Siegel City

A little star falling to Earth…

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I woke up to a strange world this morning. Strange to me at least. It’s a world that hasn’t existed since June of 2021. It’s a world where I did not get up and start thinking about what was going to happen next in Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars.

I guess I should back up a little bit. Several years ago, I had an idea. In and of itself, there is nothing special or unusual about this. This is what people who want to use AI to write or make art will never understand. This is what you simply can’t explain to someone who finds out you’re a writer and says, “Oh yeah? I got an idea. How about I tell it to you and you write it and we’ll split a bazillion dollars?” It doesn’t work that way. The ideas are the easy part. It’s doing something with them that counts.

And the period in which this idea came to me was, frankly, the most fallow period of my life in terms of productivity. For reasons I have gone into multiple times and don’t feel like rehashing now, I had an extended period where nothing was working, from a writing standpoint. Even in that barren era, the ideas were there. I had dozens of them that I started working on and simply abandoned because I couldn’t find any traction. Many of them clung to the themes of parents and their children – sometimes from the parents’ perspective, sometimes from that of the child, sometimes from someone in the middle generation dealing with both at the same time. I liked a lot of the ideas. It was the doing something at which I was failing.

Then an idea came to me for a new story in my Siegel City series. This one would not feature Copycat or any of the previous heroes as main characters (although Copycat would grow to more prominence in the story than I originally intended, it is still not HIS story) but a whole new generation of young heroes…plus one young woman who was desperately trying NOT to be a hero. The trouble with this particular idea was that…well…the Siegel City yarns were all novels and short stories, but this was neither. This was a longer tale, something that would be comprised of multiple mini story arcs that would build together into a larger tapestry before finally colliding in a grand finale. It was less like a novel and more like seasons of a television series or a longform comic book. I would have loved to turn it into a comic book, honestly. That’s my most fervent dream.. I even wrote most of the first issue for such an enterprise. But then it died off, as I am largely a one-man operation. It is possible, if not profitable, to write and publish novels and short stories on your own. But it is far more difficult to do so with comic books. I don’t have a publisher and I can’t draw anything so much as a stick figure, and even those look hideously malformed, so producing a comic book as a solo endeavor was out of the question. (Whenever I tell people this, someone inevitably points out how many friends I have who ARE professional comic book artists, and I reply that yes, they are PROFESSIONALS, and as such deserve to be paid for their work, which isn’t really possible for a guy on a public school teacher’s salary.) 

And so I pushed the story aside, thinking it would join a dozen others in this fallow period as a “nice idea, but didn’t go anywhere.”

In spring of 2021, though, the evil empire called Amazon actually kind of saved me. Amazon was launching a new platform called Kindle Vella, in which writers could serialize stories a chapter (or “episode,” as they called it) at a time. That…actually sounded pretty good. I would have the ability to do a longform story without having to pace it like a novel. I could do my arcs. I could take breaks in between, if necessary. And the chapters, as a constraint of the platform, could be no longer than 5000 words. Even in this awful, rudderless time, I thought, I could do 5000 words a week.

And so I did. In June of 2021, I dropped the first three episodes of what had become Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars. It was the story of Andeana Vargas, a high school senior whose mother, Carmelita, was secretly the world-famous and universally-beloved superhero called Shooting Star. Everyone who knew her mom’s secret also knew Andi, and expected her to grow up to be a hero herself, even though Andi had no intention of doing so. Then, at the end of that third chapter (this was important, because on Vella the first three chapters are free, so ya gotta have a hook), a video is leaked to the press that shows Andi’s mother removing her mask and revealing her true name to the world. Where did the video come from? Who made it? And what were they going to do now that their greatest secret was no secret at all?

