Fanfiction Hits by Country

Back in August 2008 the www.fanfiction.net website started providing country of origin data for hits for stories hosted on their website.  Of course, I had to start collecting this data in a spreadsheet.

Updated 7/26/2015

Wow, to date, I’ve had hits from  147 countries, the most recently added being Mali and Zaire.  Before they started providing this data I never imagined I had readers in so many places!

Duane

	Sort By Total Hits				Alphabetical Sort
		Aug2008-Jun2015	Percentage			Aug2008-Jun2015	Percentage
1	USA	80806	55.6		Afghanistan	35	0.0
2	UK	14606	10.1		Algeria	1	0.0
3	Australia	8944	6.2		Andorra	1	0.0
4	Canada	7081	4.9		Antigua & Barbuda	3	0.0
5	Germany	3626	2.5		Argentina	358	0.2
6	France	3261	2.2		Armenia	12	0.0
7	Brazil	1663	1.1		Aruba	3	0.0
8	Sweden	1560	1.1		Australia	8944	6.2
9	Netherlands	1303	0.9		Austria	391	0.3
10	Russia	1234	0.8		Bahamas	16	0.0
11	Belgium	1204	0.8		Bahrain	25	0.0
12	New Zealand	1116	0.8		Bengladesh	21	0.0
13	Philippines	1043	0.7		Barbados	100	0.1
14	Spain	1028	0.7		Belgium	1204	0.8
15	Ireland	1010	0.7		Belarus	17	0.0
16	Italy	909	0.6		Belize	25	0.0
17	Portugal	722	0.5		Bermuda	2	0.0
18	South Africa	666	0.5		Bosnia and Herzegovina	16	0.0
19	Poland	655	0.5		Brazil	1663	1.1
20	India	627	0.4		Brunei	56	0.0
21	Norway	627	0.4		Bulgaria	100	0.1
22	Iceland	566	0.4		Cambodia	6	0.0
23	Mexico	546	0.4		Canada	7081	4.9
24	Romania	507	0.3		Cayman Islands	3	0.0
25	Singapore	501	0.3		Chile	182	0.1
26	Denmark	469	0.3		China	314	0.2
27	Finland	460	0.3		Colombia	70	0.0
28	Austria	391	0.3		Comoros	5	0.0
29	Puerto Rico	390	0.3		Costa Rica	53	0.0
30	Malaysia	371	0.3		Croatia	305	0.2
31	Argentina	358	0.2		Cyprus	153	0.1
32	Venezuela	343	0.2		Czech Republic	320	0.2
33	Hungary	338	0.2		Denmark	469	0.3
34	Czech Republic	320	0.2		Dominica	1	0.0
35	China	314	0.2		DominicanRepublic	22	0.0
36	TrinidadandTobago	311	0.2		Ecuador	1	0.0
37	Croatia	305	0.2		Egypt	78	0.1
38	Switzerland	299	0.2		El Salvador	28	0.0
39	Greece	260	0.2		Estonia	167	0.1
40	Israel	259	0.2		Faroe Islands	44	0.0
41	Hong Kong	205	0.1		Fiji	17	0.0
42	Sri Lanka	204	0.1		Finland	460	0.3
43	Pakistan	201	0.1		France	3261	2.2
44	Chile	182	0.1		French Polynesia	21	0.0
45	Indonesia	177	0.1		Georgia	2	0.0
46	Estonia	167	0.1		Germany	3626	2.5
47	Slovakia	158	0.1		Ghana	86	0.1
48	Cyprus	153	0.1		Gibraltar	1	0.0
49	Japan	138	0.1		Greece	260	0.2
50	Turkey	120	0.1		Grenada	1	0.0
51	Serbia & Montenegro	116	0.1		Guam	19	0.0
52	Jamaica	112	0.1		Guadeloupe	9	0.0
53	Slovenia	106	0.1		Guatemala	26	0.0
54	Barbados	100	0.1		Guyana	16	0.0
55	Bulgaria	100	0.1		Hong Kong	205	0.1
56	Ukraine	93	0.1		Hungary	338	0.2
57	Latvia	87	0.1		Iceland	566	0.4
58	Lithuania	87	0.1		India	627	0.4
59	Ghana	86	0.1		Indonesia	177	0.1
60	Egypt	78	0.1		Iraq	3	0.0
61	Taiwan	74	0.1		Iran	1	0.0
62	Kuwait	72	0.0		Ireland	1010	0.7
63	Colombia	70	0.0		Isle of Man	31	0.0
64	Peru	67	0.0		Israel	259	0.2
65	Thailand	64	0.0		Italy	909	0.6
66	UnitedArabEmirates	59	0.0		Jamaica	112	0.1
67	Brunei	56	0.0		Japan	138	0.1
68	Panama	54	0.0		Jersey	21	0.0
69	Costa Rica	53	0.0		Jordan	10	0.0
70	Nigeria	46	0.0		Kazakhstan	2	0.0
71	Faroe Islands	44	0.0		Kenya	20	0.0
72	Malta	43	0.0		Kuwait	72	0.0
73	Suriname	37	0.0		Latvia	87	0.1
74	Afghanistan	35	0.0		Lebanon	4	0.0
75	Uruguay	35	0.0		Liberia	7	0.0
76	Isle of Man	31	0.0		Lithuania	87	0.1
77	El Salvador	28	0.0		Luxembourg	10	0.0
78	New Caledonia	27	0.0		Macedonia	5	0.0
79	Vietnam	27	0.0		Macua	1	0.0
80	Guatemala	26	0.0		Malaysia	371	0.3
81	Bahrain	25	0.0		Maldives	5	0.0
82	Belize	25	0.0		Mali	14	0.0
83	Nicaragua	25	0.0		Malta	43	0.0
84	Saudi Arabia	25	0.0		Mauritius	24	0.0
85	Mauritius	24	0.0		Mexico	546	0.4
86	DominicanRepublic	22	0.0		Moldova	9	0.0
87	Bengladesh	21	0.0		Mongolia	19	0.0
88	French Polynesia	21	0.0		Monaco	2	0.0
89	Jersey	21	0.0		Morocco	7	0.0
90	Kenya	20	0.0		Mozambique	5	0.0
91	South Korea	20	0.0		Nepal	12	0.0
92	Guam	19	0.0		Netherlands	1303	0.9
93	Mongolia	19	0.0		Netherlands Antilles	18	0.0
94	Netherlands Antilles	18	0.0		New Caledonia	27	0.0
95	Belarus	17	0.0		New Zealand	1116	0.8
96	Fiji	17	0.0		Nicaragua	25	0.0
97	Seychelles	17	0.0		Nigeria	46	0.0
98	Bahamas	16	0.0		Norway	627	0.4
99	Bosnia and Herzegovina	16	0.0		Oman	1	0.0
100	Guyana	16	0.0		Pakistan	201	0.1
101	Paraguay	16	0.0		Panama	54	0.0
102	Mali	14	0.0		Paraguay	16	0.0
103	Tunisia	13	0.0		Philippines	1043	0.7
104	Armenia	12	0.0		Peru	67	0.0
105	Nepal	12	0.0		Poland	655	0.5
106	Jordan	10	0.0		Portugal	722	0.5
107	Luxembourg	10	0.0		Puerto Rico	390	0.3
108	Rwanda	10	0.0		Qatar	6	0.0
109	Guadeloupe	9	0.0		Romania	507	0.3
110	Moldova	9	0.0		Russia	1234	0.8
111	Liberia	7	0.0		Rwanda	10	0.0
112	Morocco	7	0.0		Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	2	0.0
113	Virgin Islands	7	0.0		Samoa	2	0.0
114	Zimbabwe	7	0.0		Saudi Arabia	25	0.0
115	Cambodia	6	0.0		Senegal	3	0.0
116	Qatar	6	0.0		Serbia & Montenegro	116	0.1
117	Comoros	5	0.0		Seychelles	17	0.0
118	Macedonia	5	0.0		Singapore	501	0.3
119	Maldives	5	0.0		Slovakia	158	0.1
120	Mozambique	5	0.0		Slovenia	106	0.1
121	Zambia	5	0.0		South Africa	666	0.5
122	Lebanon	4	0.0		South Korea	20	0.0
123	Tanzania	4	0.0		Spain	1028	0.7
124	Antigua & Barbuda	3	0.0		Sri Lanka	204	0.1
125	Aruba	3	0.0		Sudan	1	0.0
126	Cayman Islands	3	0.0		Suriname	37	0.0
127	Iraq	3	0.0		Swaziland	1	0.0
128	Senegal	3	0.0		Sweden	1560	1.1
129	Uganda	3	0.0		Switzerland	299	0.2
130	Bermuda	2	0.0		Tanzania	4	0.0
131	Georgia	2	0.0		Taiwan	74	0.1
132	Kazakhstan	2	0.0		Thailand	64	0.0
133	Monaco	2	0.0		TrinidadandTobago	311	0.2
134	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	2	0.0		Tunisia	13	0.0
135	Samoa	2	0.0		Turkey	120	0.1
136	Algeria	1	0.0		Ukraine	93	0.1
137	Andorra	1	0.0		UnitedArabEmirates	59	0.0
138	Dominica	1	0.0		UK	14606	10.1
139	Ecuador	1	0.0		USA	80806	55.6
140	Gibraltar	1	0.0		Uganda	3	0.0
141	Grenada	1	0.0		Uruguay	35	0.0
142	Iran	1	0.0		Venezuela	343	0.2
143	Macua	1	0.0		Vietnam	27	0.0
144	Oman	1	0.0		Virgin Islands	7	0.0
145	Sudan	1	0.0		Zaire	1	0.0
146	Swaziland	1	0.0		Zambia	5	0.0
147	Zaire	1	0.0		Zimbabwe	7	0.0
	Total Hits	145251				145251
	Total Countries	147				147

