I have a checkered relationship with the Academy Awards…

If you want this character to feel guilty about her backstory, why not make her actually responsible for the accident?  For example, instead of having uncontrollable poison-massacre powers*, which is merely awful luck, maybe the character has powers that he uses in a reckless or ill-conceived way.  For example, maybe a flame-controller accidentally blows up a neighborhood by lighting up a gas line.  It’s still unintentional, but at least this gives him a choice to regret and atone for. Overcoming that will be more dramatic than “Gee, I’m sorry I was born to be a town-killer.” If the goal of the story is to have the character atone for his sins, it probably won’t be too dramatic if he’s not actually responsible for the sins in question. Or, if the character’s powers are completely uncontrollable, perhaps the character played some role in acquiring them, like participating in some poorly thought-out scientific experiment.

*Which are a losing Superpower Lottery ticket if ever there were one.   Pretty much everybody else in Heroes has something cool like superstrength or flight or time-travel.  Poor Maya.  Even the psychopathic serial killer has more control over his face-ripping telekinesis than she does.  (Also, he spent  a lot less time moping about his body count than she did).

Then, while passing a volcano, Carol comments that Wonder Woman’s invisible plane obeys her every command “like magic!” To which WW responds, “The magic of science, Carol!” This is bitterly ironic, given that less than ten issues earlier Kanigher had explained that Wonder Woman’s plane was made when a magical cloud turned a flying horse into an invisible airplane. But she goes on to explain that little computers in the plane make it obey Wonder Woman and only Wonder Woman, just like even smaller computers in the lasso do the same thing! (Those of you going, “Huh?!?!?!?” should probably take a little break from reading this. It doesn’t get any better.)

…

In the original ‘X-Men’ #1, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, we open with a sequence of Professor X running the team through their training regimen. Beast has to do a difficult acrobatic routine, Angel must fly an obstacle course…then the young sixteen-year old Iceman gets a turn, but Professor X is “going easy” on him by merely requiring him to display his powers. Iceman frosts himself over with snow…and Professor X telepathically tells the Beast to chuck a bowling ball at his head while he’s distracted, to “test his reflexes”.

…

At some point, logic dictates that he’s secretly trying to kill Iceman, and the whole “training exercise” thing is just an alibi.

• How long should I wait to introduce my main character?
• How can I do accents well?
  
• What are some common day-jobs for superheroes?
• How can I write a good opening?
• How can I do fight scenes?
  

I was sort of expecting Abe to win the fight by staking the vampire with a flagpole, but maybe that would have been too over-the-top.

The story begins with a young boy meeting his first love, who happens to be an elf. Drawn to her by the outsider character that defines their lives, he has his first meaningful positive emotional experience when he stumbles upon the girl in the deep forest. Later in the story (as you might expect) things get quite a bit rougher for the boy, and he must learn martial and magical secrets to not only fight evil, but merely to survive.

1. What are you trying to write?

*A short story, with an eye to sequels/spinoffs. Fantasy/action genre with martial arts mostly replacing the “sword” in “Sword and Sorcery” as the centerpiece.

2. Do you have a target audience in mind?

*Fans of traditional (Tolkien-style) fantasy, D&D’ers, Martial Arts fans. Generally late teens and older, as I expect to get a little too graphic with the violence for the little ones.

3. How thick is your skin?
* Like a rhino filled with custard. Seriously, though-be as critical as you like, so long as it’s useful in some way.

Two things jump out at me here.  First, the author’s royalty is proportionally much larger with e-books than hardcovers (20-25% compared to 15%, and even lower for paperbacks).  Second, since distributing an e-book is cheaper, the cost to consumers should drop considerably.

Picture taken from the New York Times.  Full article here.  This statistic caught my eye: “The industry is based on the understanding that as much as 70 percent of the books published will make little or no money at all for the publisher once costs are paid.”

If you’d like to do your own, please go here.

Earlier today, I received the latest e-mail from a particular troll asking to be unbanned.  See if you can guess why he got banned.

SUBJECT: Shut up and listen for once. A master of diplomacy, this one.  Here’s a brief snippet:  ”You only really have experience at getting almost everything (including this) wrong without actually getting around to realising it… While you may have experience in your field, I study literature at a professional level.”   I’d like to preface this by saying that I don’t think credentials are terribly important in writing.  However, if you’re going to make an appeal to authority, perhaps you could come up with something more impressive than being an English major.  Thanks.