-time comics fans for his work as an editor for many years at DC Comics. He parlayed that success into a run as a Star Trek prose author and has since teamed with several alums of both comics and Trek to form Crazy 8 Press. Now he's producing a new anthology from that press that should make fans of superheroes and pulp adventure excited! It's called Thrilling Adventure Yarns.

The project looks to tell stories in the tradition of the pulps, although it seems to have its major focus on the heroic side of things. It features several names that should be familiar to comic and pulp fans like Paul Kupperberg, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert T. Jeschonek and Jim Beard. It apparently even will feature an unearthed tale from the legendary Shadow creator Lester Dent never published before this book. That's an impressive line-up and is only about half the contents!

Give it a look and get ready for some great adventure yarns in the future.

Speaking of pulp heroes with a superhero flair, the folks at Gallant Knight have set out to finally create the first full-fledged role playing game based around the hundred year old hero Zorro!

2019 is the character's anniversary, so it's great to see old Los Angeles being brought to life in all its glory using the classic West End D6 system well known to a lot of gamers.

The company has been sharing bits and pieces of the rules online for the last few weeks, so be sure to check out the Kickstarter for more details!


William Tucci most famously created Shi, one of my favorite all time characters. Now he's making a big comic comeback. First, he has a new series with Axe Cop creator Ethan Nicolle called Appalachian Apocalypse. Now he's mounting the finished version of a story he started a decade ago, about a samurai fighting the undead: Zombie-Sama!

I'm all for Tucci branching out to producer more great work. I'm equally excited to see the talented John Broglia continue to produce stupendous art for the series. But I'm probably most excited that the project offers an ashcan of the upcoming return of Shi, a character I've waited for decades to see more stories about.

Head over to the Kickstarter and check out all the fun of Zombie-Sama and throw some support to a talented creative team!

Catching up is hard to do! (WIP Wednesday)

You might have noticed my complete disappearance from blogging in the second half of January. It was not without good reason as I struggled to get things up and running with Patreon stories through a seemingly never-ending fight with sickness and general malaise. I used the time to get closer to back on track with all my projects so that I hopefully can keep steady releases throughout 2019.

A lot of focus went into making sure the next month's stories are ready or close to ready to go for their impending release. The Patreon site now comes with a handy image to let everyone know the release dates for the next couple months and this will update once a month to keep the schedule out in front of me.

It's nothing fancy, but it does let everyone have the dates for the impending releases of the next two Lightweight chapters as well as the first stories in Shockwave and the second volume of Quadrant.

I also used that time to wrap up a story for the new Pen & Cape Society anthology due in just a few months. I'm not going to reveal the nature of the new anthology or the story until the book is officially announced, but I will say it continues to develop the Secret Life of D.B. Cooper series without featuring Coop himself.

Right now, I've got a couple super-secret projects in the works, one on a tight deadline I'm not sure I'll be able to finish and another long in production and looking to finish by the end of the month. Plus I'm continuing edits and writing on the upcoming Patreon stories as I work to keep well ahead new of my new biweekly schedule.

Hopefully, this blog will be back on a semi-regular schedule for the foreseeable future, so you don't miss out on what's happening out there in the fine fine world of the Quadrant Universe!

Heavy is the Lightweight! (WIP Wednesday)

The last week or so has been focused completely on Lightweight. I've been working on final edits for Lightweight 16: Earthbound which will go up on Patreon in just a few days. I'm excited to bring this new saga out to the world and hope that it proves as entertaining as I think it is. It's an interesting start to the new volume, the continuance of my favorite series to write and the beginning of a lot more from Lightweight in the years ahead.

Even as I'm putting the final edits on Lightweight 16: Earthbound, I'm wrapping up the final pages of Lightweight 20. This will serve as the penultimate chapter of his return to Earth. These chapters are very much about Kevin finding his path as an adult back on Earth, even as he faces some pretty terrifying villains.

My writing speed is still a bit slower than I would like it to be in the new year, although I've been pushing out a lot of nonfiction specifically at the Wrestling Deep End. Here's hoping I can remedy that in the next couple weeks as I prepare to release a lot more stuff over the course of 2019!

Today's image of a whole lot of weights is by Danielle Cerullo.