Dragons of Nippon – a new Vampire Diaries Novella now available at Amazon

Update 7/15/2015

Dragons of Nippon is NOW available at Amazon!

Dragons of Nippon (which takes place in the year 1596) is a part of my series of stories exploring the life of Katerina Petrova (AKA Katherine Pierce) before she arrives in Mystic Falls in 1864.  This story is a sequel to Royalty Gene (set in 1554) and Dark Awakening (set in 1492), however the stories are relatively standalone and can be read in any order.

——–

After a disastrous encounter with Niklaus in 1564, Katerina barely escapes with her life. As a result, she heads east in hopes of getting as far away from Niklaus and Europe as she can. Over the course of many years her travels take her across India and China before she finally ends up in the island nation of Nippon, the easternmost bastion of civilization.

By 1596, Katerina has been living in Nippon for three years and using her glamour to compel everyone she encounters to believe she is the Nipponese noblewoman, Lady Kumiko. She has adjusted to the eastern lifestyle, but is still forever looking over her shoulder in fear Niklaus will make an appearance even though she has run to the far other end of the world.

Because of her never-ending fear of her old adversary, she allows herself to get drawn into a scheme to steal the magical treasure held by a dragon. Her sole motivation is that her share of the booty is to be a device which will allow her to always know Niklaus’ location. And knowing his location may finally lift the nearly unbearable burden of a potential future encounter.

But stealing from a giant, fire-breathing dragon is not for the faint of heart. And powerful opponents are after the same prize. This quest could easily turn out to be the most dangerous thing Katerina has ever attempted in a hundred years as a vampire.

——–

I was inspired to write this story after seeing a display of Samurai Armor at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.  The Samurai Era seemed like it might be an interesting setting for a story and since I knew little about Japan in that period, it required some research, which is one of the parts of the writing process I enjoy.  Many of the characters are based on historical people of that era or earlier periods with tweaks as necessary to incorporate vampires, dragons, and the other magical aspects of the story.

———-

Note: The link above will take you to Amazon where you can buy the book. And, as with all Kindle books, once you are there you have the option to read the first 10% for FREE to help you decide if you want to buy.

My Date with a Mad Scientist is now available at Amazon!

Update 11/8/2014

 

My Date with a Mad Scientist is NOW available at Amazon!

Back in 2012 a couple of things were absorbing my attention and made me think if I combined them, the result might be a fun story.

The first was discovering the world of Twitter. I don’t really use it to communicate with anyone, but more to voyeur a little into celebrities’ lives or at least the portion they chose to share with the world. And I have found my tastes quickly gravitated to B-list actresses from old sci-fi TV shows and movies like Dina Meyer, Katee Sackhoff, Cassidy Freeman, Tricia Helfer, Jeri Ryan, Sandra Hess, Kari Wuhrer, and the like. It is fun to see how some just post motivational quotes, some mostly post photos of their pets, while others use it to promote their projects and personal causes.

The other thing that occupying my attention  was a couple of Australian kid shows available through Netflix. The first was ‘H2O’, a show about three high school girls who can turn into mermaids.  The other was ‘Wicked Science’ (sadly not currently available on streaming Netflix) about a pair of high school kids who get zapped by a mysterious ray that turns them into super geniuses. In every episode they created some new outrageous sci-fi device like a teleportation machine or a raygun that can shrink people, or clones, or time machines, or robots that can pass for people, or invisibility cremes. And the list goes on and on.

Anyway I got to thinking about it and decided perhaps I could do an interesting story if I smashed together a B-list actress with a mad scientist who could create all kinds of crazy things. It is one of those story ideas where you have to write it all straight and serious yet it is really just light, fast, and fluffy.

Also I find it helps me visualize the characters and keep them consistent if I select who I would like to play them, if the book were turned into a movie.  So here is who I imagine the main characters look like:

Dina Meyer as Catherine ‘Cat’ Webb. In addition to acting in countless movies on the SyFy Channel, Cat Webb starred in the old sci-fi TV series, Radiant Angel, where she played Samantha Wingate, a private eye with secret unearthly gifts. Now, with the series barely more than a faded memory, she spends part of her free time on the comic book convention circuit signing autographs and doing photo ops – like many other B-list genre actors. One day, while attending the Dallas Con, her life takes an unexpected turn into the secret world of Mad Scientists.

Guy Pearce as Will Carlson. At first glance, Will appears to be nothing more than a meek, somewhat nerdy, guy who would be most at home driving a computer terminal at some high tech firm. But Will has a big secret, he is a long time member of what is euphemistically referred to as the Mad Scientist Club. Born in 995 A.D. and one of the last warrior-priests in the old Norse religion, he was given, at the age of 46, the Elixir of Life upon being inducted into The Society of the Great and Noble Descendants of Lemuria, Sarmat, Rama, Osiri, Uiger, Aroi, Tiahuanaco, and Atlantis. Now, Will operates out of his secret citadel buried far beneath the city of Fort Worth, Texas, where he experiments on whatever interests him at the moment, and occasionally, when the need arises, saves the world.