This past Sunday afternoon, while the Detroit Lions were winning their way to their first NFC Championship game in three decades, I was doing something that was, frankly, much more remarkable: I finished writing Little Stars. The final two installments will both drop on Wednesday, because the final episode isn’t really a chapter in and of itself but more of an epilogue, and I didn’t think it would be fair to make people wait a week for it after the climax of the story. When I began, I thought the story would take maybe a year to get out of me. Of course, when I started writing the original Other People’s Heroes, I thought it would be a short story, too.

Shows what I know.

Two and a half years of my creative life went into this story, and while the journey isn’t quite over for me (more on that in a minute), I think this is a milestone worth sitting back and appreciating. I never thought it would take this long. I never thought it would be this long. But the final word count for all 119 episodes is a little over 400,000 words. That’s more than most people read in two and a half years, let alone write. For you non-writers who may be asking how many pages that is, it doesn’t matter. Page count is a little useless for a writer. It can change from one edition to the next, change because of page size or font size, and it’s impossible to keep track that way. It’s the number of words that matter to us, because word count is constant unless you revise. For comparison, for my own edification, I looked up the word counts of some of the most famous doorstoppers of literary history.

WAR AND PEACE: 587,287 
LORD OF THE RINGS (All three volumes combined): 579,459
LES MISERABLES: 545,925 
THE STAND (Uncut): 467,812
GONE WITH THE WIND: 418,053 
OTHER PEOPLE’S HEROES: LITTLE STARS: 409,206

I didn’t set out to write my Lord of the Rings, and of course I have no intention of comparing myself to Professor Tolkien (Little Stars, for instance, has considerably less food blogging), but just in terms of how much crap we’ve dumped on the page, I’ve actually chiseled out a spot among the giants here. And I feel like I’ve come out revitalized. I’ve done several short stories in the time since I started Little Stars. I started my weekly Geek Punditry columns right here. I feel like I can create again, and the memory of that time in which I couldn’t chases me like a wild bear I need to escape. I don’t want to go there again.

So the question is…what now?

Well, first I drop the end of the story on Wednesday, and I really hope you’ll all be there for it. This is something that clearly means a lot to me, and I hope I stick the landing. But after that, maybe a little break, and then the revision work will begin for the next iteration of Little Stars.

The thing is, guys, as grateful as I am that the Kindle Vella platform exists and allowed me to crawl out of that nonproductive pit of despair I was trapped in, it didn’t work out that well. Amazon was trying to capture the periodical audience that enjoys apps like Wattpad, but I don’t think it’s carried over like they hoped. Part of that is my own pitiful efforts at self-promotion, of course. I am the worst person on the planet in terms of promoting myself because my paralytic imposter syndrome makes me feel like a snake oil salesman if I try to tell anybody I’ve done something good. But another part is that I don’t think Amazon has done a good enough job selling people on the platform. The “token” system seems to confuse a lot of people, and for some inexplicable reason, when Vella launched it was only available on iOS devices – you couldn’t even read Amazon Kindle Vella stories on an Amazon Kindle. Thankfully they’ve fixed that problem and branched out to Kindle and Android, but the stories on Vella are STILL, last time I checked, unavailable outside of the United States. I didn’t know how many international readers I actually HAD until I started posting about Little Stars and got messages from people asking when it would be available in Australia or the UK. The answer to that, by the way, is, “Soon, I hope.”

So while I like the creative challenge of Vella, I don’t think I would do it again, at least not without some major changes to the platform. What does that mean for Little Stars? It means it’s time for me to revise and reformat. Even though the story wasn’t planned as novels, I’ve figured out what I think are the best places to break it down into three acts, three installments…a trilogy, in other words. I thought briefly about just putting out one ginormous mama-jama book with the entire thing in it, but some wise friends convinced me that the trilogy route was much better. Alexis Braud, if you’re reading this, thank you for pointing out that a 400,000 word book just doesn’t fit comfortably in a purse or bookbag. (There is, however, still just enough of a narcissist in me that I may do a custom printing of that mama-jama edition just so I can put it on my own bookshelf and admire the chunkiness of it all.) 

