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.