Olivia Wilde as Danielle Manford. Elle, as she is known to her friends and closest associates, is a member of the secret Society’s High Council. And of all the members of the High Council, her past is the most shrouded in mystery. She is rumored to be the famous alchemist from antiquity, Mary the Jewess. Other even more obsure stories hinted she had originally been Mariam, sister of the prophets Moses and Aaron. But now, regardless of her true origins, Elle is THE premier genetic engineer on the planet being the first person to successfully resurrect long extinct dinosaurs as well as endowing enhanced cats with the ability to speak. The expertise and skills acquired over her thousands of years of life will be put to the test if the world is to be saved from the machinations of The Alexander Alliance, the Society’s and her personal long-time nemeses. However Catherine can’t help but wonder about Elle’s relationship with Will after the countless adventures the two Mad Scientists have shared over the last ten centuries.

Matt Bomer as Benjamin Franklin. Ben, the first American-born member of the Society, has spent most of the last two centuries as the Society’s main troubleshooter. Along with Will and Elle, he will have his work cut out for him this time, as the Alexander Alliance’s plot to gain control of the world has left the thirty-four largest American cities, including his beloved Philadelphia, nothing more than radioactive ruins after the detonation of a series of powerful anti-matter bombs. The highly restricted time displacement equipment, which hasn’t been used since one of the Alliance’s prior plots allowed the Nazis to win the second World War, will once more have to be called into play.

John Coo as Zhage Liang. Liang, the foremost strategist in recorded history, was born in China in the 2nd century. Figuring out a solution to the current crisis will fall on his shoulders and his ultimate invention, the Probability Engine. Like some steampunk design run wild, the gigantic three hundred by three hundred by three hundred foot cube-shaped device filled with billions of moving parts will spit out the most probably solution to any question. And this time the solution may lead to secret Society and Alliance enclaves located on Luna, Mercury, Venus, Mars, or the satellites circling the mighty Gas Giants.

Rami Malek as Imhotep. Imhotep, the Head of the Society’s High Council, is, while looking a youthful twenty-five, the oldest living member of the Society. An ancient Egyptian Visier and High Priest, he oversaw the construction of the first of the great pyramids almost 4700 years ago.

Elijah Wood as Leonardo Da Vinci. Da Vinci, the greatest creative genius of this millenia, doesn’t often emerge from his secret laboratories. But the consequences of the current crisis are so profound, even he might not be able to sit quietly on the sidelines.

Henry Cavill as Alexander the Great. Alexander had long ago been an honored member of the Society’s High Council. But he always felt with their superior mental and physical gifts, the Society should rule the world. When the majority of the Council balked at his plan, he attempted to conquer the world by force of arms. As a result, for almost 2500 years Alexander and his followers have been in a state of war with the Society.

Alice Greczyn as Cleopatra. With her incredible youth and beauty, no one would ever suspect Cleo is THE CLEOPATRA, the two thousand-year-old former lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. A descendant of Alexander, she is a long time member of the Alliance. And her path has crossed with Will and Elle and other members of the Society many times before. She owes Will a major favor after he saved her life when she secretly stowed away on the first flight to the Moon in 1865, which was launched using a giant cannon hidden within Mount Kilimajaro in the heart of Africa. And Cat may have to collect on this almost forgotten debt, if she is to survive after being captured by The Alliance.

Royalty Gene – a new Vampire Diaries Novel now available at Amazon

Update 7/31/2014

Royalty Gene is NOW available at Amazon!

Royalty Gene is a sequel to Dark Awakening. Since Dark Awakening sold more copies in the first three months than any of my other stories had to date, it seemed like a sequel was the smartest thing to do next.

In thinking about what to do with a sequel, I remembered one of the subplots I had developed for my fanfiction story Elena’s Revenge. In it, I had given Prince Harry supernatural gifts. I didn’t do much with them, but I had developed an interesting backstory of how the English royal family could have acquired them that tied into the origins of the vampires in the Vampire Diaries mythology. So I decided to reuse this backstory, but change the protagonist from the contemporary Prince Harry to a royal family further back in time.

Since Dark Awakenings was set in 1492, I wanted the next story to be set somewhere in the 1500s. In researching the English monarchy in that time frame, I decided 1554 might be interesting. The famous Queen Elizabeth I was 20 years old at that time, making her roughly the same age as the perpetually 19 year old Katerina. She wouldn’t be crowned queen for another five years so she would have been Princess Elizabeth in 1554. Her half-brother, King Edward VI, had died the previous year at the age of 15. Her half-sister, Queen Mary I, was the current ruler.

This was a period of bitter relations in England between Catholics and Protestants. King Henry VIII, the father of Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, had created the Protestant Church of England. Edward and Elizabeth were also Protestant, but Mary was a devout Catholic. Because of their religious differences, Elizabeth spent most of 1554 under arrest first in the Tower of London and later at Woodstock Palace about 50 miles west of London. And Mary prosecuted most Protestant leaders during this time period with over 280 being burned at the stake during her reign. Many historians don’t understand why Mary didn’t also have Elizabeth killed to ensure the monarchy would stay catholic. Certainly other members of the royal family, including Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, had been executed using pretty flimsy justifications.

After thinking about it a little, I decided this could all be worked into a story to give the fiction an extra hint of reality. If the royal family had supernatural gifts, perhaps Elizabeth being under house arrest was simply a ruse to give her freedom of movement to do her supernatural duties. And perhaps Mary didn’t have Elizabeth executed because their special gift made it impossible.

Since vampires and werewolves are naturally dark creatures, it seems like the Vampire Diaries world needs some positive force to keep them in check. So the English royal family is sort of my version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I decided to change up their gifts relative to Buffy to be more consistent with the mythology of the Vampire Diaries series. So in addition to having enhanced strength and speed relative to a normal human, the royals also have the ability to compel similar to what vampires have except their gift works on vampires and werewolves, as well as humans. Their gift had made them a nearly unstoppable force in the past, which is why there were few vampires in England. However werewolves were still a problem as they had always been so numerous and made converts so fast, it had been impossible for the handful of royals to ever completely wipe them out.

I didn’t have all the details worked out when I started writing the story, but enough was clear in my head to convince me I could do an interesting story if I chose 1554 as the setting.

Therefore I decided to have Katerina return to England in 1554 and have her get caught up in a long simmering war between the Royals and the werewolves which was about to blaze hot again.

Dark Awakening, Katerina’s origin story, had been all about vampires. This sequel is largely about her dealings with werewolves. I hate to just repeat myself, so if I were to do a third story in this series, I would prefer to add some other mythical creatures to continue to make the stories fresh and interesting. As I was writing Royalty Gene, I was already thinking about setting the next story in Samurai Japan of the early 1600s. And one day the story title ‘Dragons of Nippon’ popped into my head. A story involving Katerina and dragons seemed like it might be fun, so I decided to work a little about dragons into this current story to set the stage. It isn’t clear what exactly killed King Edward VI, other than it was some slow lingering lung disease. So I decided I could work that into the plot too. What if he and Elizabeth battled a dragon and his lungs had been scorched by dragon fire and that was what had killed him? This didn’t bring Katerina into direct contact with dragons yet, but having Elizabeth relate this story to her would be an interesting way of introducing them into my version of the Vampire Diaries mythology for use in the future.

I view the previous story, Dark Awakening, as a dark romance where Katerina falls in love, but ultimately kills the man she loves. Royalty Gene falls more in the straight up action-adventure genre. I think it is a lot of fun. Hopefully, others will, too.

I think this story stands on its own and can be read and enjoyed even if you have never seen an episode of the TV series.

Note: The link above will take you to Amazon where you can buy the book.  And, as with all Kindle books, once you are there you have the option to read the first 10% for FREE to help you decide if you want to buy.

