kaBOOMers - Superhero Fiction discussion

Like every good superhero, you'll have an origin story.

Introduce yourself, where you're from, what you like to read and whether you write or review. Keep this about yourself rather than just your books. This isn't the place to promote your latest bestseller! Sure, you can mention your writing, but let's hear about you too.

Ben Langdon was born on a cold, winter day in Geelong, and grew up as a middle child. He seemed to always fall on the winning side of arguments or allegiances between his older brother and younger sister, discarding treaties when required. Most of his teenage years were taken up with obsessing over the exploits of the Uncanny X-Men and the Legion of Super-Heroes, although he came through with hardly any signs of lasting damage. He graduated from Geelong High School with his interest in reading and writing still in tact, and then found himself studying literature and journalism at Deakin University.

Working part-time at bookshops while he studied, Ben took on full-time work in his Honours year, and somehow ended up becoming a manager at one of Victoria’s biggest and busiest chain bookstores. It was a bit soul-destroying, but he met a lot of publisher reps and got a better insight into the publishing and writing industry. He fell in love with one of his employees and they decided to start a family, so Ben made the decision to get a ‘real job’ as a high school teacher and graduated from the University of Ballarat with his teaching degree.

His family moved to Portland, which was a miniature version of Geelong, and he has been there ever since. He has three kids of his own now, and marvels at his middle child’s ability to play the other two off each other. During his time in Portland he has balanced his love of teaching with a growing passion for writing. He began as a columnist for The Age newspaper using the pen name Jack Collacott and is now the editor of This Mutant Life and author of The Miranda Contract. He has also taught creative writing workshops for high school students and the general public.

Neo-Pulp is a term he picked up while a part of a writers’ workshop at the State Library of Victoria. After connecting with one of the movement’s founders and greatest promoters, Adam Ford, he has decided to champion it in his own writing, most notably in the anthology This Mutant Life. His short story, ‘The Scoundrel’s Wife’, which captures the life of a super-villain’s agoraphobic wife, was short listed for the 2011 Chronos Awards.

His Young Adult novel, The Miranda Contract, is the first in a series following the life of Dan Galkin: a former teenage supervillain. It’s a story about the pressures of family tradition, how society can judge you and how difficult it is to overcome those stereotypes. It’s been described as urban-superhero-noir, but more simply it’s a story about a kid with superpowers living in Melbourne, trying to be normal, but doing a lousy job of it.

As well as writing and teaching and parenting, Ben is completing his Masters in Communication through Deakin University and his Masters in Education through Federation University.

For more information, or to connect with Ben, you can reach him via email (benlangdon@kalamitypress.com) or Twitter (@LangdonBen) or Facebook. Of course, you can also check out his website (www.benlangdon.net).

Well done, Ben. I will try to get a bio out here in the next couple of days, but it will likely be shorter and less prosaic. Thanks for creating the group. I'm excited to see what may evolve from it. Cheers.

That's an impressive bio Ben :) And I'm intrigued by your story, considering I'm from Adelaide and find it very difficult to make contact with any writers around the city hahaha.

I also see on your blog that you provide reviews for authors, would you be interested in reviewing my bookRouge? We could do a swap :)

Here's my intro:

Isabella Modra was born in Adelaide, South Australia, where she graduated in 2011 and began working full-time. In 2012 she travelled Europe, backpacking from Ireland to Egypt to Sweden and many other countries. She is currently living in Alberta, Canada.

Isabella began her writing career at the age of thirteen, after having loved reading books all her life. She wrote a mystery series of 9 books (unpublished) by the time she was fifteen, and decided to become a self-published author. ROUGE is her first published novel, and EMBERS & ICE - the second in the series - is soon to be released.

On a more casual note, she enjoys cups of tea, acoustic guitar, dreaming of travelling and meeting people with incredible life stories.

I've been superheroing, err, I've been role-playing superheroes since the seventies. (That's what happens you read comic books at an early age. Or at least, before the invention of the computer PC.) Eventually I got around to writing novels about superheroes (and a few other things).

