Tag Archives: superguy

30 Days of Writing #5: Youngest and Oldest Characters?

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

5) By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?

My youngest character would have to be Luca Blackwood, the seven-year-old protagonist of Onyx Fire, the children’s book I co-wrote with my wife (which is also In Search Of… a publisher). It was an interesting experience writing her, as I’m not ordinarily disposed to write pre-adolescent characters–partially because most of my works are aimed at a more mature audience, partially because it’s hard for me to orient my brain toward such a perspective.

My oldest character, as near as I can estimate from a brief survey of my memory, would be Cyane, the siren antagonist of my as-yet-unpublished short story Fabulous Beasts. She hails back to Greece of mythological times. A bit easier for me to work with; that is to say, her age was not her most challenging aspect.

In terms of creation date, my ‘oldest’ character of consequence is likely Rad, protagonist of a self-titled series set in the Superguy shared-universe humorous superheroic fiction list. I essentially lifted a persona and character I created for a Villians and Vigilantes game and ran with it… and somehow, it worked.

‘Youngest’ in terms of creation date would be a character from what I’m working on right now; as such character is still in flux, I’d rather not talk about him too much–save to note that he’s a right bastard. Right bastards are always fun to write.

30 Days of Writing #1: Favorite Writing Project / Universe?

Posted by Gary W. Olson on

1) Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you’ve worked with and why.

My favorite universe is that of the Superguy shared-universe humorous superheroic fiction group. I poured a lot of work into the various series I wrote for it in the early-to-mid nineties, and made a lot of friends there along the way. Writing for it was an experience that affected me in too many ways to count, large and small. The most obvious of these, to me, is that it gave me a chance to write a lot for an audience that, while generally appreciative, did not stint on the criticism where warranted (and, let’s be honest, sometimes where not warranted–when I recall some of the things we argued about that we thought were so terribly important, I have to shake my head in disbelief). I would not be the writer I am without Superguy. It’s a part of me, and I’m still happy to write for it (though I write a lot less for it than I once did).

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The ’30 Days of Writing Questions’ are a meme set of 30 questions I originally encountered on J. Koyanagi’s site, even though the meme apparently originated on LiveJournal. Even though it says ’30 days,’ I’ve decided to take a much slower (one day a week) approach to answering these. I’d rather promise weekly content and deliver than promise daily content and renege.