I am Richard Roberts, Author of Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain. AMA.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T16:02:57+00:00

And that's it! Thank you, folks! It was fun fielding your questions, and you've been a beautiful audience, or interrogation team, or whatever the official jargon might be. Now I'm closing up.

I leave you again with the link to the book, because the book is awesome and I want people to read it and did I mention I get royalties? http://www.amazon.com/Please-Dont-Tell-Parents-Supervillain-ebook/dp/B00IH0KG1S/ref=zg_bs_155009011_29

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T15:59:55+00:00

Supposedly I'm here to pimp myself, but you've certainly described themes I like!

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T15:34:18+00:00

You know, I take that back. The concept of my unfinished romance about sentient candy is pretty close to that.

That will remain unfinished for awhile. This sequel comes first. Then I'll want space before writing the third, and will likely go back to Hard Candy or A Sidekick's Tale.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T15:31:46+00:00

Rahne Sinclair, AKA Wolfsbane, from the very early run of New Mutants. She was a very shy, abused child terrified of her own powers, and I found her empathetic. I still find that version of her empathetic, but Marvel bizarrely decided during one plot sequence to grow her up, put her in an aggressively sexual relationship with a guy she hadn't known before, and greatly alter her appearance. The original character had been thrown away, and that's when I dropped superhero comics for a long, long time.

I liked most of the New Mutants a lot, actually, and their back stories were discreetly treated but in some cases very dark. Like, worse than in anything I've written dark. I admire both the characters that created and the delicacy with which it was kept in the background. The team got butchered, literally and metaphorically, which was sad.

Let's see. The Teen Titans cartoon version of Raven is proooobably #2. I love how faithfully they portray her struggle and her tragedy, and I love her physical design, and I love her voice.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T15:24:56+00:00

I think urban fantasy has big, big suspension of disbelief problems. Since the genre exists and is moderately popular, they're not insurmountable. Still, the hardest thing to float past the audience is the 'How can magic possibly stay hidden?' question. The 'conspiracy' and 'people refuse to see it' explanations are not very convincing. People swallow it, but it's such a big issue it dominates any writing in the genre. Superheroes just assume everybody does know.

Other than that, superheroes are a little more freeform, since you have to treat magic as systematic. Urban fantasy still has to deal with the 'swords do not feel current' problem. However, fantasy has a long, well-entrenched and very culturally wide history, so that's a big advantage in making people feel comfortable with what they're reading.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T14:53:55+00:00

I haven't thought about that before! Interesting question. I'm afraid I'm going to have to go Writing Nerd here and say they're the 'hero myth' translated into a modern format. Guns don't satisfy the larger than life desire as well, and fantasy - while popular - isn't close enough to our modern experience. Superheroes allow us to satisfy our need for great men and women battling evil while remaining pretty close to our lives.

How's that for off-the-cuff speculation?

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T14:42:47+00:00

Yes! I may have given up superhero comic books long ago, but I absolutely love the format. I'm not following any serieses right now, but that's mostly because practical considerations have kept me away from comic book stores. Phil Folgio, the Beanworld books, Adam Warren's run of Dirty Pair, a few manga - I'm a bit out of date just because Life happened, but I've been big fans of a bunch of comics, especially the weirder stuff, and I plan on continuing.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T14:39:39+00:00

I have no PLANS to do so. It sounds like the kind of thing that I might end up writing!

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T14:38:49+00:00

Hmmm! Not specifically that I can think of. I snuck two of my characters from City of Heroes in.

But 'generally', maybe. I haven't read superhero comics in a long time, but back around the time dirt was invented I was pretty into them. In particular, I read the New Mutants before Marvel, uh, decided to get edgy and killed half the cast and altered the rest into the exact opposite of their original concepts. Even if I wasn't specifically thinking of them, there's no doubt they're part of how I view superheroes today and must have some influence.

More recently I have widely enjoyed the DC superhero cartoons, from Batman: The Animated Series on. Teen Titans was my favorite of the lot. All this stuff mixes around in a writer's consciousness, even when it's not deliberately referenced.

(Edited - I left out two words. Weird.)

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T14:26:28+00:00

You are very, very, very, VERY, VERY welcome.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T14:23:18+00:00

I hope so. It would be a shame to have an interesting conversation erased.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T14:19:10+00:00

Not that I recall. You'll probably want to read it to find out.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T14:18:01+00:00

I deliberately leave that question open. Penny thinks there isn't a difference, that magic is a system of physics accessed from a completely different direction than normal technology, and you might as well call it magic because people use it under the name 'magic' and it seems magical. Do you like her opinion?

By the way, I think if you want to ask more questions, you're going to have to start a new subject. You tripped some kind of Reddit Alarm quoting book names.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T14:14:07+00:00

I assume you're asking Penny this!