Hi everyone. I'm Gary, from Colorado, USA and I've been writing for publication intermittently for the last few years, although I pretty much took the last year off due to my life changing drastically (divorce, relocation, unemployment). I was fortunate to have my flash fiction story "Electrical Failure" published in This Mutant Life: Bad Company (thanks, Ben). I have published about a dozen pieces, mostly flash or microfiction, with a few poems and short stories included. I hope to get back to writing in the foreseeable future and have a half-dozen stories waiting to be told, a few just needing revisions. I look forward to seeing what everyone here comes up with as the group grows and evolves. When reading, I enjoy all sorts of speculative fiction, a little poetry here and there, and the occasional odd bit of obscure history.

Isabella wrote: "That's an impressive bio Ben :) And I'm intrigued by your story, considering I'm from Adelaide and find it very difficult to make contact with any writers around the city hahaha.

I also see on you..."

Hi Isabella,
Go the Crows! How did you end up in Alberta?
I'd love to read Rouge, but won't have a chance until school holidays in mid-April. That is supposed to be Rouge, right? From an X-Men background I remember huge arguments about rogue/rouge. Sounds like a great idea for a series though - pyrokinetics have got great potential. My main character, Dan, creates electricity so there's similar power-set and abilities. I really loved writing his power tricks.

Fritz wrote: "I've been superheroing, err, I've been role-playing superheroes since the seventies. (That's what happens you read comic books at an early age. Or at least, before the invention of the computer PC...."

Hey, a role-player! I played lots of Champions games, first in a face-to-face way and then as part of huge poems - Global Guardians and Uberworld. Are you familiar with either of them? Uberworld - www.uber-world.com - is the source world of my novel (maybe an alternate version).

What novels have you written? Did you use your rpg experiences for inspiration?

Pseudodragon wrote: "Hi everyone. I'm Gary, from Colorado, USA and I've been writing for publication intermittently for the last few years, although I pretty much took the last year off due to my life changing drastica..."

Hi Gary,

Great to see you on Goodreads! It's a bit of irony (maybe) but my writing career really only took off after my divorce a few years ago. I gave myself permission to write, and it's really paid off.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this group grows too.

Ben wrote: "Fritz wrote: "I've been superheroing, err, I've been role-playing superheroes since the seventies. (That's what happens you read comic books at an early age. Or at least, before the invention of th..."

Ben -- I'm definitely familiar with Champions, but I hadn't heard of Uberworld. Uberworld sounds pretty cool and I plan on poking around the website. I'm assuming that since Uberworld is open and it's based on the Hero System, that it's pretty much a "mainstream superhero" world (or worlds), that is, it's similar to the Marvel and/or DC universes.

I've written two superhero novels ( Dispensing Justice and it's sequel The Red Rook ) so far. Both are set in the Nova Genesis World, which is not based on my superhero RPG experiences as it's a science fictional setting. On the other hand, a few of the characters are based on characters that I role played or GMed.

-- Fritz.

Hello all, thanks for the invite Ben. I don't use Good Reads as much as I probably should.

Iv'e known Ben for a good number of years (virtually of course.) having written opposite him in several PBEM's and PBP Superhero RPGs. I've even been published in one of the inaugural editions of his anthology, This Mutant Life. (That reminds me, I still need to write Parts 2 and 3 of the PSI Project.)

My most recent publication (actually only my second) is another short story in the Alter Egos anthology put out by Source Point Press. (available on Amazon)

I live in Washington State (back after a 15 year hiatus in the wonderful hell that is the Phoenix Metropolitan area of Arizona.)

Hi Everyone,

My name is Michael John Olson. I was born in Westfield, Massachusetts but soon moved to the Chicago suburbs where I was introduced to comics when my sister took me to the legendary Moondogs comics shop. It was there we would devour the latest issues of X-men and Teen Titans, along with plenty of Legion of Superheroes.

My tastes would change as I got heavily into Frank Miller, especially his works on Daredevil, Elektra: Assassin, Ronin and of course the Dark Knight series.

Teen years turned to college years where I enrolled at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach to study aerospace engineering. I was forced to drop out after just a year as my father lost his job and could no longer afford to pay my tuition.

I bounced around from odd job to odd job until I decided to take advantage of my diving certification I received in college and started my own commercial diving company in South Florida. I serviced the luxury yacht industry for many years all the while never able to shake loose the idea I had for a science fiction series about a teen who could fly. That's how I began to write Sky Shatter.