 

Dark Awakening a Vampire Diaries Novella is now available in Amazon’s Kindle Worlds

Update 11/2/2013

Dark Awakening is NOW available at Amazon!

Amazon added a new category back in June called Kindle Worlds, where people can do stories based on a small select group of existing works.  It seemed like doing a story in one of these categories might get my works more visibility than doing totally original stories where the story ends up being just one of millions available on Amazon.

Of the currently available categories in Kindle Worlds, the one I was most familiar with and that I found interesting enough to try a story was Vampire Diaries.  Tons of people are doing your typical Elena/Stefan/Damon stories and I wanted to try something a little different.  And setting it in present day might quickly feel dated as the storyline on the TV show would doubtlessly head in some unforeseen direction.  So I decided maybe something set in the distant past would work better.  I have done a number of things set in the distant past before, but they have mostly been time-travel stories where you have a contemporary protagonist which allows you to mix in modern references.  Therefore setting a story entirely in the past presented some interesting writing challenges.

Way back in the first or second season of the TV show, they did a flashback of Katerina becoming a vampire in 1492.  But then they never told much of her story until she shows up in Mystic Falls in 1864.  So there seemed to be potential for many stories in that nearly 400 year span.  I decided I might as well start at the very beginning, so this story starts on the night Katerina is turned and then covers her life over roughly the next three weeks.

I tweaked the basic story just a little to make this story work better.  In this story, Katerina is not yet the dark character she will be on her arrival in Mystic Falls.  I pictured her being much closer to Elena in personality when she was first turned and it was only over the following centuries that her life as a vampire turned her dark.  So when she killed herself in the cabin, she really expected to die and never expected to awake up as a vampire.

And, at least in the beginning, Katerina discovered being a vampire was not a glorious existence.  It was hard and she was forced to do terrible things to survive she never would have dreamed she could do when she had still been human.  Plus, since she was running for her life from the moment she awoke, no one had explained any of the strengths or weakness of being a vampire and she was forced to figure them out as she went along.  Slowly, she learned how to cope and even thrive until she was once again sucked into a world of dark magic and demonic powers.

I think this story stands on its own and can be read and enjoyed even if you have never seen an episode of the TV series.

 

Felecity’s Secret

Arrow is probably my favorite new show of the 2012-2013 season.  Although I think it would have been a lot more fun, if they didn’t have the silly restriction of ‘no superpowers’.  Why can’t these shows ever give the audience what they really want?  First, Smallville had their idiotic ‘no flights, no tights’ rule.  And now Arrow has their ‘no superpowers’ rule.  So, in the end it is up to us in the world of fanfiction to do the stories we really want to see.

My favorite character on ‘Arrow’ is Felicity.  I love her feistiness.  Anyway, I was thinking, if I was going to do an ‘Arrow’ story it had to involve superpowers.  And I wanted to have Felicity at the center of things.  So I decided it would be the most fun if Felicity had superpowers.  Blonde hair, glasses, the obvious choice was to make her Supergirl and have her living incognito in Starling City.

So far I have seven chapters of this story done and we have had appearances by Supergirl, Superman, Oracle, and Green Lantern.  Superman has been out in the world for about 12 years and the JLA has been in existence for most of that time.  Felicity/Supergirl is 24 and has been on Earth for ten years.

Of course, like most other people, I ship Felicity/Oliver.  In this story, Felicity has it bad for Oliver, but is afraid if he learns her secret, it will scare him away.  So she is trying to hide her gifts, but situations keep arising where she has to use them.

If you found this intriguing enough to want to read the story, you can get to the beginning of it by clicking here.

Coolest Website if you are looking to design Pulp-style Cover Art!

Found this really cool website to design your own pulp-style cover art call the Pulp-o-Mizer.  I love what you can do with just a few minutes work.  If you scroll down this page, you can see a few samples I have created for some of my fanfiction including: Chuck vs LuthorCorp, Kandor, Origins, Biological Families, and The Portal.

Florentine Dragons

This story is a sequel to Teleporter Girl; however it can be read as a standalone story without reading the other one first.

This is a story of a group of high school girls with superpowers living in Jefferson, a small town in southern Minnesota.  At the age of four, when they were all attending the Thatchwood pre-school, an experimental chemical was accidentally released from a nearby biotech firm.  The resulting cloud drifted over the pre-school building killing all three adults present and leaving the girls forever changed.

Their families each carefully hid their daughter’s special abilities in fear that if they were found out, their daughters would be taken away.  Therefore it wasn’t until they were sophomores in high school that they became aware of each other’s existence.

Superpowers should make their lives more fun and easy.  But the danger always exists that if they are caught using their powers, they may be dragged away and caged up like lab rats.  But weird, almost unbelievable things are going on and only they, through the combined use of their gifts, may be able to prevent bad things from happening to the world.

It appears their old nemesis, Professor Amundsen, and his associates may be trying to bring back dinosaurs.  And based on his previous cavalier attitude towards public safety, a lot of people could be hurt or killed if they don’t figure out what he is doing and how to stop him.

And they can’t forget the old Indian prophecy, verified by talking to the ghost of a long dead shaman, which says they will travel back to the distant past to save the world.

As result, it sometimes feels like their superpowers don’t leave them time for the mundane, but important things in life like homework, afterschool jobs, or most importantly – boys.

+ + +

I have been puttering along on this story for at least eighteen months.  I write 20 or 30 pages and then set it aside for a few months before writing another 20 or 30 pages.  At this point I have about 180 pages done  and have finally reached the heart of the story where the girls have arrived in 15^th century Florence, but it still has a long ways to go – probably at least another 180 pages.  So I thought perhaps if I did some bios for the main girls and selected some actresses who could play them, it might improve my motivation to stick with it and get the story finished up.

It turned out to be a lot harder to figure out the most appropriate actresses for this one than the other stories I am working on, mainly because I discovered I’m not familiar with that many teenaged actresses.  Lots of shows set in high school (Pretty Little Liars and Vampires Diaries come immediately to mind) use actors in their mid to upper twenties.  Since the girls in this story are all sixteen year old sophomores, I really wanted to come up with actresses who are still in their teens to really look like they are sixteen.  Anyway, the actresses below are ones who I am at least vaguely familiar with and who look at least something like the characters in my head.

Elle Fanning (Super 8) as Mackenzie Thomas.

Superpower: Teleportation

Mack can teleport herself and up to two others anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye.  Until her 16^th birthday she had never used her gift to travel further than the 90 miles to Minneapolis.  But on that day she traveled all the way to Paris and ended up saving the young son of the head of the Cadeaux Magiques Fashion House.  As a result of that encounter, and coupled with her stunning beauty, she has started a secret modeling career in Europe.

McKaley Miller (Hart of Dixie) as Gracie Denton.

Superpower: Can speak with Ghosts

Unlike in the movies where ghosts are usually rare creatures that only exist when someone dies with serious unresolved issues, in reality everyone becomes a ghost when they die and Gracie (and anyone touching her) is the only one who can see and talk to them.  These literally billions of allies on the other side prove invaluable at collecting intel for the girls when needed.

Skyler Samuels (The Nine Lives of Chloe King) as Alexandra Pearce.

