This post’s title, “Adventurous Adventures and Heroic Heroes” may seem a bit odd. I mean, aren’t all adventures adventurous and all heroes heroic? Well, in short, no. Let me give you a few examples:
Ever tried to drag a recalcitrant teenager (and I am speaking here from when I was one) on what seems to you like so much fun. Like hiking five miles to see Native American petroglyphs you just learned about. Or scouring the mall for that perfect gift for your hard-to-please aunt. A teenager is not likely to be excited, one person’s adventure is another person’s slog. Or, to put it another way, adventurous adventures are the fun ones and not all are fun.
And heroes? Don’t know if you are paying attention to the current world of superheroes and fiction, but dark, gritty, and brooding seems to be in. Antiheroes abound. There are many protagonists that are at least as dark and disturbed as the villains they battle. Humans so twisted and flawed you wonder how the human race has gotten this far. Don’t get me wrong, I can certainly go for this at times and love stores with shades of moral grey, but at other times I just want my heroes to be heroic.
Did you ever see the first Superman movie (1978, staring Christopher Reeve). That adventure is adventurous and that hero is heroic. Clark Kent is not free from problems, challenges, or worries, but the sense of wonder never abates and the heroic quality of Reeve’s Superman is never in question. There is a sense of fun, a lightness, a positive feeling when the credits role (in sharp contrast to the current Superman movies.)
And again, I am not saying all heroic adventures should be like this. Just some.
If you haven’t guessed it already, that’s part of where I am coming from with the Neutrinoman and Lightningirl series. Nick Nichols and Licia Lopez, unlike Superman, are just a regular people who becomes superpowered and try to figure it all out (while falling in love, of course).
I am trying to write adventures that are fun and heroes that are everyday people with good hearts. They struggle with the same things that we do (self-doubt, dealing with their limitations, loss, grief, regret… you name it) but there remains a lightness and a sense of fun to it all. Hope.
To celebrate the Adventurous and Heroic, I am giving away the first episode, Meteor Attack! for free. There are two ways to get it:
- The ebook version is free on Amazon.com from May 1-5.
- Or sign up for my email newsletter and it’s yours (click the big green “Subscribe Now” button to the right).
And the rest of the series is free if you do me a small favor. Write a short, honest review of the book (say, Meteor Attack!) and I’ll send you the next one for free (that would be Toxic Asset). You can read more about the deal over here. The review doesn’t need to be fancying or anything, it just needs to be honest. What did you like about it? What didn’t you like? A couple sentences is plenty. Why honest, you might ask? Well, not everyone likes the same thing, what you don’t like might be exactly what someone is looking for. (For example, some folks might want more adventure and less characterization and romance in these books. That’s a fair criticism, but like most opinions it is just a matter of taste. Someone else might read that and know it’s just the kind if thing their looking for).
With this free offer, you might wonder if I’m trying to get you hooked. Well, of course I am! I love these books (i.e. I’m hooked myself) and want to do what I can to get them to a wider audience. If you have a little time and can do reviews, you can read them for free. If you don’t mind paying a few bucks for them, great. Either way works for me and heroic adventures await.
And to dip back down to the philosophical, briefly. Part of this is personal. Life is short, I want my own adventures to adventurous. To have a sense of fun and wonder. I want my life to be… well not exactly heroic, but to have a sense of purpose, of meaning. This certainly informs the kind of characters I create (heroic) and the kind of adventures they have (adventurous).
Hope your current adventure is adventurous.
Cheers,
Robert
