Category Archives: Impossible Takes a Little Longer

March 24, 2023 · 4:01 pm

Considering how it started, this week went quite well

When TYG and I got back from our madcap Mensa weekend we picked up the dogs from doggy boarding, then I made chili (quick, easy, tasty — perfect for the end of a long day driving). I’d already planned to take Monday off so that if the dogs, Wisp or Snowdrop wanted some extra attention after our absence I’d have no conflicting obligations. That proved fortunate because Sunday night, Plushie came down with the every-two-hours squirtling diarrhea.

As TYG has a less forgiving boss than I do, I took point on walking him and spent most of Monday in a daze. I tried taking naps during the day but invariably Wisp would start demanding to come in or Plushie would suddenly discover it was time for a new squirtle. He stabilized Monday night thank goodness, then Tuesday TYG took him to the vet. They found nothing; we brought him in for an ultrasound Thursday but haven ‘t heard the results. While we’d love to know why he’s had this problem more than once this year, we’re relieved they didn’t find cancerous lumps in his stomach or anything like that. If diarrheal 1AM walkies are the trade-off for keeping him around, so be it.  But for the moment he’s back to normal potty hours and solid poops.

Oh, here’s a look at him after the ultrasound. He’s so sensitive to pain (“A sensitive boy” as they put it at the vet’s), they drugged him to be comfortably numb. He remained stoned the rest of the evening.I was quite exhausted the rest of the week. Coupled with the cats spending time in the morning, I wound up not getting any exercise done; my diet was none too healthy too. Work, though, went pretty well

First up, I finished the revised Mage’s Masquerade and it looks good. I started looking for markets without any success so far though I did stumble across markets for Bleeding Blue and Fiddler’s Black. Both are now out.

I also put in work on The Cheap Assassin and have at least a working idea of the story/character arc (it’s a character-centric story). At this point, however, it’s heavy on talk rather than action. I need to find a way to have something happen besides exposition. I’ve had that problem before; it’s fixable.

I put in a couple of thousand words on Let No Man Put Asunder which gives me the 10,000 I wanted for this month. I may do more next week but there are other projects I can concentrate on. I also spent some time planning the next draft of Impossible Takes a Little Longer. I’ve realized KC needs to be a lot more intense from the first chapter; I can see how to do it.

I also worked getting the manuscripts for 19-Infinity and Oh the Places You’ll Go ready for self-publishing. That included sending the latter story out for beta-reading. I have a cover image for it as well; hopefully I can have it out and for sale by the end of April.

And over at Atomic Junk Shop I look at the impact of Steve Ditko leaving Marvel plus a couple of stories I just like. Over at Con-Tinual’s YouTube channel, I’m one of the panelist discussing mythological tropes.#SFWApro. Have a great weekend everyone. Cover by Jack Kirby, all rights remain with current holder.

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March 10, 2023 · 3:37 pm

Did I miss a golden opportunity?

With my regular cash clients on indefinite hiatus, I’ve been applying steadily to freelance positions advertised on journalism websites, Linked In and the like. The most interesting was for a “with” ghostwriting gig, as in The Perfect Assassin by James Patterson with Brian Sitts. The company in question provides the plots, then pays a writer to flesh out the details — dialogue, setting, etc.

They’re doing this in several genres so I applied for the fantasy gig. Last week I turned in a 1,000-word scene following their plot, and I think it was good, but they gave me a No at the start of this week. The problem may have been that my tone was urban fantasy when they wanted a Tolkien or George RR Martin vibe. Did I miss a golden opportunity? It would have certainly been more fun than most of my paying gigs and might have boosted my name recognition factor. On the other hand, I don’t know what length of book they wanted: the pay would have been good for 60,000 words, unsatisfying for 100,000. Plus it would come in three scheduled payments per book (one when the first quarter is done, one when the manuscript is done, one when revisions are finished or something like that). I don’t suspect them of chicanery but a new company might run out of funding before I got the cash.  Who knows?

Otherwise the week went well. I spent some time jotting down ideas for the next phase of Let No Man Put Asunder and got about 5,000 words done. I’m already thinking of revisions; if I hit my minimum for the month, 10,000 words, I may go back and polish everything, as I did with the first few chapters already.

I rewrote Mage’s Masquerade and I’m really pleased with it. I’ll print it out and do a final read in hard copy later in March.