Superpower: Immortality

Alex is the only one of the girls who didn’t receive her special gifts as a result of the chemical spill at the Thatchwood pre-school when they were all four years old.  Instead, Alexandra is the sole survivor of a high-tech civilization that existed 17,000 years ago right at the beginning of the last Ice Age.  A ‘gray goo’ nanotech accident wiped out all the processed metal in the world destroying that civilization and the ensuing Ice Age then removed all traces of its existence.  In the final hours, Alex’s father, one of the leading nanotech engineers, injected her with experimental nanomachines to help her survive during the civilization’s collapse, however neither of them realized at the time that these nanomachines would almost instantly heal any injury, give her computer-like mental powers, and keep her forever looking sixteen.  The downside of forever looking sixteen is that she can never stay in one place for more than ten years without people noticing she doesn’t age.  On the surface, it appears to be a simple coincidence that she was living in Jefferson pretending to be sixteen at the same time as all the other girls turned sixteen, but unsuspected forces may have been involved.

Kara Haywood (Moonrise Kingdom) as Danielle Scott

Superpower: Telekinesis

Danni can move any object or any combination of things up to 256 pounds through the power of her mind.  In addition to moving objects, her gift also gives her the ability to fly (along with another person, if they aren’t too heavy).  Like most of the other girls, she never knew others with superpowers existed until she was a sophomore at Jefferson High.

Molly Quinn (Castle) as Molly ‘Jacks’ Jackson

Superpower: Able to instantly understand, read, and speak any language

Jacks’ father, a minister, intended to announce his daughter’s gift when she turned sixteen.  The ghost of her great grandmother warned Gracie that all of the girls’ secrets were at risk if the announcement was made.  This was the impetus for Mack, Gracie, and Alex to get into contact with the other girls so they could band together to protect their secret.  Jacks has joined the other girls, but based on her highly religious upbringing still believes her special gift is from God and has a secret personal agenda to use their combination of unique abilities to verify the facts and events described in the bible.

Jennifer Stone (Wizards of Waverly Place) as Jill ‘Charlie’ Munroe

Superpower: Sees the patterns that surround every living and inanimate object

Charlie sees patterns in everything.  Occasionally, she gets flashes of insight that allow her to convert this knowledge into useful devices.  The most useful to date are a ‘scrying’ glass made from an assembly of wood, glass and stone that allow the user to see anyone in the world who they concentrate on, and a translating bracelet that allows the user to speak and understand any language.   She has attempted to give herself other superpowers through special tattoos, but these have had only limited success.  Along with her divorced Mom, she is addicted to historical romance novels.

Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) as Sara Gettinger

Superpower: Able to bend light and sound around her body to appear as anyone or anything she chooses

Sara attended the Thatchwood pre-school with the other girls, but then at the age of seven her family moved from Jefferson to Red Wing, Minnesota.  She is one-half Native American and her father revealed her secret to the Sioux tribal council.  However they believe she truly transforms into creatures like wolves and bears like the ‘skinwalkers’ of legend.  They don’t know Sara really only bends light and sound without physically transforming and that she can just as easily make herself look like other people in addition to animals.  Mack first became aware of Sara when she had to reveal her gift to the tribal elders to get their help in finding a long lost Indian cure.  As a result of Mack’s conversations with the elders, it appears the girls may be part of an ancient Indian prophecy and that time travel to the 15^th century may lay in their future.

 

Annasophia Robb (The Carrie Diaries) as Gail Barrett

Superpower: Ghost

Gail, who died in a drinking related car crash in 1957, is Gracie’s best friend among the world of ghosts and her de facto liaison with many others.  Like all ghosts, she is incredibly beautiful – forever looking like her dream version of herself.  Also like all ghosts she can’t stray more than ten miles from her final resting place – forever trapping her in Jefferson.  Through another aspect of Gracie’s unique gift for communicating with ghosts, she can make Gail look solid and alive for up to one hour at a time.

+ + +

Since this story includes time travel, conversations with long dead ghosts, and Alexandra’s incredible long life, I have put together the following timeline of what is currently known to help keep everything straight and consistent.

Distance   from the present (years)	Date	Important   Historical Dates and currently known facts about Alexandra’s prior life.
0	2013 AD	Present
30	1980s	Alexandra   lives in Australia under name Elizabeth Penworth
120	1890s	Alexandra   is Lady Chatsworth in England
	1430-1440 AD	Timeframe   when the girls are supposed to travel into the past according to the Indian   Legends and conversations with the ghost of the Sioux shaman Screeching   Crow.  However apparently someone lost   count and the actual date appears to be 10-15 years earlier
595	1418 AD	Alexandra   is living in Florence under name Giovanna degli Bicci married to Rinaldo di   Onofrio Strozzi.  Arrived two years   earlier from Rome.  Maid’s name   Alessandra (portly girl with dark hair and dark complexion from Naples or   Sicily)
636	1377 – 1383 AD	Alexandra   arrives in Florence in 1377 from Verona under name Lucia della Scalla as   bride of Francesco di Bicci.  Lives in   Florence until 1383 when they and their two children (Polissena and Tommaso)   moved to Avignon, France for his uncle’s bank.  Maid’s name is Maria (fair hair and   skin).  Maria dies in Avignon in 1387   at age of 24 from plague.
1400	600 AD	Alexandra   was Alessandra, Duchess of Brescia, in northern Italy.  At odds with Queen Theolinda of the   Lombards (Queen from 588 to 616 AD)
2850	833 BC	Alexandra   rules the Olmec Empire in South America (source of the El Dorado legend)
3260	1250 BC	Alexandra   participates in the Trojan Wars (on the side of Troy) under the name Ainia   with her two Amazonian friends Ioxeia and Pharetre (both killed in battle)
4500	2500 BC	The   height of the first Ancient Egyptian Empire.    The Great Pyramids are built
7000	5000 BC	Alexandra   lives in a Polynesian culture in the South Pacific
8000	6000 BC	Noah’s   flood.  Deluge refills Black Sea in   matter of days
8150	6150 – 6100 BC	End   of Ice Age, Mediterranean refills over fifty years, Fall of Atlantis
8150-8950	6950 – 6150 BC	Time   of the Atlantis Empire.  Centered in   the eastern Mediterranean.  Technology   reaches levels equivalent to Victorian England (steam trains, gas lights,   telegraphs and limited electricity)
10300	8300-7900 BC	Alexandra   rules an unnamed empire covering most of the Eurasian continent south of the Great Northern Ice Cap.  Thinks she is a god. The Great Sphinx is   created.
12000	10000 BC	Time   of the Lemurian Empire.  Centered in   South America. Eloise Dubois, the head of the Cadeaux Magiques Fashion House,   is overheard to be speaking in the long dead language of this Empire.
17000	15000 BC	Fall   of Alexandra’s original civilization due to ‘gray goo’ nanotech   accident.  Start of the Ice Age.

I would really appreciate any feedback you would like to provide, if you chose to read this first portion of the story, feel free to leave a comment.

Thanks, Duane

Get an autograph for one of my books!

The other day one of my friends said he wished there was a way I could autograph one of my kindle books like you could with a real book.  Today I found a link to a site that does the next best thing.  Authorgraph will let you request an autograph and then I can send, straight to your kindle, a file with the cover image of the book, a personalized message, and an autograph like is shown above.  It doesn’t directly attach to the book file, but if you are into collecting autographs, you can set up a collection folder on your kindle just for the autographs.  So, as I said, not quite like an autographed copy of the book, but as close as is possible for the present.

