Confessions of the One and Only F.J.R. Titchenell (That I Know of) - Fiona J.R. Titchenell's Official Homepage

Cover Reveal! Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir

5/16/2018

Time to ooh and ahh over the unbelievably gorgeous cover of Matt's and my upcoming adult sci-fi title, Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir!

This one's coming in August from Talos Press (pre-orderable now!), and you might or might not have heard Matt or me talking excitedly about it approximately a billion times by now.

It's chock-full of our signature dark humor, some affectionate riffing on comics tropes and history, plenty of social satire, and tons of gritty noir flavor. We're champing at the bit to share it.

And just look at this cover!

About Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir

To some people, Pinnacle City is a glittering metropolis, a symbol of prosperity watched over by the all-star superhero team, the Pinnacle City Guardians. But beneath the glitz and glamour is a gritty underbelly, one still feeling the physical and economic damage of the superhero-villain battles of generations past, where the lower class―immigrants, criminals, aliens, sorcerers, and non-humans alike―jostle and elbow for scraps to scrape by on.

Private investigator Eddie Enriquez is an ex-con and veteran with powers of his own who still bears the scars of his time as a minion for a low-level supervillain. Good work’s been hard to come by until a mysterious woman shows up at his office with a case the police and superheroes are ignoring: the suspicious death of a prominent non-human rights activist.

Meanwhile, superhero Kimberly Kline, a.k.a. Solar Flare, has just hit it big, graduating to the Pinnacle City Guardians. With good looks, incredible superpowers, and a family name that opens doors, the sky is the limit. But in trying to make the world a better place . . . she’ll discover Pinnacle City isn’t as black and white as it once seemed.

From the minds of Matt Carter and Fiona J. R. Titchenell, Pinnacle City is a pulpy, throwback noir of yesteryear, where two people from opposite sides of the track must team up to do good in a world full of bad.

Coming August 7th 2018, from Talos Press.

Oh, hey, look! Pre-order links!

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

iBooks

Google Play

Indigo

Out of the Pocket Cover Reveal + Patreon Unveiling

2/11/2018

So many exciting things going on right now! I'm honestly having trouble keeping up. Let's start with two exciting things in particular:

Exciting thing #1: I'm releasing a new book on April 24th, 2018, called Out of the Pocket.

It's a YA Paranormal story with -- like many of my books -- a darkly meta twist and a lot of toying with genre assumptions.

Are you torn between laughing and gagging every time you hear someone call the Fifty Shades series "romantic," or see one of those bus posters for its Valentine's Day release, not because of its frankly underwhelming kink, but because of literally everything else about the relationship it glamorizes?

Yeah, me too. Out of the Pocket is for people like us.

Do you find yourself loving obscure stories that no one else seems to know or get, because they explore weird, cerebral, genre-defying concepts that confuse people with very specific expectations?

Ditto again. And good news: publishers hated Out of the Pocket.

Oh, they liked the writing style fine, but the fact that it looks like another neatly quantifiable paranormal romance and isn't? No one knew how to market that. And the way it actually digs at some of the roots of social gender inequality and the assumptions that feed those roots, instead of paving them over and pretending they don't exist, well, apparently that approach is embarrassingly passé in the traditional publishing world at the moment.

...But I digress. Anyway, if you want to be the hipster-est hipster in your book club, take a leap through this thoroughly un-mainstream meta-paranormal rabbit hole today.

Wait, today? Didn't I say it wouldn't be released until April 24th?

That leads us to the other exciting thing.

Exciting thing #2: Matt and I are launching our very own Patreon account!

What's a Patreon account? I'm glad you asked.

A Patreon account allows fans to subscribe on a monthly basis to support an artist's work, in return for exclusive bonus content. Our patrons, even at the bare minimum $1 level, will get early access to all indie titles by me, Matt, or both of us, as soon as they're on preorder.

Right now, that means you get Out of the Pocket instantly. Patrons can unsubscribe at any time, so if you wanted to, you could pay just $1 to download Out of the Pocket early -- instead of $3 to get it on release day -- and then unsubscribe and be on your merry way, but we hope you'll stick around. We're going to have a very healthy lineup of pre-releases coming up for you this year, especially if you like post-apocalyptic dieselpunk full of badass ladies!

At slightly higher patronage levels, you'll also get behind-the-scenes content, like snippets of works in progress. You'll be the first to know about the status of the fourth Prospero book as the situation evolves (yes, that's still happening).

Oh, and I'm considering inventing the novel audio commentary. Have you ever listened to an audio commentary for a novel? I haven't, but I think they'd be cool. With enough patrons on board, we'll all get to find out :)

So, seriously, if you love our work, and you'd like to help us spend more time making more of it -- or if you'd just like to peer into the crazy that goes on during the process -- it'd mean the world to us if you'd become one of our very first patrons.

Of course, if you'd rather pre-order Out of the Pocket the old fashioned way, I've got links for that too, right after this gorgeous cover...

For over a century, the town of Green Beach has frightened its children with the tragic legend of Joshua Thorne. He’s the reason it not only locks its doors at night but nails its windows shut. Steeped in romance and revenge, his is the kind of story Angela Ironwright lives for.

When the specter of Joshua appears to her, insisting she’s the only one who can help him piece together the fragments of his own murder, she follows him without a second thought into a place he calls the Pocket, a beautiful hidden world of jumbled memory and imagination. But the Pocket holds more than magic and mystery. Before long, its other reclusive inhabitants begin to call out to Angela, warning her not to trust Joshua and begging for her help to escape his dark power.

Angela’s sure there must be some misunderstanding, and she’s determined to set it straight. Otherwise, finding justice will mean betraying the only boy who’s ever liked her.

Smart and genre-savvy, Out of the Pocket is a dark, honest, subversive take on the modern paranormal love story.

