Monthly Archives: June 2014

Astrid Maxxim: Toby Bundersmith

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Astrid Maxxim and the Antarctic ExpeditionIn the Tom Swift books I read as a kid, my favorite character was Tom’s best friend Bud Barclay. Bud was totally reliable and faithful, completely unwavering in his friendship and belief in Tom. I patterned Toby Bundersmith after Bud in that respect.  To maintain that same 50s nostalgic innocence, there can’t be any real conflict with Astrid.

Toby’s relationship has to be different in one way– he’s not just Astrid’s best friend– he’s her boyfriend. In fact, she often daydreams of one day being Dr. Astrid Bundersmith, so he has to not only be great, but dreamy as well. Toby is my perfect boy. He never wavers, he’s always supportive, he’s always reliable, and always responsible. He can’t save the day, because Astrid is the hero of the story, but he’s always there to back her up. If someone has to come to Astrid’s aid, it will be Toby. In truth, he’s pretty boring. Fortunately, there are enough other characters who can cause chaos, doubt, and trouble for our girl inventor.

Twitter

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I am making a goal of increasing my Twitter following.  I really like Twitter.  It’s much less invasive than Facebook.  Every time they update Facebook it’s worse.  I don’t even want my close friends knowing what game I’m playing, where I’m walking, or when I go to the bathroom.  At the same time Twitter is more inclusive, because you can follow someone without being a stalker.

Right now, as I write this, I have 69 followers.  My initial goal is 300.  If you would like to follow me, you can find me at @Wesley_Allison.

Last night, I just sat there and read through a bunch of tweets about Edgar Rice Burroughs (using search a topic).  It’s great how many people are tweeting their appreciation for this great storyteller.

Astrid Maxxim: Astrid Maxxim

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Astrid Maxxim 2Astrid is the big star of the series.  If the fact that she is the title character wasn’t enough to tell you that, there is the fact that her name literally means “big star”.  Astrid is a 14 year-old girl inventor, from a long line of inventors.  She is extremely intelligent, but she is also intuitive and empathetic. She is kind and friendly, but shy and unassuming. She loves science and technology and is easily frustrated by superstition and silliness. She is supremely confident about herself, but not so confident in her interactions with others. This along with a certain rigidness regarding change, I associate with her being an only child.

Astrid attends Rachel Carson High School, where she is a freshman (the school year ends at the end of book 2).  Astrid’s two great inventions are: Astricite, a superconductive material, and Astridium, a lightweight but extremely strong material.  They let her create all of her other inventions, like the hoverbike and her undersea dome.  That brings us to the hardest part of writing a book like this– imagining what inventions Astrid could create.  It’s a lot harder than I really imagined at first.  But Astrid is a fun character to write and hopefully I can think up enough for her to do for a few more books at least.

Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike

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Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing HoverbikeThere will be some news coming along in the next few weeks about my Astrid Maxxim books, so I thought I would take some time to talk about them and the characters in the story.

Astrid Maxxim books are written for 8-12 year-olds and tell the adventures of girl inventor Astrid Maxxim and her friends.  I got the idea from talking about my first book Princess of Amathar.  That book was written as an homage to the Edgar Rice Burroughs books I loved as a boy.  At the time I was pointing out that before I discovered Burroughs, I had learned to love reading by finding Tom Swift Jr. books.  Then I suddenly thought, “I should write my own Tom Swift-like stories.  That’s how Astrid came about.

One thing I loved about Tom Swift was the nostalgic, innocent, happy-go-lucky 50s feel of the story.  I wanted to keep that in my stories.  What I didn’t like was that time never passed.  In more than 30 books, Tom remained 18 years old.  And no matter what earth-shaking invention Tom created, it didn’t really change the world.  He invented the atomicar!  And yet people were still driving around in 1955 cars (not that they weren’t cool, but they weren’t atomic).  In my stories, characters would age and the world would change with the inventions.

I followed the same general formula used in Tom Swift.  There is one big invention and one or more lesser invention in each book.  Of course there is a nefarious plot afoot that the heroes must foil.  I also kept to the same length– about 30,000 words.  I whipped out the first book, Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike, very quickly.  I’ve enjoyed writing it and reading it– I’m not my harshest critic I guess!

Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike is available in ebook format just about everywhere for 99 cents.

Back From Comicon

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nfill03-172 2I just returned from Comicon Phoenix where a great time was had by all– at least by me, my son, and my daughter.  We had fun.  We bought comic stuff, saw some cool stuff, went to a few conferences– one on how to describe your fantasy world.  We saw John Rhys Davies, John Barrowman, Adam West, and John Ratzenburger.  I was sorely upset that I didn’t get to see Eliza Dushku!  The highlight was our photo-op with Nathan Fillion.  He was really nice, and yes, he is that tall, and his hair is that good.

Off the Shelf

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