Go to Authorgraph to request an autograph for one of my books (or you can also order the books from there)

Elena’s Revenge: Vampire Diaries – Primeval cross-over fanfiction story

Update 5/11/2012

At the moment I have 29 chapters of this story written. I’ve decided if I post three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) this is enough to last for 10 weeks or until the middle of July. Since it took about 10 weeks to write these first 29 chapters, hopefully, this is enough of a lead to get the rest of the story finished before I run out of chapters. The story feels more than halfway finished at this point, so unless I get a big brainstorm of something new and cool to add, it should be done in maybe 15-20 more chapters. If it does run that long, it should be enough to keep posting almost until the start of the new season of Vampire Diaries. It would be cool if I could start posting the day after the end of the third season and end right at the beginning of the four season. It would be almost like my story was a missing season of the show!

Since you have gone to the bother of visiting this blog, I guess I could throw out a few hints of things that are coming in the story as a little bonus for your effort. First, since this is a time-travel story, people who are dead can be visited in the past. On the Vampire Diaries side, we get to visit my personal favorite guest star. This character was killed during the first season and then was in a flashback episode in season two. On the Primeval side, a couple of characters killed off in the third season will make a reappearance.

Let’s see, what else? How about a hint of things to come on the action side? Well, since Bonnie has made several references to her family getting caught up in the Salem Witch Trials and the survivors then moving to Mystic Falls, we will get to see a little of the story behind these events. And on the Primeval side, the crew will end up in a life-and-death struggle against the future predators that will ultimately engulf the British Royal Family, too.

And of course, what would a Vampire Diaries story be without some Elena-Stefan-Damon angst? I’m afraid it will be a fairly long wait until Stefan and Damon make their appearance in this story. And when they do finally show up, they won’t be the familiar characters from the TV show. If you asked Elena whether she would prefer a vampire Stefan or a human Stefan, I think she would chose a human Stefan. And since she now sort of has access to time travel, it seems perfectly logical she would just use time travel to go back before Stefan is turned. I think modern-day Elena’s trip back to 1864 Mystic Falls is going to be one of the best parts of this story!

Anyway, if you found this page other than from my link within the story, and you found this intriguing enough to want to read the story, you can get to the beginning of it by clicking here.

Oh, and the illustration above is my first quick stab at a piece of cover art for this story.  If anyone, who has more photoshopping skills than me, would like to do another one, I will be happy to stick it up here.  (Perhaps one with more of the characters from the story like Caroline, Bonnie, Abby, Jess and maybe even a giant dinosaur?)  If so, drop me a message.

Duane

The Trans-Atomic Era

Update 12/1/2012

The first four episodes are NOW available at Amazon!

+ + + + + + + + + + +

Author’s Note (included as part of the description for each episode):

I have always loved the classic ‘Golden Age’ style of Science Fiction where the main characters were heroes, the storylines were fun and upbeat, and ‘Big Science’ was optimistically used to solve problems rather than cause them. I have a hard time finding very many people writing in this style these days, so I decided to do my own adventure in this old school style.

This series is inspired in part by the old Republic movie serials ‘King of the Rocket Men’, ‘Radar Men from the Moon’, and ‘Zombies of the Stratosphere’ and uses some similar technological devices like rocket planes and jetpacks. I have moved the time frame from the early 1950’s to 1936 because I thought adding Nazis to the mix would be fun. (Hmm, should Nazis and fun really be used in the same sentence?)

In keeping with the movie serial concept, where each episode ran about ten minutes and ended with a cliffhanger, I have decided to do something similar here. Each episode of this story runs about 100 pages and ends in some kind of a cliffhanger.

As I was writing the second and third episodes, I began to realize I really like this format. It seems like lately I have been buying lots of books that run 400-500 pages, but a lot of that just feels like filler. Frequently, I end up getting bored and give up after only reading the first 100-150 pages. However with this format, I am forced to come up with something interesting every 100 pages to convince the reader to stick with the story for another episode – so the story is forced to move along at a brisk pace. Hopefully readers will come to like this style, too.

Have a great day, Duane

Special Note: These ebooks do NOT have DRM.  Hopefully this will help if you need to convert the file to ePUB or some other format to be compatible with your preferred reader.

+ + + + + + + + + + +

The Trans-Atomic Era – Episode 1: Aerial Warships – The year is 1936 and it has been ten years since the extremely high energy trans-atomic elements were discovered. The first practical applications like trans-atomic powered ships and trains are beginning to roll out.

Margaret ‘Stoney’ Stonehaven, the head of Stonehaven Industries, a ship and aircraft manufacturer based in Long Beach, California, has just arrived in England for the annual running of the Stewart Cup Air Race with her new trans-atomic powered craft, Shooting Star. She is expecting an easy victory until the Nazis show up with a trans-atomic powered entry of their own.

However with race day still almost a week away, Stoney receives an urgent message from President Roosevelt. Mysterious flying men have attacked the American Embassy in La Paz, Bolivia and kidnapped the Ambassador. The President needs Stoney to investigate. Ever since her college days at Stanford shortly after the Great War, Stoney has been an occasional special operative for the clandestine arm of Stanford’s Hoover Institute, which does assignments for the President that can’t be publically acknowledged. So when the President tells her to jump, all Stoney can ask is ‘How high?’

Therefore Stoney takes Shooting Star and a small team to Bolivia where they discover an unknown adversary with technology and weapons more powerful than they had ever imagined.

The Trans-Atomic Era – Episode2: Have Jetpack, Will Travel– As a result of her first disastrous encounter with the mysterious adversaries, Stoney and her team have been stranded in the hinterlands of Bolivia. Their only hope to make it back to civilization? Break out the jetpacks!

With the aid of her unexpected Nazi allies, Stoney races back to Europe in search of clues to who is behind their unknown adversaries. Because with weapons like the Great War era battleship that has been converted to fly through the power of trans-atomics, this foe can strike anywhere in the world with impunity.

But with an agenda of their own, the opposition is not sitting still and their path will once again collide with Stoney in the skies over Paris.

The Trans-Atomic Era – Episode 3: Empress of the Sky  – Stoney has been captured and taken to the adversaries’ remarkable city-sized flying flagship. While there, Stoney will finally learn the identity of their leader and of her plans to create the ultimate trans-atomic weapon.

Meanwhile Stoney’s compatriots are forced to battle on without her. And a battle it is, as their adversary unexpectedly attacks a major U.S. city. Now it is a race to round up sufficient resources between the Americans, the British, and the Nazis to defeat this seemingly unstoppable foe.

The Trans-Atomic Era – Episode 4: The Moon or Bust – A terse, cryptic message from Stoney sends Sam and Horst in pursuit of the enemy’s elusive city-sized flying flagship. The message also accelerates President Roosevelt’s schedule for retaking Manhattan resulting in a rushed plan the new, hurriedly finished, completely untested American, British, and Nazi flying warships might not successfully implement against the enemy’s more experienced forces.

In the end, it may be up to Dr. Dorothy ‘Dot’ Lang, the brilliant young engineer behind Stonehaven Industries’ revolutionary Jetpack, and her newly recruited team of Army Aviators to save the day. However this first foray out of her lab and into actual combat will test her in ways complex design problems never had.

Meanwhile, Stoney is still being held captive by the Empress of the Sky. They are aboard the Empress’ personal rocketship on their way to her secret moonbase where the Empress will deliver a revelation that turns everything Stoney thought she knew on its head. The dangers to America and the rest of the world may be far greater and far stranger than she ever imagined.

