July has been a big month for Wearing the Cape, made more interesting by my decision to move from the original $.99 ebook price to $2.99; the decision immediately slashed my sales numbers. Why did I do it? Well, I’d gotten some good reviews, my numbers were rising, and I have a problem with Amazon’s … More Wearing the Cape: July Report
Not so long ago someone asked me if I thought the superhero genre was exhausted, and my response was that I felt it was just getting started. I compared it to the vampire phenomenon, and how the bloodsuckers seemed to have taken a bite out of every genre imaginable. One of them even invaded Wearing … More Red Is The New Black
With superheroes becoming more popular, they have begun to spread outside their traditional comic-book and movie-screen mediums. Serious novel writers are taking notice of the dramatic possibilities inherent in superheroics–which are, after all, no more implausible than the flood of modern-fantasy stories (vampires, werewolves, and witches, oh my!) taking over every genre. Of course this … More You must remember this…
Wearing the Cape has a big cast, most of which are superheroes. One of the biggest problems this created was the need for careful consistency. Who is the strongest hero? The fastest? How do they stack up against each other? How useful are their powers in specific situations? Fortunately, I had a tool ready-to-hand for … More Power Games: Astra.
Almost a couple of months ago now, I promised to talk more about world-building and superheroes–how I arrived at the Post-Event setting Wearing the Cape takes place in. So let’s talk about comic-book history and choices. Where do superpowers come from? In the golden age of superhero comics, the answer was easy: anywhere. You could … More Cosmic Questions
So, it has now been two months since the April 25th Kindle publication of Wearing the Cape on Amazon. How is it going? Hard to say since I don’t have a lot to compare it too, so lets look at the good and the bad, bad first. The Bad: I published too soon. I’d thought … More Adventures In Indie-Publishing
And now to sink for all time my reputation as a serious literary intellect. In my college days I couldn’t get enough of Star Trek–specifically Star Trek novels, and Penguin Books was cooperating by pumping out a title or three per quarter. Needless to say, quality varied, and “good” can certainly be a matter of … More In which Captain Kirk is the very model of a modern major general.
One of the things I was warned about, when I started marketing Wearing the Cape, was that some nosy Parkers would actually want to interview me about the book. Why? I’m not trying to be obtuse; it’s simply that, as a reader, I was never that interested in authors or interviews with them. If I … More Q&A: Loving The Grilling.
When one thinks of time travel stories, H.G. Well’s Time Machine comes to mind, and Ray Bradbury’s The Thunder Of Its Wings, and then of course Back To The Future I, II, and III, and… The point is that most time travel stories lead to far-distant adventures, danger, or history-threatening paradox. And then there is … More Its name is Montmorency.
Alternative-history novels are fairly common now, stories where history diverged because of a single changed event. What is less common is alt-history fantasy. Historical alt-history fantasy is least common of all. Back in 1988, Melissa Scott, better known for her science fiction works, pulled this rarest of stories off beautifully. Continuing my reviews of “lost … More A Midsummer Night’s Alt-History.
Marion G. Harmon, A Writer in Vegas. 