I finished rereading The Impossible Takes a Little Longer and it’s much better than I thought. Not publishable but as I’d hoped, the story arc is largely there. I started jotting down notes on fixing things; a big one is a lot more intensity in my protagonist’s emotions. I’m putting her through the ringer but it’s not showing on the page.

I read the second half of Obolus to the writing group — well, I got about halfway through in the time allotted. That’s frustrating as I need feedback on the ending, so I’ll wait and read that part again at the next meeting. Otherwise the reading went great. They found it much improved over the draft I read them a couple of months back. One guy said my lines were so good that like Douglas Adams I distracted him from the flow of the story. I can live with that.

I also reread Oh the Places You’ll Go! which I intend to release as a solo short story. It looks good but it made take more editing to make it good enough.

That plus a little bit of research reading covers it, I think. Plus I had articles about comics writer Jim Shooter and a noteworthy Silver Age Hulk tale over at Atomic Junkshop. On Con-Tinual’s Facebook page I participated in a discussion about Wonder Woman, a topic you may have noticed I’m fond of.

#SFWApro. LOTR covers by Barbara Remington, Wonder Woman cover by Gene Colan. All rights remain with current holders.

 

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March 3, 2023 · 4:16 pm

March came in like a … well, it came in like March, I guess.

Which is to say this was not a spectacular week, but it was a solid, productive one. Well, if you discount Monday.

Sunday night it was Plushie’s turn to get diarrhea and need to go out every two hours or so. As my boss is much more understanding than TYG’s, I volunteered to take point. I spent most of Monday in a daze, without the presence of mind to do more than blog posts (here’s one on superhero teams and another on the debut of Poison Ivy). After that, things picked up.And hey, he’s cute enough to be worth a little sacrifice. Though the strange squirting sound he made when he pooped was gross.

I got a lot of prep work done on marketing for 19 ♾️. Things like local bookstores that might host a signing, book events in the area, book bloggers who might be up for reviews, etc. Of course this will be no use unless I forge ahead and contact the bookstores, which I never did with Questionable Minds. This time I must not fail!

I wrote about 1,600 words on Let No Man Put Asunder. I stopped right before the next big fight because I’ve painted Paul and Mandy into a corner and I’ve no idea how to extract them successfully. Hopefully I’ll find the solution next week.

I submitted two short stories to various markets and applied for several freelance job openings. And I began rereading Impossible Takes a Little Longer to see how well it works and what I need to fix next go-round.

Last weekend we stopped by PetSmart to shop for pet toys and found an adoption event in progress. Didn’t adopt — we have enough — but I did get to see my first polydactyl cat.#SFWApro.

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February 1, 2023 · 5:10 am

Researching some more urban fantasy

HEROINE WORSHIP: Heroine Complex #2 by Sarah Kuhn opens a few months after Heroine Complex with Annie undergoing a slow meltdown for lack of any evil to fight or any chance to show off her heroic prowess. When Nate proposes to Evie, Annie finally has a mission — become the most powerful, most awesome maid of honor San Francisco has ever seen! As usual her bull-in-a-china-shop approach causes problems, but not as many as a rising wave of bridezillas possessed by demonic energy.

Telling this one from Annie’s POV was a good decision. She’s a good character, conscious she’s been a failure as a best friend, determined to make up for it and struggling with her own insecurities and love life. The book does a good job of fleshing that out. I will agree with some reviews that her boyfriend Scott isn’t well developed but he’s no worse than many female love interests — he’s there to love Annie and give her a reality check or two. That said, I never buy characters who calmly and accurately diagnose their emotional issues in conversation and there was way too much of that.

In terms of research for Impossible Takes a Little Longer I think the main takeaway is that it wouldn’t hurt KC to be a little more intense about stuff. It adds to Heroine Worship and I think it’s doable for my book.

One difference is that there’s surprisingly little comics reference (surprising to me, anyway) for a superhero story set in the real world, though I think that’s generally true of the superhero novels I’ve read over the year. My protagonist’s way more comic-book nerdy. But Kuhn does throw in a Clark Kent reference at one point where the leads really need to mention him, so that’s good.

