Monthly Archives: November 2011

Update: Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike

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I’m on the final edit of Astrid Maxxim and by the time you read this, I might very well have it completely done and ready for publishing.  Keep an eye out for it.  The other afternoon at work, I got so tired of the paperwork I had to do, that I started writing and came up with a draft of page one of the next Astrid Maxxim book.  Book 2 will be Astrid Maxxim and her Deep Sea Dome or maybe her Undersea Dome, you get the idea.

Omega Woman

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Omega Woman (Omega Girl until her recent 21st birthday) is one of the most powerful and popular superheroes in the world.  This is particularly annoying since she is now dating Perihelion, All American Girl’s ex.  Omega Woman has flawless silver skin and golden hair that reaches almost to the floor.  She is hauty and disdainful of everyone she thinks is below her… which is everyone.

Omega Woman has super-strength, invulnerability, flight, and can shoot Omega Rays from her fingertips.

Perihelion

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Perihelion is the ex-boyfriend of All American Girl.  Though we are not privy to why they split up, they did so about six months before the story started.  I have a feeling that the breakup was either Stella’s idea or her fault, and now she regrets it.  Within a few months of their split, Perihelion began dating Omega Girl.

Perihelion is extremely good looking and is the spokesmodel for a line of sharp Italian suits.  He has the super strength and invulnerability, but his great ability is flight.  He is the fasted flyer of all the supers.

Melanippe

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There are several mythological characters named Melanippe, but Stella’s mother is the sister of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons.  She has an on-again/off-again relationship with Theseus (Yes, that Theseus) and has setteled into a life of hedonism on Mount Olympus, much to Stella’s shame.  “And my mother is an Amazon, which I used to think meant she was a warrior woman, but apparently just means she’s some kind of immortal hoe-bag.”  Of course this means that if you were to mix the continuity of my little story with that of DC Comics, then Stella and Wonder Woman would be cousins, which is cool, because WW has always been one of my personal faves.


Hipparion

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In Women of Power, I wanted real mythological figures for Stella’s parents, but I didn’t want them to be major mythological figures that everyone knows.  Her father is the demigod Hipparion, who is mentioned once or twice in the mythology texts but has no surviving stories about him.  His name means “pony” in greek, so he must have had something to do with the being a lord of horses or something.
I had fun playing with the idea that nobody on Earth remembers him, even though he thinks he is a major figure in history.  Like most mythological fathers, Hipparion has only a passing interest in his offspring, and expects to be called on for magical armor or weapons, but not emotional support.

Linda Ford AKA Skygirl

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Linda Ford, also known as Skygirl, is the second character (title character if you will) of Women of Power.  She is the daughter of Earth’s greatest hero, Skyman, who was killed defending the Earth from an alien invasion.  Her mother was the evil Madame Mesmer, who seduced Skyman, but Linda was raised by her step-mother Doris Drake-Ford.  She has all the powers of her father (though perhaps not as strong as him in any area).  She has super strength, invulnerability, supersonic flight, super breath, x-ray vision, heat vision, and several other kinds of super vision.  She is vulnerable to disease and poison and to Polarite, the fragmented remains of her father’s home planet.
Linda lives her life seemingly unaware that the world knows who she is.  She wears a brown wig and sensible clothes as a disguise, even though anyone can find her name at the top of the Skygirl Wikipedia page.  She tends to be naive and silly, much to the annoyance of All American Girl.
Linda was a very fun character to write.  She makes a great foil for Stella (AG).  She is of course a parody and tribute to super characters like Supergirl, though personality wise, she’s more Mary Marvel.  My favorite little detail was that when Skygirl and All American Girl play rock, paper, scissors, All American Girl always wins.  She knows that Skygirl will always pick rock, because anyone who has to worry about a rock that can kill them all the time will always pick rock.

Stella O’Clare AKA All American Girl

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Stella O’Clare AKA All American Girl, is the main character of my book Women of Power.  Stella is the daughter of an immortal Amazon and a Greek demigod.  As a child, she was exiled from Mount Olympus for being unable to get along with the other children, landing on Earth in Chicago’s O’Clare Blvd.  She’s intelligent, sarcastic, and quick to anger.

All American Girl has super strength, invulnerability, and the ability to fly.  She is immune to poison, disease, and any form of magic.  Like all superheroes, she want to help mankind, but being a hero is also a business.  She wants to be the star of her own superhero magazine and to reach the top ten of the New York Times Superhero list.

As the story begins, Stella is having a particularly rough time as she has recently broken up with her boyfriend, the super superhero Perihelion.  To make matters worse, while Stella has been moping around after the breakup, Perry has immediately taken up with Omega Girl.

I loved writing All American Girl.  She is both a parody and an homage to my favorite heroes from the comics.