+ + + + + + + + + + +

Coming Soon – Episode 5: Mermen of Neptune

+ + + + + + + + + + +

Update 12/4/2011

To help me picture in my head the characters as I write (and, frankly, to dream a little about this story someday being turned into a big budget movie), I’ve picked out the following actors who I think could play the main characters:

Jeri Ryan as Margaret ‘Stoney’ Stonehaven (38).  Together with her younger brother, Tommy, Stoney runs Stonehaven Industries, a ship and aircraft manufacturer based out of Long Beach, California.  A graduate of Stanford, she is an occasional agent of a clandestine branch of the Hoover Institute, which handles special secret projects for the President.  In her spare time, she is a world class airplane racer.

Katee Sackhoff as Samantha ‘Sam’ Anderson (36). Sam is Stoney’s chief mechanic and best friend.  The two women met in France during the closing months of the Great War on the day Sam lost her hearing while working as an ambulance driver at the Front.

Tim Olyphant as Truman Cartwright (34). Truman, a Major in the U.S. Army, is the military attache at the American Embassy in London.  The second son of the richest landowner in Georgia, he stands to inherit nothing except a generous allowance.  A gentleman officer, he joined the Army and attended West Point to travel and see the world.

Aaron Eckhart as Horst Eckmann (41). Horst, a Colonel in the German Luftwaffe, is a veteran of the Great War.  With the virtual elimination of the German Air Force after the war as a result of the terms of the Versailles Treaty, Horst spent a dozen years flying for the Bolivian Air Force.  In late 1934 he returned to the Luftwaffe as the chief pilot of their experimental trans-atomic flight test program.

Rhona Mitra as Ruth Nichols (37). Ruth, a charter member of ‘The ninety-nines’ the first 99 licensed female pilots in the U.S., is an old flying friend of Stoney’s.  The two women spent a large portion of the 1920’s barnstorming before Stoney was forced to take over her father’s company on his death.  Now, Ruth is the chief test pilot for Stonehaven Industries.

Nina Dobrev as Dorothy ‘Dot’ Lang (26). Dot is the brilliant young lead engineer on Stonehaven Industries’ Jetpack design team.  A geeky engineer at heart, she doesn’t fully appreciate her true beauty and its effect on men.

Cate Blanchett as Empress Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova (34). Anastasia is the sole survivor of the July 1918 massacre of Tsar Nicholaus and his family.  She is the leader of the White Russian forces opposing the Bolsheviks.  She holds the secret to the origins of the trans-atomic elements.

Lyndsy Fonseca as Countess Larisa Andreevna Dubroskaya (21). Larisa, a Lieutenant in the White Russian military, is a Countess in name only until the Bolsheviks are forced out of power.  She acts as an aide to Empress Anastasia aboard the Imperator Nicholas, the trans-atomic powered flying flagship of the White Russian military.

Josh Brolin as Count Kirill Poluektovich Naryshkin (38). Kirill is the Field Marshall of the White Russian Forces and the Empress’ right hand man, but he harbors a secret agenda, which may be the Empress’ undoing.

Keri Russell as Doctor Professor Irene Joliot-Curie (38).  Irene, a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry for her work in developing new trans-atomic elements, is the daughter of Marie Curie, two-time winner of the Nobel in Physics and Chemistry.  Stoney met Irene on her first day in Paris during the Great War and they became life long friends.  Now, Irene, the mother of two small children, is the head of the Curie Institute in Paris.

+ + + + + + + + + + +

If you would like to to contact me, please leave a comment.

Start of a second new series – Teleporter Girl

Update 5/10/2012

Teleporter Girl is NOW available at Amazon!

Teleportation (n) – The ability to move instantly from one location to another.

Mackenzie Thomas, a high school sophomore in the small town of Jefferson, Minnesota, has a big secret.  She’s tall, she’s blonde, she looks like a Scandinavian supermodel, but those aren’t Mack’s big secret.  No, her big secret is her ability to teleport; a gift she has had for as long as she can remember.  In the past, she has never ventured further than simple excursions to nearby Minneapolis, but now, on her sixteenth birthday, she teleports all the way to Paris – initiating a chain of events resulting in the most intense week of her life.

Mack will discover clues to the source of her unique teleportation ability and how the same long ago event is also responsible for her best friend Gracie Denton’s equally unusual gifts.  For Gracie can see and interact with shades.  And before the week is over, they will need the aid of these nearly countless invisible allies.

While uncovering the source of their special talents, Mack and Gracie learn they are not alone, as they have always believed.  Almost two dozen of their classmates may secretly possess similar miraculous mental and physical abilities.

Meanwhile, a mysterious illness is striking Jefferson’s citizens.  As Mack and Gracie race around the globe in search of a cure, they must also determine the identities of these other girls.  For only by combining their gifts and working as a team will they be able to locate the formula for a long lost antidote and acquire the crucial ingredients.

As secret after unexpected secret is revealed during their quest, Mack will discover her destiny is greater than she had ever imagined.  For this girl of Jefferson, life will never be the same.

Volturi’s Bane – a Bionic Woman/Twilight Crossover Story

Here is one of my ‘works in progress’. Volturi’s Bane is a Bionic Woman and Twilight Crossover Story. On the Twilight side it takes place shortly after the end of the third book for a couple of reasons. First, I haven’t yet read the fourth book. Second, I wanted to explore a different path for the Bella/Edward relationship starting before they get married.

On the Bionic Woman side, this story is based on the recent 2007 version of the TV show rather than the classic show of the 1970s. I found some of the computer augmentations they gave Jaime in the more recent series interesting and wanted to explore them a little more.

With the Bionic Woman’s speed, strength, enhanced vision, and hearing, she seems to be on same playing field as the vampires and werewolves of the Twilight books, so I thought she would be a good match and mixing her in might lead to an interesting story.

of course, I’m not going to just throw Jaime Sommers into the story with no rhyme or reason. Plus I thought it would be more interesting if klutzy Bella has a bad accident and has to be ‘upgraded’ to save her life. Now, with her having speed and strength of a vampire or a wolf, it changes the whole dynamics of the basic story, which is something I like to explore in most of my stories.

And to add another layer to the story, I have included Jaime’s little sister Becca in the mix. Now in the Bionic Woman TV show, they never gave Becca much interesting to do, so I have decided to change that. In my story she is this budding MAD SCIENTIST. Okay, she’s not out to conquer the world, but she is building this crazy bad-ass robot. Also, as in the original unaired pilot, Becca is deaf in this story.

This story is told in a first person style from Bella’s perspective, like in the books. However, while she isn’t in every scene, probably the key character is Alice. I find the concept of someone being able to see into the future an interesting concept to explore. At least in this story, she uses her ability to orchestra things and force a future she wants, which is something I never saw happen much in the original books.

If this sounds interesting, the first four chapters are available here.

And if you would like to discuss any aspects of this story, leave a comment here.

What I’m currently writing. . . .

Updated 9/16/2010 — I am currently working on a sequel to my first Covert Affairs – Highlander cross-over story. I haven’t decided what to call it yet, as I’m just getting started and working on intertwining the events of the season 1 finale into my storyline before heading off in a new direction. If you would like to check out what I have written so far, click here.

And as always, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please leave a comment.

We’ll Always have Paris

Now Complete — ‘We’ll Always Have Paris’ is a crossover between Covert Affairs from the USA Network and Highlander. Annie, Auggie, and the rest of their team are in Paris on a mission when Annie’s life takes a 180 degree turn.

With this story, I tried a different style with a lot of little chapters instead of a few longer chapters with the goal of posting a new chapter every day until the story is done. In the end I posted 15 chapters in 15 days. I’m not sure if I will try this style again or just revert back to my normal mode of an occasional longer chapter. From the comments I received, people seemed to enjoy getting something new every day, but it got to be a grind towards the end having to work on it every single day. Plus it felt a lot more ‘choppy’ than my regular style.