Young DC heroes in prose - thoughts on Wonder Woman: Warbringer and Catwoman: Soulstealer

Just over a year ago, DC and Random House teamed up to produce the DC Icons series, novels telling the tales of young DC characters. The titles don't seem to have any particular connection other than that theme and a rogue's gallery of well known young adult writers providing the stories. With two books of the released three now under my belt, I thought I'd share some thoughts on both.

The Batman book remains on my to-be-read pile! 

Wonder Woman: Warbringer twists the back story of Diana and gives her an adventure in Man's World years before Steve Trevor arrives. Instead, she rescues a young girl named Alia when she washes up on Themyscira's shores. Unfortunately for Diana, she soon learns Alia isn't just a normal girl, but a Warbringer, a living trigger for war in the world.

The plot quickly expands to introduce Alia's friends and her brother Jason, even as forces beyond her control seem to attack Alia and Diana from every corner. Much of the story is spent hopping from Alia and Diana's point of views as they get to know each other, but Diana is far less a fish out of water than in most tellings of her origin. A major twist hits two-thirds through the book to reveal the true villain and the tale rushes to a speedy finish there.

Leigh Bardugo is a fantasist in her regular work and perhaps that explains some of the slog her character interactions often seem to be. The time between leaving Themyscira and reaching the site of the final battle often feels disjointed and with little clear path. Because of this, the middle really weighs the rest of the story down. The conclusion makes up for a lot of those issues, but it just doesn't feel like Bardugo had enough to fill three hundred plus pages in an entertaining way.

The same cannot be said for Sarah J. Maas' Catwoman: Soulstealer. The roughest part of the tale is an extended introduction set a few years before the main action as teenage Selina is taking care of her ailing sister Maggie while earning a living as part of the girl gang of fighters known as the Leopards. This portion ends badly for Selina as she's arrested and about to be locked away for a long time before Talia Al Ghul intercedes and invites her into the League of Assassins. And while this section feels overly long, every page of it is essential in defining Selina and her motivations for the rest of the novel.

Fast forward two years and Selina returns to Gotham as Holly Vanderhees, a wealthy socialite. She's graduated from the League, but has betrayed them in coming to Gotham with a prize she's looking to sell far greater than anyone could imagine. She quickly sets up her work as Catwoman which brings her into conflict with Batwing. With Batman out of the city, Luke Fox is in charge of defending it and one of the best parts of the book is how compelling Maas makes both Selina and Luke as their narratives bounce back and forth.

I expected the cast to be limited mostly to those two figures, but Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn end up playing significant roles, with a bevy of other Gotham regulars making cameos at least. The tale races along with two characters that stay compelling and a plot that's always moving forward.

Maas knows the lore of these characters well and embraces it rather than ignores it. Dozens of Gotham locations used previously appear as do several well known elements related to the characters I've mentioned already and a few more. Maas revels in crafting her own take on these ideas and the result is an epic novel that makes me wish she would write more contemporary heroic fiction.

Both Warbringer and Soulstealer bring new ideas to old characters, but it's only Maas's Catwoman tale that truly excels at it. Both books are available pretty much anywhere books are sold, so check them out if you haven't already and let me know what you think!

A December to dismember! (WIP Wednesday)

Blame Extreme Championship Wrestling for that punderful title, as they gave us the original event of the same name in 1995. WWE pretty much destroyed the relaunched ECW with a pay-per-view of the same name a decade later. (It was a whole lot of not good.)

It's been a tough few weeks. Health issues kicked my depressive tendencies into high gear and familial situations ramped up my own need to retreat from a lot of the world. I've focused a bit more time into a few games instead of putting a lot of it into writing, either here on the blog or on books.

But I am continuing progress on Lightweight. I hoped to finish the last two chapters before the end of the month so that the first drafts would all be prepped for the January launch of all new stories on the Patreon. While I still have months and months to get them done before they would actually debut, that doesn't mean I don't want to make sure readers can know they will see everything come out in a timely manner with work done months in advance.

My plans for the final two weeks of the month consist mostly of getting the last few rewards for December sent out on Patreon, then to make sure everything is up and ready for January and February on the Patreon. From there, I plan to wrap up the fourth book of Lightweight, then move on to completing the first full year of Quadrant and Shockwave. After that, I'm in the free and clear to start on 2020's slate of stories for the site!

