My newest idea is about a teenage girl named Jessie who has been working to defeat the forces of the supernatural since she was ten years old, when the ghost of her mother returned to help her grandfather train Jessie. She’s seventeen now, and she regularly fights these forces, what she fights varies from week to week, but includes things such as vampires, werewolves, and ghosts – all in the classical sense. However, the biggest thing she fights are the Boogeymen, ghosts of emotions who cause havoc and pain wherever they go in their quest to destroy. Boogeymen can only be seen by those who know exactly what they are and believe in them – such as Jessie and Derek (we’ll get to him), and children, who believe in such monsters under the bed.

Jessie is not focused on being popular or getting boys, and will not fall apart the first cute boy she comes across. The drama comes mostly from her two worlds intersecting, her friends finding out about her abilities and ‘night job’, and the tension between her grandfather and her over the ‘future of the family power’. Her abilities come from meditation and balance, meaning that she needs to stay focussed and calm or run the risk of getting herself killed in action. Essentially, she’s a ninja. A redheaded, British descended ninja.

The rest of the cast includes Samantha a.k.a. Sam, Jessie’s sports loving, tomboy best friend who has a major crush on Derek. Tristan, the childhood best friend of the girls, who is not actually in love with either of them. He’s into technology and inventing. And then there’s Derek, the stereotypically hottest and most popular guy in school, who, in all actuality, is a huge dork and loves all things supernatural, often tripping over his words in trying to protect his reputation. He’s generally a nice guy though, and hangs out with everyone, particularly Jessie and Co.

There’s not much in the way of plot yet. But I do know that Sam already knows about Jessie’s little hobby, Tristan is suspicious of what they do in their spare time – which actually leads to a subplot where he thinks they are secretly dating and ‘outs’ them to the whole school. He later finds out the truth though and proceeds to try and make new gadgets for Jessie. And Derek ends up in the middle of it all due to his paranoid and supernatural loving ways. Add on the fact that Jessie’s Mom tends to hang around and chat with her, though Jessie and her grandfather are the only ones who can see him, and her grandfather constantly pushing her to become the ultimate fighter and wanting her to take over the family, and I think I have something relatively interesting.

Thoughts?”

Target audience: “I’m not sure what the target audience would be…I’m suspecting male teenagers would be the primary audience for this sort of thing, but there is a chance that an older audience might find it interesting, as well as a female audience.”

“’Don’t sugar-coat your advice, but please try to be polite.’ While this is my first time posting something like this on an open forum, I really want to know what others think about this premise/idea.”

SN guest writer Jeremy Melloul is trying to raise funds for his upcoming comic book on KickStarter.  Screws Loose is a supernatural military thriller about a team of mercenaries that finds a mysterious crate.  Even a $10 donation gets you a copy of the comic (when it comes out) and a $25 donation gets you a copy and character designs.  I have donated $150 in the off-hand chance that the mysterious crate holds a bathtub full of rabid mongeese.  “That’ll teach you to be a mercenary in a supernatural thriller!”

(I wonder if there’s any chance his thank you card will have a sketch of his characters fighting off a bathtub of rabid mongeese.  That would be the most badass thank you card I’ve ever seen).

• Increase site traffic from 150,000 hits to 200,000 (around 25% growth).  I actually had about 219,000 (roughly 38% growth).   
• Write at least 100 writing articles.  Including guest articles, we had about 105.
• Get published.  Not yet!

My 2012 resolutions for SN:

• Increase site traffic from ~220,000 hits to 275,000 (around 25% growth).  I see a few obstacles on the horizon.  My numbers for 2011 (and 2010) were inflated by tens of thousands of searches related to Green Lantern/Batman demotivationals.  At one point, SN was #2 on Google image searches for Green Lantern.  Since then, Google’s algorithm has changed and SN no longer places remotely high on GL image searches.
• Get in the top 2 results on Google for a search for list of superpowers and superpower list.  According to Google Traffic Estimator’s (crude) estimate, those two queries total ~20,000 searches a month.  It’s surprisingly competitive.
• Host at least 100 writing articles, including 20+ guest articles.  
• Get at least 10 articles with 10 Facebook likes.  So far, my personal best is 410 likes on a single post (the Green Lantern/Batman demotivational).
• Get published.  Hope springs eternal!

My story plot is a little vague right now since I’m still trying to figure out where I want the story to go so…

My novel’s focus is on Christena, she is about 25 years old and works as a secretary for the boss of a small mafia. She’s having issues coping with her life in the mafia after spending most of her time in a vigilante group that went after criminals who escaped justice. The story starts a year and a half after the death of the three other girls in her group that were like her sisters. Christena is both physically and mentally scarred from the bombing that kill her sisters, and is also forced to deal with an obsessed psychopath that she works for.

The story is currently being told in the POVs of Christena and her boss with a prologue that is two years before the story starts.