I don’t know how many Astrid Maxxim adventures I might write in the coming years, but they won’t be limited by the story possibilities or inventions.  I’ve got quite a list of possible story topics.  None of them is particularly brilliant prognostication on my part– as I am neither a futurist or a psychic, but I think they could all make good stories.

Astrid Maxxim and her Rocket Plane

Astrid Maxxim and her Lighter than Air Liner

Astrid Maxxim and her Space Surveyor

Astrid Maxxim and her Electric Rifle (In tribute to Tom Swift, as are they all, really)

Astrid Maxxim and the City of Gold

Astrid Maxxim and the Satellite Destroyer

Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hovercar

Astrid Maxxim and her Space-Time Selector

Astrid Maxxim and the Ultimate Weapon

Astrid Maxxim and the Sub-Ocean Rescue

Astrid Maxxim and her Orbital Telescope

Astrid Maxxim and her Floating City

Astrid Maxxim and the Robot Rebellion

Astrid Maxxim and her Orbital Spaceport

Astrid Maxxim and her Fantastic Flying Sub

Astrid Maxxim and her Space Science Lab

Astrid Maxxim and the Return to the Moon

Astrid Maxxim and the Rogue Planetoid

Astrid Maxxim and her Lunar Mega-Crawler

Astrid Maxxim and her Deep Space Probe

Astrid Maxxim and the Asteroid Miners

Astrid Maxxim and her Lunar Space Cutter

Astrid Maxxim and the Race to Mars

Astrid Maxxim and her Interplanetary Space Cruiser

Astrid Maxxim and the Deep Space Rescue

Austin Tretower is the final member of Astrid’s group in the Astrid Maxxim series.  Austin is a lovable screwup– the kid who all the bad things happen to.  There just has to be one in every group and Austin is it.

I toyed with the idea of having Austin come from my own hometown here in Nevada, but in the end, he came from Washington state.  This is a little fantasy of mine too.  I love the rain, and growing up here in the desert I never get it.  This gives me a chance to compare the two through Austin’s eyes.

In book one, Austin gets bitten by a rattlesnake.  In book 2, he gets bitten by a lake monster.

Denise Brown is one of Astrid Maxxim’s best friends.  Denise is one of the few kids in the story that isn’t an only child.  I realized after I had finished Astrid Maxxim 1, that I had made many of them only children.

Denise has a brother named Dennis.  My friends pointed out that with the names being so similar, the readers might get confused.  On the other hand, that’s just what people tend to do– name their kids in groups or with similar names.

Denise and Dennis live with their two dads.  I haven’t actually worked out their back story yet, so I haven’t decided if they had a mom at one time.  Their dads have different last names, so they probably live in a state where gay marriage is not legal.  I may never actually illuminate the whole issue, as it’s not truly important to the story and Dennis and his fathers barely appear.

Tom Swift Jr. created his inventions on the grounds of Swift Enterprises, though there was a Swift Construction Company not too far away.  Swift Enterprises was supposed to be four miles square.  When I was a kid, I spent a great deal of time wondering if that was four square miles (two miles by two miles) or four miles by four miles (sixteen square miles).

One of the other things I was fascinated by when I was a kid was Disneyworld.  I had been to Disneyland, but the idea that Walt had this huge expanse that not only included a Magic Kingdom, but also campgrounds and lakes and other parks really touched my imagination.

For Maxxim Industries therefore, I created a huge expanse of 180,000 acres, dotted here and there with industrial parks and business campuses, as well as power plants, its own airfield, and even a spaceport.  Of course it also had rivers and a lake, a cactus park, convential parks, and for some strange reason, the high school from the adjascent Maxxim City was also on the Maxxim Industries grounds.  This allowed the students to take a monorail train to school every morning.

I made a great map, but lost it in the move to my den this past summer.  As soon as I find it, I’ll post it here.

Many people write fan fiction and have a lot of fun with it.  I did a bit of it when I was a kid– even writing my own Tarzan novel, but I much prefer creating my own worlds.  So, when I decided that I wanted to make my own books in the vein of Tom Swift Jr., I knew that I wouldn’t simply write Tom Swift Jr. books (although it’s been done– sometimes really well), but I would create my own world and characters inspired by the stories I loved as a kid.

I decided immediately that my main character would be a girl, but that she, like Tom, would be the scion of a long line of wealthy inventive geniuses.  Unlike the Tom Swift, who had 33 adventures and never aged a day, I would have my characters move through time, growing older.  For that reason, Astrid started at age 14, in her first year of high school.

Astrid’s dad would be a famous inventor in his own right, and would work on a vast industrial campus, like Tom; but unlike Tom (who lived in the 50s and where women never seemed to do much), Astrid’s mom would be a successful businesswoman.

As I’m back to work on Astrid Maxxim and her Undersea Dome, I thought I would write a bit about my inspirations and creative decisions on the Astrid Maxxim series.

One day I was talking about my inspirations for Princess of Amathar (which of course were the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs).  I remember standing by the bookcase and pointing out that the books that had really made me a reader, before I discovered Burroughs and other science fiction books, were the Tom Swift Jr. Books.

I was staying with my grandparents over the summer when I was nine when I discovered the Tom Swift books that had belonged to my uncle George, who had died the year before in the Viet Nam war.  George was a medic and was killed in action, valiently trying to save others and was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star.

He had about a dozen Tom Swift Jr. books and I read them all summer, and when I got back home in the fall, I started ordering my own series.  I was thinking about all this, as I was talking that day about writing, and I thought– I should make my own series like Tom Swift Jr.