Where Kuhn’s book had a lot of rom-com elements, FAE OF FORTUNE: Seattle Paranormal Police Department Book One by John P. Logsdon and Eric Quinn Knowles feels like a mashup of Justice League of America with the old Police Academy series.Rather than a lone wolf like Harry Dresden, protagonist Savannah Sage has an entire team of paranormals in the Seattle PD to work with her. Like Police Academy they’re all screwups — Savannah being put in charge of them is a demotion — but of course by the end of the book they’ve proved they have the right stuff. The mashup didn’t work for me, though I can see why it might appeal to other readers (and apparently does, as there are multiple sequels and the series is part of a larger, multi-book mythos).

I can’t say I learned anything from this one other than if you’re going to have an exposition-heavy first chapter it’s got to be good, interesting exposition and this wasn’t. The story, involving a scheme by a corrupt Kingpin-type, is okay and the fight scenes are good, but the conversational scenes between fighting not so much. The killer teddy bear is cute, though, even if describing it as a form of golem feels all wrong to me.

#SFWApro. Covers by Jason Chan and Murphy Anderson (bottom), all rights remain with current holders.

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January 27, 2023 · 3:57 pm

Contrary to “Macbeth,” it’s sometimes good to cry “Hold, enough!”

Which is a way of saying I need to take more breaks. Not the vacation kind, but during the day. It’s less eye-strain if I get up and away from the computer regularly, plus I have non-writing chores that need doing. But when I get caught up it’s easy to forget and only realize it when my brain’s fried and I still have writing to do. So next week, I’ll try setting a timer.

That said, this week went well. I finished the current draft of The Impossible Takes a Little Longer and I’m pleased with it. A long way from publishable but the story has taken on the right shape for what I want and the ending finally works for me. Though admittedly I cheated by having one big battle take place off-stage — I’d love to do that in the finished draft but I doubt I could pull it off. But we’ll see. Now I put it aside for a month, then review.

I rewrote my short story Mage’s Masquerade and it improved considerably. I need to build up the romance more but I think the relationship is on a solid foundation — Cecily shows she has both intelligence and a cool head — and I think I have the plot holes in the previous draft fixed.

I started rewriting another untitled story, an oddball take on Jekyll & Hyde set during the early 1980s. Then I got restless and started (as in at least a couple of paragraphs) for other Jekyll and Hyde versions. The trigger being viewing the 1931 and 1941 adaptations of the novel, which I’ll review in tomorrow’s post.

I’ve started researching Shopify to see about setting up an Internet store to sell some of my stuff directly. Not that I’m going to dump Amazon but they take a lot of the sale price — so why not explore alternatives? You will, obviously, hear when anything is for sale.

I also spent way too much time reviewing my performance for the month and my plans for next month. It’s a very easy way to avoid writing when my brain’s tired and it’s necessary work, so I gave in.

All in all, I should have been more focused, but I’m still pleased with what got done.

I got Shadows Reflected in Darkness back again but I also sold another book. Or maybe two, Amazon announces the sale well before details like what sold and how many become available. It’s annoying, given that if they know the sales took place, they should certainly be able to share the data.

#SFWApro. All rights to image remain with current holder.

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January 25, 2023 · 5:00 am

Doing my research: Heroine Complex

I read Sarah Kuhn’s Heroine Complex four years ago. I recently reread it as research for The Impossible Takes a Little Longer. Given that book is about a woman superhero, I thought reading a book about a woman superhero, written by a woman, might be productive. Plus there’s that criticism from the editor who rejected Southern Discomfort that I should read more urban fantasy. So off I went.

For those who haven’t read Kuhn’s book, it’s set in San Francisco several years after a demonic portal opened. The portal closed but demons keep popping up; Chinese American Annie, going by the name Aveda Jupiter, takes them down with TK-enhanced martial arts skills. Unlike most urban fantasies, this all happens publicly and Annie thrives on the spotlight.

By contrast Annie’s Japanese-American best friend Evie is shy, insecure and happy to stay out of the spotlight as Annie’s support person. She manages everything from Aveda Jupiter’s social calendar to keeping her kickass leather boots clean. And she never, ever thinks about her own pyrotic powers, which she keeps under wraps.

Then Annie gets injured. Evie has to pose as her for a celebrity event but when demons crash the party Evie uses her fire powers to save the day. Suddenly everyone’s over the moon about Aveda Jupiter’s new ability so obviously Evie has to keep up the masquerade until they can figure out some way to transfer them to Annie.

