Hello, I am new

Hi there,

My name is April, and I'm currently in the Portland, OR area. I write really dark fantasy for adults, and plucky, optimistic superhero books for YA readers. I am the hospitality chairperson for the Cascade Writers convention in the Pacific Northwest, and currently run the Twitter account for that convention as well. If you went to Cascade this last year, you probably saw me running the game of Werewolf on opening night.

I'm currently looking for an agent, but they're very well hidden.

Well the, superhero book is called Dreadnought, and is about a young transgender girl dealing with the problems of inheriting the powers of the world's greatest superhero. It's an unapologetic power fantasy for trans kids, who don't often get to see depictions of people they relate to being important and capable. It also turned out to be way more of a howl of outrage on behalf of my friends who are survivors of abusive households than I had intended it to be.

What kind of stuff do you write?

No, I've actually only read maybe 3 superhero novels, two of which were novelizations of DC comics storylines. I'm sort of shocked it turned out as well as it did, given my lack of experience with superheroics in prose.

And I do want it published, but it's apparently a real hard sell right now, because no superhero book has ever really taken off the way publishers have hoped they would. We shall see.

Jenkki said:

Like a thinly veiled Superman?

Click to expand...

To the extent that any flying brick is a derivation of Superman, yes. I tried hard to make Dreadnought her own thing, though.

Also, I try to keep her relative power levels lower than Superman's, mainly because I want her girlfriend (cowgirl Batman, basically) to be able to keep up with her, or at least not be so outstripped she's made redundant.

She can win a fight that Superman wouldn't have much trouble with, at the cost of getting pretty badly beat up herself. Bullets don't kill her, but they hurt. What makes Dreadnought "the greatest" is that few other capes can match her mix of speed, power, and durability, which means that while she's often facing someone who can do something better than she can, but she's got a few edges of her own in different areas.

EDIT: Also, thank you for the lovely welcome, everyone!