Speed Demons!

At the start of the year I wrote a full-length gender swap novel called Secret Origins that was like Batman v Superman meets my previous superhero gender swap novel Girl Power.  The idea was that an alien artifact inadvertently turns a Batman-type hero and Superman-type hero into teenage girls.  They go to high school with the Superman-type hero a popular girl and the Batman-type hero a nerd.  Ultimately they wind up fighting each other and then joining forces to stop an alien monster.

The epilogue was like a cookie scene in a movie, something to help set up the next story.  In that we introduce Dr. Alan Bassett, a scientist studying the alien artifact that crashed.  Except when the artifact splits open to release the monster, radiation from the artifact changed Alan into a hot teenage girl--a hot teenage girl with super-speed!  So yes she's the Flash to the Batman and Superman characters.

Something I learned about this is if you don't have your sequel all lined up, you really don't want your cookie scene to get too specific.  Because then I kind of had to tap dance a little to get everything to line up for the most part.  So when I wrote a cookie scene for the sequel I made sure to keep it a little more generic so it could fit in anywhere.

It took a while to come up with an idea for the sequel.  I actually ran through like 3 outlines before I got one I liked.  And then I didn't use a lot of that one, though the overall framework was pretty much the same.

Since we're dealing with a Flash character in my first attempts I tried basing it on one of the more iconic Flash stories, 2011's Flashpoint where the Flash goes back in time to stop his mom from being killed, which in turn creates an apocalyptic present.  They half-assed used it on TV and rumor is they might be using that for the movie Flash--provided they ever get their shit together on that; I mean I think they've gone through like 5 directors already.  Anyway, my first outline more or less did that the same way.  It didn't really seem right.  I tried another way where instead of going to the past, the Flash character fucks things up in the present and accidentally is thrown into an apocalyptic future.  I got that one all roughed out but it still didn't seem right.

So I decided to nix the whole time travel thing.  I don't really like time travel stories that much anyway.  The final version then stayed entirely in the present.  The first quarter or so of the book is just Allison learning to adjust to being a girl and a superhero.  She goes through quite a few growing pains with both.  At the same time she tries to reconnect with her former wife and young daughter and winds up becoming her daughter's babysitter while her former wife goes on dates with the guy she was cheating on her former husband with.

But ultimately the Batman-type hero from the previous story finds her and brings Allison back to her mansion to give her a real place to stay and to train her to become a hero.  Again there are some growing pains, but she seems on the right track until she tries to foil a hostage situation by herself.  One of the hostages is a girl named Naomi who has a superpower of her own:  like Rogue of the X-Men or Superman villain Parasite, Naomi can drain someone of powers.  She uses this on Allison, who then has to find a way to get her power back and save the world from Naomi.  (In one of the later outlines she was supposed to give up her power willingly like Spider-Man 2 but then I decided to make it involuntary.)

Allison as Bluestreak! (ie Power Rangers costume with Captain America mask)

Allison's friend Melody as Electric Girl!

This was the kind of story that starting out I didn't think it'd be all that long.  Then almost a month later it was nearly 80,000 words!  It's been almost two years I think since I wrote anything that long.  So hopefully it does well. Buy it here.

I already have an idea for the third one roughed out.  It's supposed to be more like Civil War as the government creates its own superheroes to take down Allison and her friends.  I'm not sure when that will be done, but probably by the end of the year.  Here are the initial Sims of them:

Janet

Lucy

Megumi

Rose