Coming April 24th, 2018

Preorder links:

Amazon (Kindle)

Barnes & Noble (Nook)

iBooks

Kobo

Google Play

Smashwords

Indigo

(More options coming soon)

Book Review: Fangirl

6/24/2017

Book Review:

Rainbow Rowell

St. Martin's Press, 2013

A+

The Basics:

Cath is a fanfic writer beginning her freshman year of college. She's absolutely terrified to be away from home for the first time, especially after her twin sister and best friend, Wren, refuses be her roommate, sticking her with a stranger, Reagan, and Reagan’s perennial hanger-on, Levi. The only place Cath feels at home is in the world of her favorite author, Gemma T. Leslie, spinning new stories for her pre-made characters. She’s not sure she’ll ever be ready to create new characters out of her own deeply private thoughts, let alone open herself up to the uncertainty of feeling something for someone new who doesn’t live inside her head.

The Downside:

Levi can be condescending in ways I found slightly too easily brushed off at points, and the excerpts of Cath’s fanfic can run a bit longer than they need to be in order to complement her story and give insight into her mind, yet not quite long enough to have the chance to suck in the reader in their own right. The book also seems to run out of pages just before the story ends, something I can appreciate in an intentionally ambiguous ending, like Eleanor & Park, but in a story this wholeheartedly hopeful, I could have gone for a bit more closure.

The Upside:

Enough griping.

Fangirl might be the most stunningly accurate depiction of social anxiety I’ve ever encountered in any medium. Cath’s mental patterns, defense mechanisms, and fear of unfamiliar people and situations are presented in a level of vivid yet unembellished detail that anyone who struggles with social anxiety -- or who has ever struggled to understand someone who struggles with social anxiety -- should read.

Cath’s relationship with her father is a major highlight, brimming with mutual love, respect, and support, complicated by the fear that Cath may be inheriting her father’s mental health challenges along with his intensity and wit.

The subjects of fiction writing and fan culture are handled with great care as well, presenting both defenses and criticisms of the concept of fanfiction while discussing the great and worthy challenges of originality. The irreplaceable necessity of connecting with other thinking, feeling people outside the safety of fictional fantasy is a major theme of Cath’s story, yet it coexists harmoniously with a celebration of the positive power of fiction, to inspire, communicate, and even bring people together.

And of course, every one of the many themes Fangirl touches on, from family to first love to creativity to learning styles and the unpredictable uniqueness of each human mind, can be found woven through poignant yet laugh-out-loud blocks of sparklingly quotable dialogue.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

Book Review: Mockingbird, Vol. 1: I Can Explain

5/22/2017

Book Review:

Mockingbird Vol. 1: I Can Explain

Chelsea Cain, Kate Niemczyk, Ibrahim Moustafa

Marvel, 2016

Grade: A+

The Basics:

Bobbi Morse, A.K.A Mockingbird, is a superhero. Not that her bosses at S.H.I.E.L.D or her former idols on the camera-facing core lineup of the Avengers tend to notice much, but she is a scientist and martial artist who helps people for a living. She particularly excels at talking down mutant twelve-year-old girls who can’t get anyone else to explain what’s happening to their bodies, and bailing out Hawkeye, who’s totally not her boyfriend.

The Downside:

While I find it works well enough, the non-linear presentation of these five issues may frustrate many readers and doesn’t add exceptionally much.

The Upside:

Bobbi exemplifies the best possible version of the terms “attitude” and “snark,” in potently concentrated doses. She’s the angry, undervalued female superhero who knows exactly what she has to be angry about and how to point it out in a few sharply chosen words at exactly the right moments, before continuing to get the job done.

The sarcastic sense of humor here is constant without ever feeling forced, and toys with Marvel conventions, not only about gender, but about such tropes as hordes of faceless non-human enemies (allowing heroes to show off their fighting skills without looking like jerks) and the dubious morality of S.H.I.E.L.D’s shadowy government status.

The dysfunctional relationship between Bobbi and Hawkeye is the real treat of this volume, and detracts nothing from her character. Quite the opposite. This is where things gets complicated, and we get to see, as cool as she is, why Bobbi Morse is not someone you want to be. Or be anywhere near.

Bobbi is a bad significant other. Really bad. Almost as bad as the average male superhero, but unlike those guys, her story doesn’t pretend otherwise. She’s that aloof, dishonest, emotionally abusive partner who will nevertheless show up to save you whenever you need it, the one you can’t help liking in those rare moments when things are going well.

In other words, she’s an action hero with a love interest.

Depending on how much patience you have for the abundance of bad male partners in fiction, Bobbi can be viewed either as a welcome reversal, giving the woman a chance to be the layered jerk for a change, or as a commentary on why this archetype is so readily accepted the other way around in the first place.

Altogether, this is a series I’ll definitely be following for as long as it- What? It’s already been cancelled?

Typical. Right, Bobbi?

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

Book Review: Carry On

8/15/2016

Book Review:

By Rainbow Rowell

St. Martin’s Griffin, 2015

A+

The Basics:

Simon Snow is the Chosen One, destined to save the World of Mages from the Insidious Humdrum and the brewing war between the elitist old families and the Mage who runs Watford school. If only Simon could get his explosive level of power under control. And maybe figure out how to make his girlfriend happy. And uncover what's up with Baz, his vampire roommate, the rival with whom he’s been nursing an obsessive mutual enmity since they were eleven.

The Downside:

The world of Carry On started as the subject of fanfiction in another Rainbow Rowell book, Fangirl, and the vestigially fanfic-y quality of the setup makes the characters a little difficult to connect with in their own right at first (what's with Harry Potter analogue characters always being named Simon, anyway?). Rowling doesn’t have a monopoly on stories about learning magic, of course, but some of the details here are distractingly specific.

The Upside:

Both the characters and world do eventually assert their uniqueness, and it's a beautiful thing when they do. Every conflict, personal or political, is explored on all sides with extraordinary finesse. The status-quo of the World of Mages is prejudicial and wrong, yet the loudest and therefore most influential revolutionary is half-mad and quick to jump to tactics that do more harm than good. There are good people and good intentions to be found on all sides of the fence, including in the camp that simply wants to run far away.

