Astrid Maxxim: Denise Brown

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Astrid Maxxim and her Undersea DomeDenise 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. Members of my writers group 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.  In any case, by that time, I was married to the names.

Denise and Dennis live with their two dads. I made a conscious decision that I would have a gay couple in the books to reflect the reality of our culture.  On the other hand, having essentially a completely non-sexual (and kind of a 50s naiveté) thing going, I wasn’t going to spend a lot of time fleshing out the details.  Their dads have different last names, so either they live in a state where gay marriage is not legal or they just decided to keep their own names.  The kids are both named Brown, while their other dad is named Richards.

Being a teacher, I have a real thing about people (gay or straight) giving their kids hyphenated names.  It never fits in the computer correctly.  It always messes up class lists.  And the kinds always pick one or the other name and go by it anyway.  I actually had a mother call me one time and tell me not to accept her child’s assignments if she didn’t use her full hyphenated name!  I told her “Get a grip, lady.  What she calls herself is between you and her, and what papers I accept is between her and me.”

Astrid Maxxim: Valerie Diaz

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Astrid Maxxim CoverWhen I was planning out the Astrid Maxxim series, I knew I was going to set it in the American southwest.  I therefore needed and wanted one of the main characters to be hispanic.  Valerie Diaz therefore became one of Astrid’s two good friends.  Valerie is one of the two Valeries in the series, and therefore supplies one of the running gags– that everybody has to differentiate which Valerie they are talking to. Valerie is a shy, pretty girl who has strict parents. Her father Sergio is head of Maxxim Industries Security and her mother is one of the few women in the story who are housewives.  Valerie’s mother is one of the few people in the series who doesn’t think that Astrid is perfect.  I think a lot of young readers will identify with Valerie.  She’s the kid that doesn’t always get noticed.

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.