There are several mythological characters named Melanippe, but Stella’s (All American Girl in Women of Power) 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 Wonder Woman has always been one of my personal faves.

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, 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, 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 wants 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.

Novelyne Cavendish is a two hundred year old vampire who works as a secretary in Sin City Detective Agency. I really didn’t want this book to have a “good” vampire. The whole basis of the book is that vampires are bad. However, Novelyne is at least trying to be good– to go “vegetarian.”

Novelyne’s last name is Cavendish because I wanted her to be distantly related to Xochitl, so an Irish surname seemed the best way to express that. Her first name I have been saving for a long time to use on a character. I originally heard the name as the friend of Conan creator Robert E. Howard– Novalyne Price Ellis. I changed the spelling as an in-joke… because she’s a character in a novel.

Novelyne is short and blond, both because I wanted to play against the usual vampire type, but also because I was thinking about how people two hundred years ago were for the most part smaller. I also gave her a little catch phrase of her own– “He’s really, really nice. I really, really like him.”

Xochitl McKenna is the main character of Blood Trade.  She is a private eye and Goth tattoo model in a very dark version of Las Vegas.  She is a former army ranger, and as such is an excellent hand-to-hand fighter and marksman, and she has a very personal hatred of vampires.

Xochitl’s first name is Nahuatl (Aztec) for flower.  Her last name is Irish.  This reflects the family heritage that she barely remembers of a half Mexican, half African American mother and a blond, blue eyed father.

As a tattoo model, Xochitl is the canvas for her friend, tattoo artist Sid Case.  She has a variety of tattoos including a very fuctional tattoo of a cross on her neck, but Sid’s masterwork is her right sleeve which features a pastiche of the macabre including the images of Stephen King, Batman, Betty Page, and Marilyn Monroe.

One little quirk that Xochitl has is that she can’t leave cash laying around.  If she sees money, she has to pick it up.  This sometimes includes money in someone else’s wallet.  Originally I did this because I wanted all the characters in this book to have some bizarre quirk, but it became something important for the plot.

Blood Trade is available wherever fine ebooks are sold for $2.99.  It is recommended only for adults.

The first Astrid Maxxim book was published in 2011.  The second followed in 2013, with two more in 2014.  I’ve long had an idea that I would eventually write a long series of Astrid Maxxim books and now I’ve got quite a list of story outlines waiting.  I definitely plan to have the next Astrid Maxxim book done before the end of the year.  If everything works out, I would like to write at least one a year and still have time to get my other books out.

With that in mind, I had Matthew Riggenbach at Shaed Studios go ahead and design covers for books six and seven.  They look awesome and have inspired me to get writing faster.  Watch for Astrid Maxxim and the Electric Racecar Challenge, coming soon.

One of the major characters of the Senta and the Steel Dragon series is Zeah Korlann. He begins as the head butler for the Dechantagne household. His daughter is Yuah and he are members of the Zaeri minority religion. I used Zeah to play out several themes in the story– the rise of a working class person to prominence, religious intolerance, etc. Originally Zeah was a rather mild mannered fellow anyway, but when I revised the story, I decided he needed a stammer. The stammer only shows itself when he is under stress– whenever he is around Iolanthe.

The idea for Eaglethorpe Buxton came from two very different places. I wanted a narrator who would try to teach the reader, much like Lemony Snicket does in A Series of Unfortunate Events. I also remember reading Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener in college and being fascinated by the idea of a narrator who was not very reliable. In the case of Eaglethorpe, the narrator became extremely unreliable.

Eaglethorpe also exists in a comic version of my old Dungeons and Dragons world, so he is the type of sage/bard/adventurer that an extremely nerdy D&D player might come up with. I’m looking forward to writing more Eaglethorpe someday. You might look for Eaglethorpe Buxton’s Fairy Tales sometime in the future.