With this new version, there will have to be some changes to make it fit. So after a little bit of a break I’m going to start revising. I don’t intend to make any massive changes to the story itself, but I will probably tweak the details, fix any continuity snarls that I can find, tighten the story up, and hopefully improve the characters and themes that evolved as I went along. When it’s over, while the Vella version will remain, the novel version will be the “official” history of Andeana Vargas as far as Siegel City canon is concerned, and in any discrepancies between the two, the books will be triumphant.

And then?

I have other ideas, of course. I think I made it abundantly clear that ideas are easy. And two of them are fighting it out right now, both of which are stories I worked on in the past and can’t quite get rid of, which I think is a good sign that they deserve revisiting. One of them is a science fiction epic, a story about two sisters trying to hunt down an inheritance left for them on a distant planet known as Earth. This would technically be a YA novel (or series, if I’m being honest), although I currently have no plans for a love triangle involving a bland, Mary Sue protagonist and a pair of bland, interchangeable heartthrobs. No, this is a story about sisters. And their parents, to some small degree, because I really can’t escape that. But mostly the sisters.

The other story I’m considering would bring me back to Siegel City right away. It’s the story of the oft-discussed but mysteriously missing STAT. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I based STAT on an old City of Heroes character of mine and that I had a whole backstory of his that I wanted to put in a book some day. This is the book I’m talking about. I even found myself working in more frequent references to STAT and dropping some Easter Eggs in the final act of Little Stars, little story seeds that would grow in this hypothetical novel. And yes, once again, this would be a story about parents and children. It’s just THERE.

Or maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow with a totally different idea that I can’t help but get started on. I really don’t know.

But the gap between my last novel, The Pyrite War, and the beginning of Little Stars was nine years. Sure, in that time I kept producing my Christmas stories, a couple of novellas, and my humor book Everything You Need to Know to Survive English Class, but the narrative gap was simply too long. I don’t want that to ever happen again.

So on Wednesday, please enjoy the grand finale of Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars. And then keep coming back to see what I’m working on next. Hopefully you’ll be as surprised by it as I will.

One last note – a special and very sincere thank you to Lew Beitz. Lew and I are moderators on the Comic Book Collecting page on Facebook, and over the last couple of years he’s become not only a friend, but the best darn Beta reader I could ask for. And he may be the only person on Earth who loves Keriyon Hall more than I do. That’s saying something. 

Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2014: An All-American Christmas

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This is another one where I’m not 100 percent certain where the inspiration came from. It’s another Siegel City story (although the last of those for a while, until 2021, to be precise), and once again I’ve branched out from Other People’s Heroes into new characters. I think it’s one of those stories that came to me, Jeopardy-style, in the form of a question: what if a crook found out when the superheroes in his city were having their Christmas party? How could he take advantage of that? And who would stop him? It’s shorter than a lot of my other Christmas tales, but I like it.

And hey, one more time, three cheers for the artwork of Jacob Bascle! You may remember him from such books as literally every Siegel City story, as well as his professional comic book design and lettering. Check him out on Facebook or visit his online portfolio! 

Christmas 2014: An All-American Christmas

Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2012: The Ghost of Simon Tower

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Yeah, I know what I said with “Lucky Penny” – I was branching out and writing Siegel City stories that weren’t part of the main cast of Other People’s Heroes, but I hadn’t left them behind ENTIRELY. This story stars Josh Corwood, alias Copycat, the main character of OPH, and it was written while I was working on what would turn out to be my last attempt at a direct sequel to Other People’s Heroes. Even now, though, I was linking to other stories. There are elements of this story that tie in directly to The Pyrite War, my novel of Siegel City’s Golden Age (which doesn’t feature Josh at all), and other things that would come back years later when I began working on the serial story Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars (in which Josh is a significant character, but in a supporting role). That’s why this ends with a little bit of a sequel hook – it was in reference to a story that I was planning, but never quite told. It still happened, though, in that long gap between OPH and Little Stars. Maybe I’ll tell it some day.