Not much news otherwise as I ramp up for the Christmas holidays. Next week's posts will likely be light on content, so you can expect to see your next WIP Wednesday after the first of the year!

Life's derailments, or a migraine a day... (WIP Wednesday)

It's been a tough week framed with the return of an old enemy: migraines. This has slowed my process quite a bit. 

Most of the work I've accomplished over the week has been on lunches and short stretches away from home and a computer, writing in a notebook. I've worked on much of Lightweight this way over the last few months. 

Outside of this, my focus has been mostly on trying to keep the headaches from derailing me completely. This has slowed my writing down a bit, but shouldn't impact the full roll out of the Patreon at the beginning of January. 

Beyond that, I've been playing quiet games and mostly just working to stay distracted from the pain as much as possible. It's been an up and down process, but usually my bouts with headaches leave me within a week or two arrival. 

While I'm busy recovering though, you can bring a bit of joy to my day. If you've been reading my work please head over to Amazon or Goodreads and give it a review! Every single review helps more readers find the work, and you will earn my unending gratitude and brighten my day just a bit more.

Today's image is a much more elegantly photographed image of a headache than I could ever produce, all thanks to the talented Matteo Vistocco on Unsplash. 

The First, but not the last! (WIP Wednesday)

It's mostly been a weekend of relaxing here at Super Powered Fiction Central! This has been on purpose as I cool off from spitting out 50,000 words in thirty days as part of NaNoWriMo. The First: Hero's Dawn isn't quite finished yet, but it will rest for a bit as I make sure I've got the first three months of stories set for the huge roll-out of twice monthly (or more) new fiction on Patreon.

I'm also getting things prepped for the roll-out of another top ten wrestlers for the year ending 2018 over at the Wrestling Deep End, as well as writing about recent independent shows I've attended.

Next up on my docket is the wrap of Lightweight Book Four, more Shockwave and then finishing up The First: Hero's Dawn. From there, I'll then wrap Quadrant Book Two before pulling out a couple older works to finally bring to an end.

So I have lots of plans ahead... but not much to talk about for them right now! I'm sure I'll have more in the near future however, as things get ready to launch for the next wave of Lightweight tales in just a few short weeks!

Today's image is of D'Compose, a great villain from the classic cartoon Inhumanoids, by artist Kelly Williams. I've had giant monsters from beneath the ground in my head for awhile lately, so it seemed fitting to share this one here!

Tuesday Throwback - Enter the mind of Enigma in Quadrant: The Future Shock!

I talked in detail last week about the importance of the Quadrant series to my writing. I even penned a brief introduction to the four members that make up the team. But that was last week. This week brings the fourth volume in their ongoing adventures, now ready for your digital purchase!

"The Future Shock" brings Enigma to the forefront as he finds himself trapped in a single moment of time. It also introduces one of the team to one of their greatest threats, Tempus Dux, the dark lord of the future. Dux has a vast hatred for the heroes of Quadrant, a hatred they don't yet understand. But without the voices in his head for the first time in his life, the young omnipath must use his wits and his telekinesis to stop a threat beyond anything he's faced before!

All this plus the return of a strange force that offers more mysteries into the nature of the Quadrant Universe!

Quadrant: The Future Shock is now available at Amazon.com.

Happy Thanksgiving! Spend it with "The Pilgrim!"

Much less cool pilgrims than the one I'm talking about. 

I first debuted "The Pilgrim" near the end of my 52 stories in 2014. It served as the final part of the Short Shots series that also saw "The Editor" released.

It remains the only tale I have only release on Wattpad where you can still read it now.

This is a short beat of a story, a weird little tale with a bit of existential horror mixed within a cosmic set piece. Perhaps it offers as many questions as it offers solutions. It also introduces an enigmatic being to the Quadrant Universe, one that will continue to play a role, whether directly or indirectly, in future tales.

Please judge for yourself. And if you like it, leave a review wherever you've read it. And if you really enjoy it and haven't done so already, please consider joining my Patreon, where you will see a ton of new content just like it!