ashander

Fackit I Tweet like I read French, if I stare at it long enough I can muddle my way through it but I come across as mostly illiterate and possibly drunk.

There's been a lot of talk about the lack of women in the superhero genre and the lack of female characters in, well, everything lately, and it's been on my mind lately because while I'm a male writer, one of my main goals with The Indestructibles was to make every character essentially gender-neutral. I didn't want strong female characters, I wanted strong characters of both...
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Just got a review of the book from superheronovels.com. I have to say that "indefatigably entertaining" is the best thing anyone has ever said about me period, writing or otherwise:

"At the beginning of the novel, the Indestructibles weren’t very indestructible. During their first official mission, for example, they looked like a bunch of toddlers in a bouncy castle. But over time, and through...
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Got my first ever fan message. From a writer entering college, asking for advice. I don't know how people ever get tired of this. It almost moved me to tears. I don't really know how to reconcile that someone was inspired enough by what I wrote to come find me, even if it's just on goodreads.

Maybe I shouldn't write back right away, but the...
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The publisher announced Book 2 in my YA series yesterday, which is funny, because while we'd talked about it... we hadn't actually COMMITTED to it. I'm psyched, I want to write it, but apparently I have until the end of August to try to get the manuscript out if we want it ready for RI ComicCon in November. I think I should just start hoping...
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So there was that ridiculous Slate article a few days ago telling adults they should be ashamed if they read YA books. I wrote a bit up about it, and my publisher decided to submit it to CNN. It went onto the iReport, which is kind of fun.

Why there's no shame in reading, and why shaming anyone for anything is a horrible thing to...
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Haven't been on the site in a long while, not because of an intentional absence but because I've been working on a big project--my first novel was picked up by a publisher a while back and it just launched two weeks ago. It's a YA novel (written to be approachable for adult readers too) about a group of reluctant teen superheroes. I think it's a...
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