By now you should know that I love a good ghost story. I hope you agree that this is one.

Oh – and another shout out to Jacob Bascle, once again nailing it with the cover art for this story. Check him out on Facebook or visit his online portfolio! 

Christmas 2012: The Ghost of Simon Tower

Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2011: Lucky Penny

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By 2011, it had become clear that the story of mine that resonated most strongly with people was the novel Other People’s Heroes, which is all well and good. I like that story. I’m proud of it. But several efforts at writing a sequel had fallen flat for one reason or another. Eventually, I thought that rather than continuing that story, it would be better to try to branch out and tell new stories in the same world – new heroes, new characters, even new timelines. I could still bring in the characters from OPH if the occasion was there, but it was a big universe. Why limit myself? The Christmas story “Lucky Penny,” set in the Siegel City Universe’s version of Las Vegas, was my first attempt at this, and it’s served me well since then.

Big thanks to Jacob Bascle, comic book designer and letterer supreme, for the cover art used not only for “Lucky Penny,” but for every Siegel City story to date. You’ll see more of his work in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, feel free to check him out on Facebook or visit his online portfolio! 

Christmas 2011: Lucky Penny

Ghosts of Christmas Stories Past 2000: Lonely Miracle

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As I mentioned yesterday in the introduction to this little project, I got the inspiration to write a Christmas short story as a gift to my friends back in 2000. I was fresh out of college, working at a newspaper, and scribbling away at a story that had grabbed me about a reporter who discovers he has super powers, and thus wants to become a superhero himself. Originally intended to be a short story, when “Capes and Masks” reached 25,000 words and I realized I wasn’t even halfway through, I understood that I was actually working on my first novel. The book was eventually finished and given a slightly catchier title, Other People’s Heroes, and it’s kind of been the hub of my writing ever since. 

As I was working on the book when the idea to do a Christmas story came to me, I wound up incorporating that universe I was building into the story in question, a habit that would become more and more pronounced for me over time. You will find, over the next few weeks of this time capsule project, that a great number of these Christmas stories are linked either to Siegel City, to my other fictional world which I refer to as “The Curtain,” or to various other projects that were in the works at the time and may or may not have ever been completed. (Mostly have not.)

But for now, my friends, please enjoy — and feel free to share — the first story in my annual tradition, the Siegel City tale called…

Lonely Miracle

Flash Fiction: Ted and the Form

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I did a quick writing exercise today that turned into a little Siegel City story. It’s raw and unedited, but still, I thought I’d share it here.

Ted didn’t know where the money was, only that it wasn’t back in the cab where he left it. He’d gotten out of the car and closed the door, walking only three steps before realizing the hefty envelope had fallen out of his pocket. He spun on his heels and jumped almost directly in front of the car, stopping the driver before he could pull away from the curb.

“Hey, you crazy man?” The driver barked from his window. “I could have killed you!”

“I’m sorry, I just… I forgot something in the back seat,” Ted said. The driver glowered at him, but popped the door lock and let him in. He crawled across the seat, looking where he’d been sitting, looking down at the floor, shoving his hands between the cushions. Nothing.

“Hurry up, pal, I’ve got a business to run,” the driver said.

“It’s not here,” Ted hissed to himself. “It’s not here.” It didn’t make any sense. He knew he’d had the envelope with him when he got into the cab. Jason had handed it to him outside of the office and he was still holding it when he climbed in. He had been in the back seat of the cab when he stuffed it into his coat pocket. It was no longer in his coat pocket, therefore it had to be somewhere inside the cab.

And yet it wasn’t.

Not on the floor, not on the seat. He couldn’t even accuse the driver of having taken it because Ted had been in the back seat the entire time and he’d had no opportunity to get out and hide it.

“Are you sure you didn’t leave it somewhere else, buddy?” the driver asked. “I can’t wait around all day.”