The first thing I noticed — which I was sort of aware of already — is that KC doesn’t think much about clothes. Evie’s quite detailed about what she and Annie, and others in the cast are wearing; clothes aren’t something I think much about so I go light on that stuff. Most women I know think about them more — and clothes can be a good scene-setting detail — so maybe this is something to work on. Sure, KC could be the kind of woman who doesn’t care much, but that feels like a cop-out (by contrast, going light on clothing detail in Southern Discomfort, even in women’s POV sections, felt perfectly natural).

Second, like a lot of urban fantasy there’s a lot of Tell rather than Show; given the book got published and led to several sequels, it confirms my feeling this writing rules is overrated. Evie tells a lot about her personal history with Annie, her experience as an Asian American, her relationships with the other characters and the history of the city’s demonic incursion.  It works for me except when the villain gives an interminable explanation of her evil plan at the climax. That’s good news, seeing as Impossible has plenty of telling: the world’s alternate history is weird and there’s a lot I need to get across.

Third, one of the things the editor criticized Southern Discomfort for was a lack of urgency and tension. I’ve seen How To writing advice books that warn against casual, chatty scenes because they lack tension and lose the audience — though my writing group’s sometimes told me I should have more scenes with less tension, to let readers catch their breath (I’ll be blogging more about this).

Heroine Complex isn’t big on tension. The demon-slaying opening is played for humor: the demons are possessed cupcakes, Annie’s worst moment is that her zit is caught on camera. Then we get lots of Tell about growing up Asian, which is some of my favorite stuff in the book. This makes me hope that the personal scenes between my KC and her friends aren’t going to kill reader interest, Then again, a lot of Evie’s scenes are tense or awkward which adds to the drama and the interest. KC’s in a much better place a lot of the time.

Plus Heroine Complex‘s urban fantasy aspect is really the B-plot. Evie is the A-plot, a woman miserable in her own skin, blooming into a happy, comfortable person and rebuilding her relationships with the other characters. The heart of my story is the fight against a mystery misogynist wrecking KC’s life so maybe personal stuff needs to be kept down?

Studying other writers’ books isn’t a magic formula for success. “Successful author got away with X, therefore I can do X in my book” does not follow. There are lots of factors that go into making a book successful; it’s quite possible I’ll get the mix wrong. Still, I think rereading the book was helpful.

#SFWApro. Cover art by Jason Chan, all rights remain with current holder.

 

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January 20, 2023 · 2:56 pm

A “disorder under heaven” week

A line of Mao Zedong I’ve occasionally quoted is that “there is disorder under heaven but the situation is excellent.” That sums up this week. It started off frustrating but turned out much more productive than the shakedown cruise of the first week in January.

Monday I had to deal with Plushie’s puking, plus help TYG out with some stuff. That sucked up much more time than expected and chopped up the day into small bursts of time where I couldn’t accomplish anything. Tuesday TYG and I had more stuff to take care of, plus I had my dental cleaning in the afternoon. Once again the day broke up into periods to small to build any focus.Still, I’m pleased with my work. I got another 4,000 words done on Let No Man Put Asunder, which is harder than I thought. After waffling in December, I’ve committed to keeping protagonists Paul and Mandy in the city of Blue Ivy (which I’ll probably rename) at least for the early part of the book. That means instead of having them on the run, alone, they’re having to deal with Mandy’s family, the city police department, plus the bad guys who are after them. All of that changes things up and my mind keeps suggesting more changes. Plutarch, a psionic boy from an alt.Greece is now Flavia, a Nubian slave from an alt.Rome, still psionic but also blind. She gets to keep Plutarch’s living-metal bodyguard, Talos, however.

I rewrote Paying the Ferryman and I think I’ve fixed the problems. I’m going to have my writing group beta-read the second half, however (it’s 8,000 words) to see if it holds up as well as I think, and what to do if it isn’t. I rewrote Bleeding Blue and I think that definitely works: I’ll wait until the end of the month, then make a final proof in hard copy.

The one where those missing two days hurt me most was Impossible Takes a Little Longer. I did get some work done on the book but nowhere near as much as I’d have liked.