We get to hear what it’s like to be a chosen one waiting to die, trying to minimize the collateral damage, and yet privately clinging to the hope of a happily ever after he can’t even think about starting to build yet. We hear from the love interest who’d rather be at home away from magic and looming war, living her own story in the now, rather than continuing to be used in evil plot after evil plot as hostage or incentive for the Chosen One, on the promise of a chance to be his happy ending, if he ever gets there. And yet, she cares for him. We hear from the brilliant sidekick who throws herself into every adventure and never looks back. We hear from the generation past, who thought they were doing the right thing. We hear from the guy born into the elitist old money culture who knows that he’s growing into more than one thing his family hates, but the love of family remains, sweet and complicated and unresolvable.

Wrap all of that in a sincerely believable, Rainbow Rowell-grade forbidden romance, and Carry On is a masterpiece both as genre commentary and as a story to stand alone, in equal measure.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

Five More of Fi's Fiction Pet Peeves #1: The Glass Lampshade

5/30/2016

See also:

Fiction Pet Peeve: Rape Gang Alley.

Fiction Pet Peeve: That Thing Designed for Dramatic Effect and Nothing Else.

Fiction Pet Peeve: "I Have to Go Now, Honey! I'm More Important Than You!"

Fiction Pet Peeve: The Cock-a-Doodie Lie!

Fiction Pet Peeve: "I Am the Parent, Therefore I Disapprove."

This is a simple one. It’s that moment when a character points out and possibly even protests the terribly insulting thing the plot is doing… to no effect.

Example? Why, I’m glad you asked.

In the final season of Angel, a series of shifts in the show’s focus and one actress’s pregnancy resulted in the main lineup of evil-fighters looking like this:

That’s five men (the green demon is a white actor underneath if you’re keeping score on that front) and one woman. The woman, Fred, is brilliant and thoroughly lovable but also the only member of the team without either superpowers or some level of combat training, making her the go-to damsel.

In the lead up to the series finale, Fred gets implanted with a demon, which is slowly killing her as it gestates and prepares to take over the world.

Desperate to save both the world and herself (because who wouldn’t be?), Fred works long hours in her laboratory looking for a cure, in spite of her deteriorating health. When Wesley, one of her many doting male associates, comes to tell her to rest, she objects with, “No! I’m not just the damsel in distress!”

“I’m better than that!”

Yay! Fred’s reclaiming her agency! Surely the writers have noticed how they’ve been treating her and are about to rectify the problem, and-

Oh, wait, no.

****Spoiler Alert****

Fred’s attempts to save herself come to absolutely nothing, and her soul is eaten by the demon who takes over her body, providing lots of angst for her many admiring male survivors.

****End Spoilers****

This peeve isn’t about the general practice of pointing out problems with fiction from within the fiction (known in storytelling jargon as “lampshading,” hence my little title joke).

It’s a technique that can do wonders under the right circumstances, ideally when the story pointing out the writing sin is a work of meta-satire that successfully manages to be smarter than most stories that commit said sin.

Sidney in Scream makes a complaint of this sort that works, because her respective story takes it to heart, when she tells Ghostface that she doesn’t watch horror movies because the victims are an insulting bunch of busty blondes who “run up the stairs when they should be running out the front door.”

I really AM better than that!

Sidney says this shortly after Ghostface finishes with his busty blonde first victim of the movie (played by Drew Barrymore), but Sidney herself remains competent throughout, outsmarting and outmaneuvering Ghostface, at one point running upstairs to escape through a second story window only after he blocks her attempt for the front door.

Even that opening scene with the death of Casey subverts the tradition Sidney is calling out by actively desexualizing the violence. Casey remains fully clothed in a baggy sweater throughout, and as soon as the scene transitions from flirty meta-banter to physical threat, it turns deadly serious, focusing on audience sympathy for Casey over the more typical creative dismemberment.

This part of the scene is not FUN.

Lampshading can also work when it’s used to write off a practical issue that’s standing in the way of the best possible story.

“Hey, didn’t we used to be a delivery service?”

In the case of this Futurama joke, the show is completely guilty of the sin it’s pointing out, that is, inconsistent accounting for how the characters spend their time and make their income. It works, though, because the strength of Futurama comes from the variety of its zany, episodic plotlines.

No one’s mourning the fact that we don’t spend more time watching the cast delivering packages. This isn’t something that’s central to the point of the story, and there’s no real-life social context attached. It’s an oversight that doesn’t ill-use or insult anything except, mildly, the audience’s long term memory, so once we receive this nod of acknowledgement, we can move on to enjoying the crew's more interesting spacefaring hijinks, satisfied that our intelligence is respected and the creators aren’t trying to slip anything past us.

The lampshade only becomes pointless, worse-than-nothing glass when a work of fiction commits a more real-life serious or story-integral sin and then points it out without doing anything to remedy it, apparently with the mistaken belief that pointing at the problem is the same thing as fixing it.

There’s a scene in City of Bones in which the Shadowhunters have to sneak into a church to raid a secret stash of anti-demon weaponry. So as not to imply that Christianity is the only viable avenue for fighting evil, Jace quickly explains that all organized religions are secretly in on the cause.

“We could just as easily have gone to a synagogue or a mosque.”

Yeah, but you didn’t though, did you, Jace? The lampshade line is there, but Christianity remains the only religion we actually see involved in fighting evil.

Okay, religion is an extremely delicate subject, and if an artist doesn’t feel qualified to represent a real-life culture in fiction, steering clear can sometimes be the wisest course of action, so maybe we can give that one a pass.

Not so much this little gem of a moment in the Twilight book-verse:

“You know, I saw this story on the news last week about controlling, abusive teenage relationships.”

Jacob throws this out there in Eclipse, the book in which Edward disables Bella’s car and physically prevents her from visiting other friends. The joke of this line is presumably intended to come off something like, “Ha ha, Edward and Bella sure are easy to mistake for an abusive relationship, aren’t they? But they’re not, though.”

Except they completely are, and this lampshade does nothing to change how unhealthy they are or how reprehensibly the story romanticizes that abuse.

Should we even touch how bad the Marvel movies have gotten with this lately? Eh, why not, we all know these, right?

Remember that party scene where the Avengers men all acknowledge that, back in their solo franchises, most of them had love interests? They talk for a while about what the ladies are up to and try to one-up each other with stories about how smart/independent/tough/generally awesome their girlfriends are.