If you would like to check it out, the story begins here.

A place to read my ‘Chapters in Progress’ and discuss my various stories

Hi,

I started a ‘Chapter in Progress’ page several years ago for a couple of reasons. First, I like to do long chapters of 10,000 words or more, so when you get a new chapter from me you will know you have a nice long read that tells its own portion of the overall story. Of course, the downside of long chapters is that they also take a long time to write. Therefore for the people who don’t mind getting the new chapter in smaller chunks, they can find it here. Secondly, I thought some people might find my creative process interesting. To help you follow how a chapter evolves during its development, you can use the ‘track changes’ function in Word. With this function turned on, the most recent changes I have made will be highlighted in a different color like red. Generally, I write in a very linear fashion from the beginning to the end of the chapter. But lots of time I proofread the last couple of days worth of writing to clean up typos and tweak sentences that just don’t flow right. I do occasionally go back and make more extensive changes when some new idea which will greatly improve the story occurs to me.

I have had a different version of this ‘Chapter in Progress’ page up for several years. During that time people have sent me e-mails asking questions or making suggestions for changes. I decided others might also be interested in these on-going conversations. So I have decided to redo my ‘Chapter in Progress’ page into a more blog-like format. This way it will be easier to have a more dialog-oriented discussion.

If you have comments of a general nature, or if you just feel a need to kick me to be more prolific, post them here. If your comments are more specific to a particular story, you can post them in the appropriate entry below.

I hope you find this site interesting,

Duane

Chuck versus LuthorCorp

November 4, 2009

Here is one of my current ‘works in progress’ (hmm, I do seem to have a lot of ‘works’ in progress at the moment!).  Since Kristin Kreuk from Smallville appeared in season 3 of ‘Chuck’, I thought a Chuck/Lana Lang cross-over might be fun. Although as this story has grown and evolved, it is becoming more of a DC comics/Chuck crossover than simply a Lana Lang/Chuck crossover, as Wonder Woman, Batman, Batgirl, and Green Lantern have all joined the story in addition to Smallville’s Green Arrow and the Flash.  (And am I the only one disappointed that the Wonder Woman TV pilot didn’t get picked up as a series?  Of course, what I would really have liked would have been a Justice League TV series, but I guess we will have to settle for fanfiction.)  If I ever get back to this story, I think it is turning into a Justice League origin story with all the main players and hopefully some worthy adversaries.

The first seven chapters of this story are available here.

Update 2/3/2013

New cover art for the FanFiction.net website.  Created using Pulp-o-Mizer website:

 

 

Origins – A sequel to Biological Families

Here is one of my ‘works in progress’.  ORIGINS is a Smallville story and a sequel to ‘Biological Families’. It will explore the origin of a number of things like the Kryptonian race, Brainiac, Superman’s ‘suit’, and more.  It will mostly take place 17,000 years ago during the final days of Chloe’s original, long lost, high-tech civilization.

The first two chapters are available here.

The following artwork is by jedwar.tevas, August 10, 2010

Updated 2/3/2013:  New cover art for the FanFiction.net website.  Created using Pulp-o-Mizer:

1963 – A ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ Story

1963

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a new favorite of mine.  After only a couple of episodes, I had a strong urge to tell a new story, exploring things a little differently than they are doing in the show. And what intrigues me the most is Cameron’s evolution from robot girl to something more. Now, if you have read some of my other stories, you will know I have an affinity for time travel stories. Although unlike most of my others which primarily stick to one place in time, the first arc of this saga jumps around a lot with each chapter taking place in a different time period or alternate time line (Sort of how the old show ‘Sliders’ did each episode).

The first arc, consisting of four chapters, are available here.

What was going to be the fifth chapter, exploring the next time line, kept growing in size and scope until it needed to be its own story rather than just a single chapter. The idea came to me when I started watching the new ‘90210’ TV show and it reminded me of how Brian Austin Green had appeared in that show’s earlier incarnation, I decided a cross-over chapter with 90210 might be fun. In the end it grew to five chapters and I think it turned out well. A lot of the people who have sent me comments said they thought Terminator+90210 was a pretty bizarre mash-up, but that, surprisingly, it worked.

This second arc of my Terminator story is available here.

So now I have started thinking about what to do next. I sort of like the longer form of the previous arc, where the story stays in one time line for multiple chapters. And I thought the obscure, unexpected cross-over was fun and I would like to try it again. So, I am thinking of doing another cross-over only even more obscure.

At the moment I am thinking the next story will be a variation of them battling Skynet on the moon in the late 1970’s I had mentioned in the last chapter of the first story. And for a long-time sci-fi fan like me, the obvious cross-over for this time frame is the 1970 British TV show ‘UFO’.

The show was set in the distant future year of 1980 and involved a secret organization (with its headquarters buried below a British movie studio) battling alien invaders. Now if you aren’t old enough to remember 1970, when this show was created, you may not understand how things on this show like the existence of many large moon-based operations by multiple countries and corporations felt entirely possible a mere ten years in the future. But in 1970 it had been less than ten years since the first person had gone into space and they had already landed a man on the moon. I think if you asked people in 1970 which was more likely: the space travel of this show in ten years or mankind not sending anyone back to the moon for more than 50 years, they would have all voted that events in the show were more likely. What has happened with space travel in the last few decades seems to be almost ‘stranger than fiction’.

Anyway, as I said, this show was done in 1970 and tried to extrapolate things to 1980. And not only did they try to extrapolate technology, but also everything else. It feels so anachronistic, at least to a modern American, to see all the characters sitting around their offices smoking cigars and drinking hard liquor. And then there are the fashions. 1970 England was still in the whole ‘mod’ scene and this show is a lot like Austin Powers on steroids – the men all wear turtlenecks and Nehru jackets and the women are all in short, short skirts. But my favorite bit was always the women who manned the secret organization’s moon operations. They dressed in these shiny metallic jumpsuits and all wore matching purple wigs. I think it would be a lot of fun to see Sarah, Cameron, Naomi, and Lisa forced to wear the purple wigs and skin-tight spacesuits to blend in!

I still have to figure out the ‘hook’ to tie these two stories together into a seamless whole, but it simply feels like it will be a lot of fun if I can make it work.

Just to help you picture what I am talking about, here are a couple of photos. You can find lots more info, if you google ‘ufo tv series’.

The first two chapters of the third arc of my Terminator story are available here.

Can you picture Cameron, Sarah, Lisa & Naomi in these moonbase outfits?

---

The moonbase from the show

---

The DVD available from Netflix or Amazon

---

If you would like to discuss my overall terminator saga, or more specifically the upcoming story arc with ‘UFO’, please leave a comment.

---

Are you a Cameron Fan?

Granger, Texas Ranger

Granger, Texas Ranger

I think crossover stories between ‘straight’ and ‘magical’ ones work better than most attempts to crossover two ‘magical’ ones. Since I have never tried a Harry Potter story, I thought it might be fun. Of course, women always seem to be the central characters in my stories so one centered on Ms. Granger seemed more interesting than one about Harry. Anyway, I was driving to the gym one day while waiting for book seven to be released when suddenly the ‘Granger, Texas Ranger’ refrain started bouncing around in my head. Since I live in Fort Worth, setting a story here has a certain appeal to me. The first chapter seemed to flow out of my fingers almost as fast as I could type, which is usually a good sign. So, we will have to see where this one decides to take us.

The first chapter of this story is available here.

If you would like to chat about this story, please leave a comment.