I'm currently married with two children, a boy and a girl. I must admit that self publishing is a pretty wild roller coaster of a career, but I wouldn't give it up for the world.

Looking forward to meeting many of you here. The best to all.

Hi Everyone,

My name is Michael John Olson. I was born in Westfield, Massachusetts but soon moved to the Chicago suburbs where I was introduced to comics when my sister took me to the legendary Moondogs comics shop. It was there we would devour the latest issues of X-Men and Teen Titans, along with plenty of Legion of Superheroes.

My tastes would change as I got heavily into Frank Miller, especially his works on Daredevil, Elektra: Assassin, Ronin and of course the Dark Knight series.

Teen years turned to college years where I enrolled at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach to study aerospace engineering. I was forced to drop out after just a year as my father lost his job and could no longer afford to pay my tuition.

I bounced around from odd job to odd job until I decided to take advantage of my diving certification I received in college and started my own commercial diving company in South Florida. I serviced the luxury yacht industry for many years all the while never able to shake loose the idea I had for a science fiction series about a teen who could fly. That's how I began to write Sky Shatter.

I'm currently married with two children, a boy and a girl. I must admit that self publishing is a pretty wild roller coaster of a career, but I wouldn't give it up for the world.

Looking forward to meeting many of you here. The best to all.

Brian, sounds like you should have been a researcher/developer with the LSH - they always had room for new character concepts.

Which character was your favourite?

Mine was Chlorophyl Kid. Don't know why. I started reading those comics during the Dominion occupation, adult-Legion series. I still have them in individual comic form. In fact I only have individual comics for the adult-Legions series and Robinson's fantastically remained Starman series.

Is it bad that I sort of had a crush on Princess Projectra? (Not the retconned lizard version, obviously)

Up until the introduction of Blok, my favorite was always Element Lad. I think I switched to Block because he was the first tangible member who wasn't just a funny-looking human.

Hello everyone. I'm new to GoodReads but enjoying the groups and perhaps online book clubs.

I'm happily married with children...lots of them!

I'm Stephen T. Brophy, a living human male. I had a mostly uneventful suburban Texas childhood, an ignominious college career in the comfortable bohemian bubble of Austin, a meandering stretch of misspent but frequently enjoyable post-graduate time working jobs beneath my abilities in the bigger bohemian bubble of San Francisco (when that town was still affordable enough to provide such a bubble, to give you some idea how long ago that was).

A long and only sometimes torturous sequence of life events finds me currently residing in Los Angeles, where I turn broken dreams into entertainment as a slightly embarrassed but reasonably well-compensated story producer for various reality TV shows.

Along the way, I've performed sketch comedy with no less than five different groups in at least as many towns, including members of Kids in the Hall and others who've gone on to varying degrees of success, did a little time as an actor, wrote at least one abandoned epic scifi novel to completion, as well as many short stories and countless unproduced TV scripts (and one produced, as a pilot for TVLand starring Harry Shearer, Alice Cooper and Robert Morse of "Mad Men" among others).

I also managed to find someone to marry my ass, which is amazing, as is she. She's a social worker, so she provides the conscience in the relationship, which allows me to keep working in entertainment, where it would only be a hindrance. And she even let me go so far as to put a kid in her. He's now eight years old and our favorite father/son activities are reading comics, playing with action figures and watching The Walking Dead.

Last year, I took the leap into self-publishing, and it was superhero prose that pushed me over the edge. After spending a few fitful years getting very far on an epic novel (still in the works), I took a break to churn out a short story that spiraled into a novella called "The Villain's Sidekick," about a '90s-style henchman who goes by HandCannon. He's got a gun arm, a steel jaw, a diabetic cat, an angry ex-wife, and an adorable six-year-old daughter. And he may not be as bad as everybody--especially himself--thinks he is.

The book's had some good attention from BoingBoing, io9, and a few other places and I fell so in love with the characters that I'm working on the inevitable, far more epic, sequel, Citizen Skin, as we speak.

I'm satisfied to see so much interesting, entertaining superhero prose being churned out right now, call it Capepunk or New Pulp or whatever works. It's a great opportunity for world-building and flights of fantasy that don't have to rely on dark dystopian visions or other conventions of scifi.

So that's me in a nutsack.

I'm Shine and I was inspired by Marvel movies and RPing really helps me build up the structures.