That’s really sweet, guys. It’s great that you’re so supportive. Sounds like some of those women are having pretty cool adventures!

…Which we’re never, ever going to see any of, are we? Not a snippet of any of them ever doing anything remotely relevant to any movie that we’re actually watching, ever again. Nope, the narrative follows the men, and the men alone, wherever they go.

But at least we’re going to get some new costumed women soon who might get some narrative focus of their own, right?

…Right?

“It’s about damn time.”

So sayeth Wasp when Hank Pym, her movie-universe father, finally bestows on her her mother’s supersuit, indicating that he’s done being demeaningly overprotective of her.

Yes, Marvel. It is about damn time Hope’s father acknowledges her power (see last week’s peeve). And yes, we get the meta-joke that it is about damn time Marvel movies likewise acknowledge female supers collectively.

It was "about damn time" a long time ago. It was "about damn time" before this post credits tack-on in Ant-Man, and it continues to be "about damn time" far more urgently and dramatically than a 2018 release of a movie titled “Ant-Man and The Wasp” (emphasis mine) can come anywhere close to addressing.

Lampshades alone don’t make problems go away, not if the problems are big enough. Self-deprecatory humor can only buy you so much leeway. Sometimes the only patch for that insulting plot is to just do the thing right in the first place.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

Book Review: Dreamless

4/25/2016

Book Review:

By Jenniffer Wardell

Jolly Fish Press, 2016

A-

The Basics:

Princess Elena has lived all her life under the looming shadow of the curse placed on her as a baby by her evil sorceress aunt. On her fast-approaching eighteenth birthday, she will fall into a dreamless sleep for a hundred years. She’s pursued every avenue of spellbreaking research she could find before resigning herself to wait out her remaining days of wakefulness as privately as possibly, minimizing the emotional casualties when the inevitable comes. Not everyone believes the curse to be incurable, however, and a certain opportunistic prince has his sights set on the credit for her rescue. Forced to accept additional security measures to keep such vultures at bay, Elena ends up spending more time than she’d planned with her childhood acquaintance and now bodyguard, Cam. The better they get to know each other, the harder it is to make peace with their imminent separation by sleep and time, until Elena must reopen her spellbooks, and her willingness to hope.

The Downside:

The identical tone of unremitting sarcasm across all character voices, dry yet never risking a moment of understatement, makes the conversations feel formulaic after a while and undercuts the moments of sincerity.

The Upside:

Elena and Cam are an appealing couple, both dignified and understandably reserved characters who allow themselves to lean on each other with all the hesitation their situation calls for, and with all the inevitability of love. The emphasis on the pair of them learning to work together rather than against each other in misguided efforts to keep each other safe is a particularly refreshing and romantic departure from fairytale tradition. This is not a modernized retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story so much as it is a story that borrows the sleeping curse set piece of Sleeping Beauty as its inspiration, a difference which works entirely in its favor. Rather than try to dress up the same old damsel story in distracting new accessories, Dreamless takes possibly the most passive of the classic fairytale princesses and satisfyingly remakes the story around her chance to fight against her impending helplessness. This may be the subtlest jab it makes at its fairytale source material, amid its lovable ghosts and cowardly princes, but it’s the sharpest, the one that lets all the rest fall into place.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

Almost Infamous: Aidan Begins

4/18/2016

On this, the eve of the release of Almost Infamous, Matt's countdown of sneak peaks into the world of the supers draws to a close, with an introduction to the unlikely super who's about to shake the world.

Superheroes have been a part of everyday life for more than a hundred years. They star in movies, grace advertisements, walk the red carpet, and occasionally save a life or two. Empires have risen and fallen because of them, and time after time they have saved Earth from certain annihilation.

And they have become irrelevant.

With supervillains effectively extinct, superheroes have become idle and are in danger of losing their funding and their livelihoods. Fearing this, a team of heroes have come up with a drastic plan: to create a team of supervillains who answer only to them, staging crimes so they will have someone to fight.

These are the stories of the men, women and monsters who take part in this dangerous program.

These are Almost Infamous: Origins.

Previously on Almost Infamous: Origins: Prospects, Unwanted, Torches and Pitchforks, The Redcape, Family Business, Villain Worship, Anger Management, Flawless Victory, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been, Nothing Fancy, and On the Town.

Almost Infamous: Aidan Begins

By Matt Carter

Aidan

Hacklin's Hall, Indiana, USA

My little brother, Andy, had gotten another award for some reason. It might have been athletic, or academic, or possibly one of those “everybody gets an award” days that always tended to run out of awards just before I would’ve gotten one; it didn’t matter. Andy got an award, and that was reason to celebrate.

Andy waking up in the morning seemed to be enough reason for my parents to celebrate. Meanwhile, should I ever do anything worth celebrating, all I’d get was a pat on the back. If I was lucky.

Then again, occasions where I’d done anything worth celebrating were pretty few and far between.

And so, because we had to celebrate, Mom and Dad let Andy choose any place he wanted for dinner, and as always he chose the Super Pizza Adventure in South Bend.

I didn’t see why we had to drive an hour to a stupid kiddie pizza place just because my brother got another stupid award that wouldn’t mean anything by the time he graduated high school. I didn’t see why everything had to be so easy for everyone and why everything had to be so hard for me and why the universe just didn’t work out for me like it did for everyone else and why, why, why this all had to happen when I had such a bad headache.

I texted Vic from the car. I guess you could say he was my best friend.

Aidan: This bites.

Vic: Super Pizza Adventure? Their pizza sux, but I can tell you how to cheat at skeeball if you wants.

Aidan: No thanks.

Vic: Or that if you look up the skirt of Super Sally you can see her thong.

Aidan: That’s a robot you know. Of a large fluffy bear.

Vic: Don’t mean she doesn’t have a thong. I read it online.

Aidan: You really gotta stop doing that.

Vic: Thong watching?

Aidan: Going online.

“Aidan, honey, put that away. This is your brother’s night, and I don’t want you taking away from it by being on your phone all evening,” Mom said.

“But, Mom!” I protested.