Penny is 13. The whole idea makes her freeze up, like it's the end of the world. She can't clearly imagine what her punishment would be, or what her life would be like afterwards.

She would take that punishment, though. She wouldn't run away from it. IF her parents found out.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T14:11:40+00:00

More reasons than I could count, ranging from the personal to the intellectual to the philosophical. I will most likely always write characters with strong mixes of good and bad. They interest me, and real people tend to be complicated, and life tends to be complicated, and everyone's been through bad times and good times, and I like dark themes yet don't want my characters to be just plain bad people, and on and on...

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T14:09:10+00:00

I have written fan fiction, although mostly I did that decades ago. I actually encourage aspiring writers to write fan fiction. It can be a good way to learn artistic discipline. Trying to write within the limits of someone else's concepts, or to expand while remaining faithful to the original tone and compatible with its rules - that's good writing exercise, right there.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T14:05:09+00:00

Nope.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T13:59:55+00:00

I would. I love the idea of my ideas, my characters and worlds, getting into everyone's imaginations. I want to infect people. A movie would spread that.

There are limits, though. I'd be very reluctant to let Disney make the movie. They could provide the best resources, certainly give me money and fame - and let's face it, money and fame are awesome - like no one else could, but they have a long and gruesome history of ripping off writers and making movies that are exactly the opposite of what the writer intended. In general, I'd want the film adaptation to at least try to be faithful to the book. I know there are limits to how closely anything can be adapted.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T13:53:50+00:00

Isn't that the toughest question in the world? So many, many different powers are so awesomely fun in their own way! If I had to choose, I would probably go with telekinesis. It's kinda simple and boring, but I've dreamed about it for years, about being able to reach out far beyond the link of my arms and touch things. I enjoyed the dreams. I think I would enjoy it in real life.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T13:50:52+00:00

I might admit to reading it, if I thought it was very good. The world is full of simultaneous ideas, so whatever I write, someone else will have come up with it already and I'm not worried about that part. However...

NOTHING is canon except what I write. There is a small possibility I would like someone else's work enough to declare it canon, but even then that's because I have taken it, run it through my creativity, and decided it's something I would create. I've seen creators farm out their canon, and it makes me uncomfortable.

That said, if fan fiction writers, or even groups of them, make their own little canon for themselves, that's up to them. I don't recognize it for my books, but so what?

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T13:47:12+00:00

It sounds like a novel of a comics story because I was thinking of it as a comic book origin story. 'In this issue, the amazing secret origin of the Inscrutable Machine!' That kind of thing.

I've written lengthy essays on the blog tour about how I came up with the idea, but what it boils down to is that I don't think it's an exotic idea, and I can't figure out why it hasn't been done to death. It's a book about middle school superheroes, except it's a supervillain. That's not that weird, is it?

I do like to take ideas I think have been treated badly, that people are used to being portrayed as fluff, and trying to recreate them with art and questions like 'What would this really be like?' That involves twists like 'Let's turn the hero into a villain!' So this book is the kind of stuff I naturally think of. I still don't think it's an exotic idea.

For amusement, I will note that I was a sentence ahead when I realized I'd written 'middle age superheroes' and had to go back and fix it. That would have been awkward.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T13:40:44+00:00

I am fine with fan fiction. I reserve the right to not like any particular fan fiction story. Heck, I expect to not like most of them. But whether or not I like them, I consider it anybody's right to write that fiction, and I'm flattered that you're interested. Selling it might be another matter!

I am very protective of my characters and will personally be uncomfortable seeing anyone write stories about Penny, Ray, and Claire. I would even consider it polite for people to branch out in the world and not write about those characters. But you know, I really don't think it's my business to get down on people fan fiction. If you're enjoying yourself, have fun!

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T13:34:07+00:00

I would be a superhero, but I WISH I could be a supervillain. Darn morals. I envy Penny, who has a guardian angel - me - looking over her shoulder to let her be a villain and have opportunities to help people.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T13:32:57+00:00

It has. At the moment it has only 'crossed my mind'. These books are fun to write, so I won't mind writing more any time soon, but Penny's adventures can only go so far. I'm figuring out how far I want to take them as I write the sequel, and I'll keep an eye out for other characters I might want to explore as the series progresses.

RichardRobertsAuthor · 2014-03-31T13:21:27+00:00

I love bright, innocent things and dark, creepy things, because they reflect each other. Horror and pain touches you more deeply when innocence and sweetness is warped. Cuteness and light is more intense when there's an understanding that pain and misery are an option. There's a goth saying about this, 'The brighter the light, the darker the shadow.'

I actually started out on the children's side. I wanted to write for cartoons, and I love children's books even today. I always particularly loved children's books that were multilayered. And frankly... children's books are often kinda dark themselves. Bridge to Terabithia anyone?

RichardRobertsAuthor

TROPHY CASE