On the downside, Adventures of the Red Leech came back from the Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft anthology I submitted it to. I may send it out again, or save it for Magic in History, the historical fantasy collection of my own stories I plan to put out (needs a better name, though). More disappointingly, Gollancz sent back Southern Discomfort. I’m not shocked — a big publisher announces a window for unagented submissions, the competition’s bound to be tough — but it’s frustrating. I’ve hit almost all the specfic publishers who accept books without an agent and the remaining ones are currently closed to subs. Perhaps it’s time to self-publish again?

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I’ve published a late MLK Day piece and a look at the new generation of comics writers — Roy Thomas, Cary Bates, Denny O’Neil, Jim Shooter — who debuted at DC or Marvel in 1965 and ’66.

I’ll close with a look at Trixie and Snow Drop nuzzling. I wouldn’t say our cats and dogs are friends but they get along okay.#SFWApro. Cover by Gil Kane, all rights to images remain with current holders.

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January 13, 2023 · 4:17 pm

A smoother cruise this week than last

I wrote a week ago that the first week of 2023 felt like a shakedown cruise. This week the ship seemed to stabilize. We still had a lot of distractions but the work went well despite that.

The big distractions came Tuesday. Snowdrop had peed on the couch the night TYG kept him indoors and she could still smell it. We had someone come in to clean the couch off, after which we and the dogs had to stay off it for several hours while it dried.

Unfortunately that resulted in me and the pups sitting on the other couch for most of the afternoon. It’s much harder to work on my computer around them — the couch arms are too high to rest the computer there for instance — so I wound up doing some research reading instead.

We also had someone come in to check out the chimney as well. It has some damage which make it unwise to use the fireplace so TYG wanted a price estimate on repairs. Suffice to say, repairs would cost more than we want to spend, given that we didn’t use the chimney much even when it was in good shape. However if either of us gets a big payday down the road we might reconsider.

Thursday I’d planned to run out to the library and pick up the new Elric book I’d reserved, otherwise the reservation would have expired. That turned into a much larger expedition as I also wound up getting Trixie’s prescription food from the vet, plus food shopping done, plus picking up a prescription. TYG is away this weekend at an alumni event out of town — she left mid-morning — so I’ll be sticking home with the dogs and not going out. That saves me having to crate Plushie — he gets up to mischief otherwise – or the slight possibility something happens to me while driving and then there’s no-one here for the dogs until Monday.

Anyway, that bulked up the trip until I had no focus left for work by the time I got home. Still, I did get quite a bit done this week:

I redrafted a story I last worked on a couple of years ago, before Undead Sexist Cliches, Aliens Are Here and Questionable Minds sucked up so much time. It’s a long way from good yet, but I see more potential in the tale of a ruthless, objectivist businessman and his mysterious nemesis. Currently untitled.

I got several thousand words further in Impossible Takes A Little Longer, getting a lot of Reveals out of the way before things move into the climax (Hitchcock recommended that, so nobody’s distracted from the action by waiting for exposition). I stopped when it became time to move against the bad guys because I’ve no idea what they’re going to do. Hopefully it’ll come to me when I resume.

My research reading involved a couple of urban fantasies I’ll be reviewing soon, Fae of Fortune by John P. Logsdon and Eric Quinn Knowles and rereading Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn. I prefer doing that kind of reading outside of writing hours but with so many to-do things distracting me, I compromised.

I got about 3,000 words further into Let No Man Put Asunder. I also read the first two or three thousand words to the writing group who gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up plus some feedback I’ll be discussing soon.

So go me! Let’s hope next week is as productive.

#SFWApro. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with current holder.

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January 6, 2023 · 3:46 pm

I shall think of this week as a shakedown cruise for 2023

My work weeks often make me think of that phrase of Chairman Mao, “there is disorder under heaven but the situation is excellent.” This was a messy, disorganized week; I did get my hours of work in, but I wasn’t focusing as well as I should. By today, all I could manage was research reading. Even my pleasure reading slowed down, a sure sign my head is not in the game.

The problem may have been Monday night: TYG had an IT crisis to deal with which woke me up after barely a couple of hours’ sleep; when I went downstairs the cats wanted in and demanded attention, making it impossible to sleep, or to get some early work done. On the plus side, Snowdrop did something we’ve wanted for years, accepting a place in my lap.This is a big step for him, though I still had to keep the back door open to keep him happy. And I do wish it had been TYG’s lap because she loves Snowdrop so much. Still, it’s very cool. But not conducive to sleep.