“Listen to your mother, son,” Dad said. I felt like a political prisoner. I just got this new Edgetech phone, top of the line, loaded with games and apps and finally got more people’s numbers on it than just my family, and they wouldn’t let me use it? I was pretty sure villains in the Tower at least had access to phones.

Andy looked at me, smug, “It’s all right, Mom and Dad, I say that if Aidan wants to use his phone, he can.”

I could have both punched him in the head and hugged him right then, but since both of them would have made him scream and punch me in the head, I didn’t.

“Sorry, kiddo, but we’re almost to Super Pizza Adventure, and after that it’s all phones away,” Dad said.

“But what if I get a text?” Andy asked.

“Well, sure, it is your night,” Mom said.

Injustice. Plain and simple. But would I get up and say anything about it? Would I fight for what was right?

Of course I wouldn’t. Because I was Aidan Salt, the inconsequential. Even if I said anything, nothing would have happened, so what would the point be?

#
At least Super Pizza Adventure was a lot of fun, even with my headache and all the injustice I had heaped upon me. I couldn’t let anyone see that, because I wanted them to know that I was still angry, but I couldn’t help the childlike glee that always came with coming here. It was a kiddie place through and through, made up to look like what a five-year-old would think a superhero’s base would look like and populated with wandering and occasionally singing cartoon-like animals dressed as heroes (some of them people in costumes, some of them really convincing robots). They must’ve thought Andy was here for a birthday, because three of the robots (a bear, a bunny and an alligator made to look like a villain) crowded around him and sang him a non-copyrighted birthday song. For his part, Andy didn’t do anything to make them think otherwise.

With all the attention on him, it was easy to sneak off and play some games. I didn’t text Vic for his foolproof method of cheating at skeeball (though I kinda wished I had), but I did a pretty good job I think, getting a fair few tickets.

At least until the machine jammed. I just got a ball clean in the 1,000 points hole, hardest in the whole game. That should’ve come with a whole stack of tickets, enough to actually get something resembling a respectable prize. But I could see the corner of a ticket lodged diagonally in the machine, hear the tickets grinding to a halt behind it.

It figured.

The way this day was going, I should’ve seen it coming, especially with my headache making things worse. I had to go find someone, had to get the tickets that were rightly mine, had to make this goddamn machine play nice.

At once, the headache seemed to spread to my whole body, an annoying, tingly ache that spread from the tip of my nose to the ends of my toes. And then at once, almost like a tickle, it seemed to pop, disappearing and leaving me completely clear.

With that, the housing of the skeeball ticket machine popped open, dented outward, hundreds of tickets pouring out. I yelped in surprise, but then made to grab as many tickets as I could that unspooled, cramming them in my pocket before anyone could see, and get the hell out of here.

Now headache free and carrying a stack of tickets that I’d add to my bin at home (I’d been saving up for a video game for some time), I was thinking that this day was about to make a turnaround. Screw Andy’s accomplishment, I was on a roll.

And then the thought hit me. It was a small thought, a passing notion that I tried to ignore but couldn’t entirely.

What if I did that?

It was stupid thinking. I wasn’t super. I couldn’t be. I hadn’t been exposed to anything toxic or alien or been experimented on by a scientist, and I sure as hell couldn’t be a super from birth, because powers like that pretty much always manifested at puberty, and here I was about to graduate high school.

There was no way I could be special.

I just wasn’t that lucky. I couldn’t be.

I was Aidan Salt and I was always destined to be Aidan Salt, pointlessness personified. I could dream of being a superhero, sure, just like I could dream about hooking up with Kelly Shingle (Hacklin’s Hall High School’s finest) or dream of winning the lottery, but none of these things were going to happen, because I just wasn’t the kind of guy that it happened to. These things happened to more interesting people than me.

Better people.

People who had a destiny.

So, yeah, the machine popped open right when I got pissed at it, and my headache went away at the same time. Coincidence, it had to be. Some mechanical failure, or maybe some passing super saw how frustrated I was and decided to take pity on me, or perhaps did it just to give me false hope, a dream that I had a superpower I clearly could not have.

That made much more sense.

Even so, all through the car ride home, I couldn’t help but think that this might be that one time, that one infinitesimally rare time, that something good might have happened to me. Better than getting a new car or finally losing my virginity (though both of those would’ve been pretty sweet), this was the sort of thing that could change my life. If I had superpowers, I could be someone special, the kind of person that people finally would take notice of.

A better person than Aidan Salt.

It wasn’t possible, but it might be. Right? Didn’t the universe owe me that chance?

I had to find out. I had to be sure.

We’d just arrived home, pulled in our driveway, everyone getting out and ready to come down after such a great evening celebrating Andy. I was trying to draw together that feeling I had when I was pissed at the skeeball machine, and I thought I might have it. An intense tingling that went all throughout my body, a sensation that I could suddenly feel everything around me, not just me. The knowledge that I was about to become something so much greater than I currently was, that my life was about to change.

Focus.

I had to send that focus somewhere, and the focus just happened to find our mailbox.

It exploded, peeling itself outward like a banana while shards of metal and bits of torn mail flew every which way. Mom screamed and ran, and Dad looked stunned. Andy ran in the house, crying and whining that his celebration had been ruined.

His celebration may have ended, but mine was just beginning. Hands shaking with giddiness and figuring the phone ban was long over, I texted Vic.

Aidan: You won’t believe what I just did…

Eighteen-year-old Aidan Salt isn’t a superhero. With his powerful (and unpredictable) telekinetic abilities he could be one if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He’s unambitious, selfish, and cowardly, and he doesn’t want to have to deal with all the paperwork required to become a professional superhero. But since the money, fame, and women that come with wearing the cape are appealing, he decides to become the first supervillain the world has seen in more than twenty years: Apex Strike.

However, he soon finds villainy in a world where the heroes have long since defeated all the supervillains. While half the world’s heroes seem to want him dead, the other half want to hire him as their own personal villain to keep them relevant. Choosing the latter course, Aidan enters a world of fame, fortune, and staged superhero fights that is seemingly everything he ever dreamed of . . . at least until he sees what truly hides behind the cape-and-mask lifestyle.