Ted didn’t say anything. Instead, his mind was rushing through all of the things that were going to happen if he didn’t get that money back. He thought about the his boss noticing that it had gone missing in the first place. He thought about being fired and tossed out on the street. Worse, he thought about his boss’s enforcers coming after him. Working for Cary Buchvalt wasn’t on the level of being the henchman of a full-blown supervillain like Dr. Mayhem or Herr Sinister, but in a place like Siegel City even the low-level bosses could afford to place a couple of masks on the payroll. He imagined himself being hunted down by the Tracker or strangled in his sleep when the Form – who could honestly be anywhere around him even now and he wouldn’t know it – suddenly slithered under his bedroom door and carried out the boss’s orders.

“Enough is enough, pal,” the driver snapped. “Get out of the cab or I’m gonna call the cops.”

Cops? Ted didn’t have any fear of the cops, not with the alternative being visit by one of Buchvalt’s goons. How did this happen? How did he get here? He’d come out to Siegel back in ’56, fresh out of college, hoping to get a job at one of the larger firms. Instead he found himself doing the books for a mobster whose claim to fame was that he’d managed to escape Nightshadow on two separate occasions before being locked up for a nickel.

The driver was turned around now, staring him down. “Am I going to have to get physical?”

What about his ma? Would Buchvalt get physical with her? She’d met him once when she came to town for a visit, talked about what a nice gentleman his boss was. Would she say the same when her postman melted away, revealing the Form himself, ready to stuff his pliable fist down her throat and suffocate her with his own flesh?

“That’s enough, buddy.” He hadn’t seen the driver get out of the car, but he felt a pair of meaty hands grab him by the back of the coat, yanking him free and hurling him to the sidewalk. “I don’t know what you’re missing, pal, but I ain’t got all day!”

“The envelope!” Ted shrieked. “I need the envelope!”

“You need your head examined!”

The cabby turned and slid behind the wheel again. It was a smooth, fluid motion, during which he never lost contact with the car, and it was fast enough that the door was already slammed shut before Teddy could pull himself to his feet. He fell on the door, pounding the glass and shrieking. The driver just stared at him.

“Please, I need that envelope.”

“Last chance, pal.”

“Let me back in!”

The driver shrugged. “Your funeral, bucko.”

The door handle suddenly popped out of the frame, swinging back like a switchblade. Ted didn’t feel the pain until he looked down and realized it had sharpened like a blade too, opening his shirt and then his flesh as easily as slicing off a piece of Ma’s shrimp mould. The blade settled in his stomach, then he felt it dart into him, coming out of his back and sending blood spattering against the lining of his coat.

The blade retracted and turned back into the door handle and Ted, horrified, fell back onto the sidewalk as the cab drove away. It was past midnight, there was no one on the street, no one to see the dark pool spreading around his body, no one to jump in the phone booth and call for help.

Right now, Ted couldn’t help but think, he’d even be okay if Nightshadow showed up.

As the cab rounded a corner and rolled out of his sight, the frame of the car began to contract. It shifted, driver and all, turning into a rolling, slate-colored ball before gliding to a stop near a pay phone. The ball straightened up, taking on a humanoid shape. The bulky, blobby man picked up the phone, then produced a coin from somewhere within the folded putty and dropped it in the slot.

“It’s me, boss,” he said. “Yeah, I got the envelope. What do you mean ‘where,’ somewhere around my pancreas, I don’t know. Nah, he didn’t feel me take it, but he noticed it after he got out, so I had to take care of things. Yeah, that way. No, I guess I don’t need to visit his ma now. He learned his lesson pretty good.”

He hung the phone up and his form shifted again. It became smaller now, and his flesh took on a normal tone while a blue uniform sprung up around his body. He was pretty sure Ted was no one’s problem anymore, but the boss was right. Better safe than sorry. “Officer Henreid” would just take a little stroll down the block and make sure things were taken care of for good.