Later in the week I had appointments (minor car repair), errands (pick up doggy drugs) and other matters to distract me. So maybe that’s all there was to it. Or perhaps it’s the return to the mean I keep blogging about: sooner or later, sheer chance dictates I’m going to have an off week. I had an above average month in December so perhaps this is a return to the mean. The two explanations are not incompatible of course. Either way, the week is done so hopefully I can rise back to bettter-than-average next week.

The biggest accomplishment of the week wast that I redrafted Bleeding Blue and I’m really pleased with it. I expanded on the scenes without padding, fixed several problems my writing group pointed out and much improved the climactic scene. I’m still not entirely satisfied with it so I’m putting the story aside for a week, then I can look at it with fresh eyes.

My next accomplishment was to collect the short stories for Magic In History — title is very tentative — which is a collection I hope to self-publish later this year. I also gathered all my Doc Savage posts with an eye to reworking them into a book, the same way I worked my James Bond posts into Sex for Dinner, Death for Breakfast.

I got some good work done in Impossible Takes a Little Longer, especially considering it’s new material rather than reworking my previous draft. I didn’t get as far as I would have if my focus had been stronger though. The same is true of Let No Man Put Asunder.

Oh, and Draft2Digital notified me I sold three books last month, ebook versions of Atlas Shagged, Questionable Minds and Undead Sexist Cliches. Thanks, unknown purchasers!

And now the weekend. I shall chill, re-energize (I hope) and rebound next week.

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.

 

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December 30, 2022 · 11:45 am

Creative amidst the chaos — that seems an appropriate way to end the year

Which is to say that during 2022’s final fortnight (you may remember I didn’t do a week-in-review last week because of the power outage) I got some good work done but not as much work as I’d hoped. Simply too many distractions.

This week, for example, we had to pick up our car Monday (it was just a dead battery so nothing overly pricey) and drop off the rental car. As I’d canceled my blood-donation appointment Friday due to car complications, I went in Tuesday morning. Then in the afternoon I braved the mall traffic (it’s easy to forget lots of people are still off the week after Christmas) to visit the Apple store and figure out the problem with my phone. It’s been randomly opening apps or switching from one app to the other which is ultra-frustrating; fortunately it turned out to be a simple fix. The replacement glass I got from a repair store had come loose (“If I can look at where it meets the screen and see through to the pixel cells, there’s a problem.”) — though whether they did a half-assed job or I jarred it loose with a couple of subsequent drops (TYG told me I didn’t need a phone cover; she underestimated me) I know not.

That, of course, took up most of Tuesday afternoon so I was irrevocably behind the eight-ball in making my hours this week; the blood donation didn’t help either but I place I high priority on donating regularly. Wednesday and Thursday we took the dogs for long lunch walks which threw off my afternoon planning, but again being a good dog-parent is a priority. Today it was just a matter of “well I’m not going to get everything done, am I?” undercutting my commitment. Plus I woke late which I almost never do. Plus we have Lily and Tito over for the day and they always require extra attention. There’s Tito, from an earlier visit. And here’s Lily.But work still got done. I added several thousand words to the current draft of Impossible Takes a Little Longer. Much of it was reworked from an earlier draft but I moved on at the end into new stuff and it worked. However I reached one of those points where I simply don’t know what to do next and didn’t have the focus to tackle it, so I didn’t meet my quota (30,000 words) for December.

My rewrite of Paying the Ferryman was excruciatingly slow due to the distractions but the story improved considerably. I think it may have reached the point where I can show it to the writing group and benefit from feedback.

I finally drew up a list of my published books and short stories for TYG. While I doubt my intellectual property (e.g., Questionable Minds) will be hugely valuable for her if I pass first, I might be wrong.

I also redrafted Oh the Places You’ll Go! slightly based on editorial feedback and completed the revised draft of The Love That Moves the Sun. Both go out next month, assuming I can find markets.

There’s other stuff I’d hoped to get to but I think I can feel pleased with all that work. And I published several blog posts at Atomic Junkshop variously dealing with how to spend Christmas money, a great Teen Titans scene, the teenage crimefighter Tomboy and the disappointing end of a Silver Age story arc.

Happy New Year everyone! I wish all y’all a fabulous 2023.

#SFWApro. Book cover by Samantha Collins.

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