Almost Infamous will be released on April 19th, 2016, from Talos Press. Find it wherever books are sold (including the Amazon link so helpfully included here and in the cover above).

Almost Infamous: On the Town

4/15/2016

Once again, to celebrate the countdown to the release of Almost Infamous, Matt's sharing this series of sneak peaks into the world of the supers. Keep watching here or on his homepage as the day draws closer!

Superheroes have been a part of everyday life for more than a hundred years. They star in movies, grace advertisements, walk the red carpet, and occasionally save a life or two. Empires have risen and fallen because of them, and time after time they have saved Earth from certain annihilation.

And they have become irrelevant.

With supervillains effectively extinct, superheroes have become idle and are in danger of losing their funding and their livelihoods. Fearing this, a team of heroes have come up with a drastic plan: to create a team of supervillains who answer only to them, staging crimes so they will have someone to fight.

These are the stories of the men, women and monsters who take part in this dangerous program.

These are Almost Infamous: Origins.

Previously on Almost Infamous: Origins: Prospects, Unwanted, Torches and Pitchforks, The Redcape, Family Business, Villain Worship, Anger Management, Flawless Victory, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been, and Nothing Fancy.

Almost Infamous: On the Town

By Matt Carter

Helios

Hollywood, California, USA

It’s not easy being a superhero, but it is pretty fucking awesome.

Most of the time.

Times have changed and we have to change with them. We’re not living in a day when all you have to do to be a hero is wear a super suit and save the occasional kitten from a tree or put out a fire, though it doesn’t hurt to do that periodically.

These days, it’s all about image.

You can’t just come in and save the day and hope for that to be enough if you want to be relevant. No, you need to put yourself out there. You need to be visible. You need to be a master of media both old and new, how to give interviews, how best to make use of the constantly shifting world of social media, and how to stay in the public eye in ways beyond conventional heroics. Some of us are into the stage, or music, or modeling, or maybe even charity work. I prefer film, myself. I gloriously look the part, after all, and my powers of strength, flight, telekinesis and energy projection are rather camera ready and, dare I sound blasphemous, godlike, wouldn’t you think?

I fight hard to be what I am, and I take care of myself. No fewer than two hours out of my daily routine are dedicated to exercise and grooming, and since you probably won’t have heard of half the stuff I do (and wouldn’t be able to even pronounce half of that), I won’t bore you with the details. I eat a calorically modest diet and I generally don’t drink or do drugs to excess, but I allow myself indulgences periodically because what’s the point of life if you cannot live it?

Though I may not be the greatest superhero alive today (a title that will likely always be held by El Capitán), I aspire to be a symbol. Someone people can look up to.

And not just little people, either, but other heroes.

Take Icicle Man, for instance. He’s only been in the heroing game for about four years now, and boy is he green. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good friend, and he’s great at what he does, I’ve never met a better cryokinetic, but he lacks discipline and vision. Though a full Protector, he’s only what I’d call a good hero.

Let me tell you how I started to make him great.

------------

It all started after he froze that paparazzo solid.

We’d just left Modesto’s Keep, greatest club in Hollywood (I know the owner, nice guy), just the two of us, guys’ night out (no girlfriends, though plenty of girls inside willing to ignore that). He’d had a little too much to drink, one of his many vices, and though I’d imbibed, I found my feet with greater ease than him. We were walking down the outer stairs of the levitating club, him singing some inane K-pop song he’d made famous back home, when we got to the usual throng of paparazzi that separated us from our limo.

Now, unlike most celebrities, I understand the necessity of the paparazzi. They’re vultures to be sure, the kind of scum who deserve to burn in every level of hell for the sake of variety, but they do their jobs well. They follow us around and take our pictures, acting as some of the greatest free press agents you can imagine, while also giving us a peek at just how in demand we are (the more of them stalking you, the more popular you are). Depending on how much of a bad boy image you want to cultivate and how much money you have (or free time for community service), you can beat them up periodically. Do your penance, say you’ll never do it again, wait an appropriate length of time and do it again.

I’ve got too good a relationship with the press to do this very often, but Icicle Man, he acts like a bad boy, which is a shame, because a) it’s not something he aims for, and b) he’s got too much of a babyface for the part. If it was something he meant to do, he could maybe pull it off, but it’s not. He lets himself be ruled by real, human emotion, and that’s death in this job.

You’re either constantly vigilant, or you’re nothing.

Now where was I?

Right. Paparazzi.

We were walking through the throng, camera flashes in our eyes and the usual questions and provocative statements meant to get a reaction from us flying around. I flashed my brilliant smile, I made good with them, even managed to namedrop my currently filming project a couple times and apologize for not being able to offer spoilers. Icicle Man, surly and drunk, wouldn’t even deign them that, which is cool, people can do whatever they want. Sometimes he’d jerk, look like he wanted to strike them, but I’d hold him back, keep the smiles going, keep him from getting too cold.

And then one of them just shouted, “Any truth to the rumors you’re gay?”

In point of fact, Icicle Man isn’t, but he does have his own sexual predilections that are better kept private (private enough that they’d make the team look really bad), and he’s pretty touchy when it comes to anyone talking about them.

So I couldn’t entirely blame the guy when he raised a hand at the paparazzo and froze him solid in a block of ice. This was one of those rare moments where you got to see the rest of them act like people, running and screaming instead of just standing there taking pictures and trying to provoke us (not that they didn’t start doing the same when they got to what they thought was a safe distance).

I entered damage control mode quickly, taking off and hovering a few feet off the ground. I melted the ice with the energy beams from my hands, telekinetically breaking the rest apart when I got the frosty (and terrified) paparazzo free.

“You should’ve let him freeze,” Icicle Man said.

“Quiet, and let the master work,” I said, flying over to the paparazzi and the crowd that had gathered. Usually, I had writers for my best speeches, but on this occasion I was willing to improvise.

I was always pretty good in my improv classes, after all (as any good superhero should be).

“Gentlemen, please forgive my friend here. As superheroes we should aspire to be above such base instincts as anger, but in this instance, can you entirely blame Icicle Man? Day in and day out we fight for your freedom, and if you’ll pardon my crudity, freedom is pretty fucking heavy. It’s such a great weight that sometimes we bend and snap under it in ways we cannot predict and do not mean. So do not blame Icicle Man, blame those who would threaten your freedom for placing the weight on his shoulders,” I said.

This seemed to get some of their attention, but not enough. Time to sweeten the pot.

“Tell you what, guys, we’re on our way to another club. Stick around us, and shots are on me!” I yelled. This got a much better response, as I knew it would. The first speech was for my image. The shots offer was to get them off my back. Icicle Man’s image for the night wouldn’t be in great condition, but he’d survive, at least until someone else fucked up even more.

I flew back over to him. He looked up at me sulkily.

“Why’d you do that? Why’d you play their game?” he asked.

“Because, like it or not, we’re not the only people in the world. We need them to make us great, whether you like it or not. Now pull your act the fuck together. We’re going to hit another club, we’re going to buy those assholes some shots, and we’re going to make it such an awesome party that they won’t even try and remember that you nearly killed one of them tonight,” I said.

“But their cameras?” he asked.

“Way ahead of you,” I said, quickly texting one of the Protectors’ lawyers. Cybernetic implants kept her from ever having to sleep (and she was a bit sweet on me), so I knew I could get her to suppress this from becoming a thing by the time all the paparazzi sobered up.

“This’d be a whole lot easier if I could just kill some bad guys,” Icicle Man said.

He had a point there, not that I could tell him that. There were people, myself included, who had some plans to fix that, plans to make our very own supervillains to change the status quo, to prove to the world how desperately we really were needed. I liked Icicle Man, well enough, and he was my friend, but with a head like his, he couldn’t really be trusted with something like that. Not yet at least.

But if I kept him under my wing, taught him the ways of the world, maybe he could be brought in.

“It would be, wouldn’t it? But we can’t predict when, or if, the villains will ever rise again. What we can do is be the best damn heroes possible. Ask my why,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because if you make people do what you want them to do, make them behave as you think they ought to, they will naturally resist. However, if you are someone they aspire to be, a hero to them, you won’t have to tell them what to do for you, because they’ll already be doing it without you needing to ask. Inspire that kind of devotion and you can slake your lusts and rages on them periodically without any fear of repercussions or need to clean up like I did for you tonight. Do you understand?” I asked.

He smiled, “I think I will when I sober up.”

“Good boy. There might be hope for you yet,” I said, laughing.

Eighteen-year-old Aidan Salt isn’t a superhero. With his powerful (and unpredictable) telekinetic abilities he could be one if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He’s unambitious, selfish, and cowardly, and he doesn’t want to have to deal with all the paperwork required to become a professional superhero. But since the money, fame, and women that come with wearing the cape are appealing, he decides to become the first supervillain the world has seen in more than twenty years: Apex Strike.

However, he soon finds villainy in a world where the heroes have long since defeated all the supervillains. While half the world’s heroes seem to want him dead, the other half want to hire him as their own personal villain to keep them relevant. Choosing the latter course, Aidan enters a world of fame, fortune, and staged superhero fights that is seemingly everything he ever dreamed of . . . at least until he sees what truly hides behind the cape-and-mask lifestyle.

Almost Infamous will be released on April 19th, 2016, from Talos Press. Find it wherever books are sold (including the Amazon link so helpfully included here and in the cover above).

Almost Infamous: Nothing Fancy

4/1/2016

Once again, to celebrate the countdown to the release of Almost Infamous, Matt's sharing this series of sneak peaks into the world of the supers. Keep watching here or on his homepage as the day draws closer!

Superheroes have been a part of everyday life for more than a hundred years. They star in movies, grace advertisements, walk the red carpet, and occasionally save a life or two. Empires have risen and fallen because of them, and time after time they have saved Earth from certain annihilation.

And they have become irrelevant.

With supervillains effectively extinct, superheroes have become idle and are in danger of losing their funding and their livelihoods. Fearing this, a team of heroes have come up with a drastic plan: to create a team of supervillains who answer only to them, staging crimes so they will have someone to fight.

These are the stories of the men, women and monsters who take part in this dangerous program.

These are Almost Infamous: Origins.

Previously on Almost Infamous: Origins: Prospects, Unwanted, Torches and Pitchforks, The Redcape, Family Business, Villain Worship, Anger Management, Flawless Victory, and Are You Now or Have You Ever Been.

Almost Infamous: Nothing Fancy

By Matt Carter

Nevermore

Paris, France

Aline was drunk, but not as drunk as she looked. It was the best way to do business after all. Stumbling around, splashing her drinks, dancing and making out with tourists in the club, making a great fool of herself. In short, a perfect distraction.

With her the fool, it offered Claude and me the chance to sneak through the disorienting din of the club and separate the tourists from their wallets. The money and credit cards was much appreciated, but the ID’s and passports would net even more. We could never stay at the clubs too long this way, but we still had our fun.

It was not my favorite way to spend a Saturday evening (I’d much prefer the clubs without the work), but we hadn’t had a good job in a while and needed some spending money.. Normally, we specialized in more high-end robberies than picking a few pockets, jobs where someone with my unique skillset could really make a difference. We may not have been the best in the business, but we did well enough for ourselves.

“Ugh, I hate the commies, always so grabby,” Aline said, readjusting her top as we walked to the next club.

“And they never have enough money,” I said, frowning as I sorted through our spoils of the evening.

“You should try seducing American girls, Aline. They are never on their guard, and cannot take their liquor. Easy picking,” Claude said, smiling the smile that always made me look forward to getting him undressed later.

Aline frowned, “No thanks, I still have my pride. Besides, American girls are more Ange-”

I glared at her, and she quickly corrected herself, “-Nevermore’s style.”

I nodded, smiling and puffing on my cigarette. Nevermore may not have been the name I was born with, but it suited me much better. I liked the dark. Not only did it suit me, but it was a fine place to hide when I was not having fun. This was more often than I would tell Claude or Aline or their friends or any of my other lovers, and that was how I liked it. I would smile, and I would be their friend, and I would party with them, but I would only allow myself to be as happy as I wanted to be. It helped prevent life’s greater disappointments.

“Are they your style?” Claude asked, arching an eyebrow. He knew what was and wasn’t my style, and we’d shared enough men and women in our bed for him to know that, but he liked talking about it, and if it meant not scaring him away, I would indulge him.

“American girls are fun, but not enough challenge. They’re drunk and on holiday in the most romantic city in the world, if you believe the travel brochures, and their inhibitions disappear. It is too easy. I much prefer their boyfriends,” I said.

“And they are less of a challenge?” Claude said, looking me up and down.

“In their way. When they are on holiday and they are looking for an affair or a casual one night stand, they have a particular image in their mind of the perfect French girl. Tall and pretty and blonde with an accent that’ll fuck you long before her mouth even touches you, like Aline,” I said.

“Awww, thanks, Nevermore,” Aline said, pulling the cigarette from my mouth and kissing me swiftly on the lips. As usual, she used this as an excuse to keep my cigarette. I could have taken it back from her, but instead I just pulled another from my pack and lit it on hers.

“They don’t come looking for me, not unless they’ve particular tastes, or are willing to take a walk on what they’d call the wild side, which few are, at first. Hence, the challenge,” I said. It was true, I was likely more beautiful than Aline, on my better days I was almost sure of it, but the tattoos I had covering close to 70% of my body had a way of scaring most men off.

That’s what happens when you cover your body in tattoos representing each of Edgar Allen Poe’s greatest works. You didn’t fall for him because he was cheerful.

Though I did fall for Claude for that reason, so what did I know?

I’d had many lovers before I met Claude, but none of them stayed around like him. They would last barely more than a night, treating me as if I were a cheap whore because they could, and because I let them. Claude, though, he stayed. He had a dark sense of humor to him that appealed. It was a sense of humor that would often manifest as cruelty, but he rarely meant it beyond jest. He was kind more often than he was not, and he was fun when working and when off the clock. He was not the perfect man, but he was one I did not mind spending time with.

Besides, he was the one who usually got us the good jobs.

Usually.

“I want to go home and sleep,” Aline grumbled.

“It’s barely 1 am! Are you serious?” I asked.

“Serious about getting out of these heels, yes,” she said.

“Two more clubs, and we’ll call it a night,” Claude said.

“One,” Aline pouted.

“Two,” Claude said.

“One and a half?”

“Two,” Claude said, his voice losing all humor.

Aline kept pouting, but she said no more. We’d both learned better than to get Claude’s temper up.

Claude stopped, gripping my hand tightly.

“Did you bring your costume, Nevermore?” he hissed.

“No. I didn’t think it was that kind of work night,” I said.

“It will be soon,” he said. I couldn’t see what he could, but that was nothing new. Claude’s X-ray vision made him an excellent thief and often let him see danger before it came.

This time was no different.

I could hear them before they rounded the corner. Hissing and laughing and boasting. Scalefaces. Lemurians.

Tall and muscular and thoroughly unattractive, they were also incredibly dangerous in groups if they had a mind to be. Since we were not from Atlantis, it was unlikely they would strike us on general principle. But the way Claude was trying to turn tail and run, I did not think these were ordinary Lemurians.

The first one barely rounded the corner before seeing us. He was dressed in human clothes, none of that gleaming armor the true scaleface warriors loved to wear to prove they still remember their home country. For a moment I thought Claude was overreacting. Then the scaleface cried out.

“CLAUDE! YOU SON OF A BITCH, GIVE US OUR MONEY!” it yelled in shitty, hissing French, charging down the alley toward us.

Claude shook himself out of my hand and took off running, Aline and her high heels not that far behind. I should have followed, but that was not what I did in situations like this. If I didn’t want to do it to impress Claude (which I always enjoyed doing), I did it because it was what I always did.

I was our group’s muscle after all.

Calmly, I stepped out of my heels and kicked them aside. I let my tattoos do the rest.

A large, black, bladed pendulum burst from the tattoo on my chest, swinging down between the Lemurians and scattering them. Not ones to fear any battle, they skirted past the pendulum.

A great black cat, as large and ferocious as a lion, burst from my arm, mauling and pinning the two scalefaces in front to the ground. The other two fought past it easily, running at me and shouting their hideous reptilian curses. This was not as clean a fight as I usually liked, I always liked to put on a bit of a show, but this time, keeping it simple would work.

Before the final two could reach me, a great flock of ravens, cawing and scratching, surrounded them. They cried out and tried to fight the spectral horde summoned from my tattoos, and they could do nothing. I could have left them be, bloodied and confused, as Claude and Aline had already made their escape, and I could just as easily.

But even though this fight was nothing fancy, I wanted to give it a grand finale that Claude would appreciate.

I wanted to make the Lemurians know fear.

Summoning an ax into my hands, I walked through the flock of ravens to the thrashing, fighting scalefaces. With all my tattoos animated, trying to burst through my skin as one, I must have looked a terrifying sight.

The bloodied leader of the Lemurians looked at me with pure spite and said, “Stand back, she-witch, and let us claim what is ours!”

With a dark smile, I said, “Nevermore.”

Eighteen-year-old Aidan Salt isn’t a superhero. With his powerful (and unpredictable) telekinetic abilities he could be one if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He’s unambitious, selfish, and cowardly, and he doesn’t want to have to deal with all the paperwork required to become a professional superhero. But since the money, fame, and women that come with wearing the cape are appealing, he decides to become the first supervillain the world has seen in more than twenty years: Apex Strike.

However, he soon finds villainy in a world where the heroes have long since defeated all the supervillains. While half the world’s heroes seem to want him dead, the other half want to hire him as their own personal villain to keep them relevant. Choosing the latter course, Aidan enters a world of fame, fortune, and staged superhero fights that is seemingly everything he ever dreamed of . . . at least until he sees what truly hides behind the cape-and-mask lifestyle.

Almost Infamous will be released on April 19th, 2016, from Talos Press. Find it wherever books are sold (including the Amazon link so helpfully included here and in the cover above).