It's 2 a.m. on a Friday night. Well, Saturday morning, really. And I've got the house to myself, and I'm playing a lot of old songs from when I was young. True story: before I ever wrote a novel I was in a couple of bands. I was a "useless frontman," zero ability to play an instrument. Just sing. It was a million years ago, before we had cell phones, before you went viral on TikTok, when you'd play bars with sticky floors and people could still smoke inside and I was catastrophically depressed but also probably the happiest I've ever been in my life. Which is a very strange thing to say, but that's the truth of it - I was on this razor's edge of self-destruction, but I was making music with my friends, and there is something in the creation of music that makes you think the world is worth living in. 

Anyway. I started writing short stories then, flash fiction, and a lot of it centered around what I'd experienced in those bands. Music is a young person's game, I think, and you feel time move with distinct cruelty as a musician, even as a useless frontman. But time also stands still, in those smokey rooms, the sound of your own voice reverberating off exposed ceilings, the taste of cheap beer in the air as you rip your soul out and give it to a room full of strangers. 

This was my first flash fiction story about being a singer. Everyone in it is a real person. Some of the events are not specifically real, but they are close enough that this is a ghost story just for me. It's a specter of who I was, and of people I knew and loved. It was supposed to appear in a book PFP Publishing was going to produce, an anthology of stories like it called Preludes & Codas (see the musical theme there? The owner of PFP was a music journalist when he was young), but they instead bought the rights to the Indestructibles, and instead of stories about musicians, I wrote stories about superheroes. Life is strange and full of wonder. 

Content warning: Talk of self-harm. That's a conversation for another time, and one I'm happy to chat about if you ask. 

"Mia's pregnant," Will said, setting his bass guitar aside.
 
Behind him, Billy drummed a rim shot. Andrew and I just stared. "I think I gotta quit the band."

Andrew, his guitar dangling suggestively on his hip, looked at me. I looked at him, and then to Billy, and then we all looked back at Will.

"What?" Will said.

"Three?" I said, finally. "Three? A little selfish in this economy, huh? And you know it's gonna be a—"

"We thought we'd give it one more shot for a son."

"It's gonna be a girl, Will,” I said.

Billy performed another rim shot. Ba-dum-ching...

"If it's a girl, you need to name her Yoko," Andrew said.

"Aw, that’s just tacky, dude..."

"Whatever, man," I said, winding the microphone's cord gently around my arm. "Had to happen eventually."

"Seriously, Parker, I can't keep this up anymore. I can't be on the road all the time... we're getting old. We're never going to make much more money at this. Three. I'm going to have three kids."
 
He paused, looking at me, like I was going to try to convince him to stay. Another day, another time, I might have tried, but I wasn't in the mood. I looked away and kept collecting stray cords.

I sat down on the piano bench in the corner of the studio and crossed my arms. We had played together for fifteen years now, Tilting Windmills, but fifteen years to them was longer than ten years to me. Billy, Andrew, and Will were all at least four years older than me, veteran musicians who had scooped me up at eighteen and made me their frontman. Fifteen years of living broke, three indie records to our name, including a concept album retelling the story of Don Quixote. Stupid fucking concept album, the hubris of a twenty-year-old songwriter who thought he was ten times cleverer than he was. Ironically, when we didn't tell people what the album was about, it sold better.

"We never got to play North Dakota, Willie," I said.

"Got to play everywhere else, though." He smiled a little, his face blurred by his grey-flecked goatee. "It was a good run, kid."

"Yeah," I said. I heard footsteps climbing the stairs to the studio. I hoped it was Katie Jane. I needed a little Katie Jane right now.

"Well, shit, if it isn't the dream queen," Billy said when Katie walked in.
 
I wondered, as I always do when I see her, if anyone else in the world has a girl like her, who took his breath away every single time she walked in the room. Dark hair worn simply and to her shoulders, grey eyes spilling wisdom like tears, those quirky, endless lips holding back white, imperfect teeth.

"You look like someone ran over your cat," Andrew said.
 
He said this almost without fail whenever he laid eyes on Katie Jane, and it was not far from the truth. Katie Jane was the princess in the tower, beautiful and timeless and bathed in an endless haze of perpetual sadness. Over the years I learned to read her happiness, in the arch of her eyebrows or the corner of her mouth, but if you were not a student in her shrine finding her joy was near impossible.

"Speak for yourself," she snapped at Andrew, flashing him a wink and one of her pretty little smiles, the ones that never, ever touch her eyes. In anyone else it would have looked mournful, but I'd been watching that smile since we were teenagers, and it was the best she could muster. A soft twitch of her lips was worth more than a glittering white grin. "It looks like a massacre in here. Did someone quit?"

Met by silence, she looked at me, eyes widening. She mouthed the word "shit." I shrugged. Katie crossed the room and sat beside me on the piano bench, setting the guitar case she had slung across her back on the floor and lacing her fingers through mine. She bumped her head against my shoulder softly.

I met Katie Jane in high school, the year we both tried to kill ourselves, running into each other in Harvard Square for the first time while both wearing matching bandages on our wrists. Two weeks later people took to calling us Hansel and Gretel on Prozac, and, honestly, we never quite left that way of living. It took us eight years to realize we were in love, eight years, two music careers—hers so much better than mine—three songs and two more suicide attempts. Her folk career and Tilting Windmills' prog-rock foolishness took us separate ways, and we left breadcrumbs in our wake, breadcrumbs and songs. She wrote a ditty called boy in a coffin for me and played it at her shows a hundred times before telling me it was mine; I gave her katie jane you promised me morning, which could never be hidden, and i know where you've gone now, which we never talked about, not once. One of the breadcrumbs we left for each other was to never use capital letters in our song titles. It was a stupid conceit, but nobody seemed bothered by it.

Should have named the second song serendipity. I called her in her hotel in Austin the night she tried to die again, and for whatever reasons she might have had, she couldn't resist answering, which gave me enough time to call 911. She stumbled into mine, in a studio apartment in Medford, Massachusetts eighteen months later, back from a tour with a bottle of whiskey under one arm. It was that moment we gave up being Hansel and Gretel and became something more, mostly because in my blood-loss I'd begun to hallucinate while she was calling for an ambulance, and everything I'd never told her came tumbling out. She put them in a song. "I loved you in every life I've ever had / I climbed a grey tower in Arizona / just to touch your hair," she wrote, telling me these were the words she thought would be the last things I ever said. "I only have tomorrow / because of you." I've asked her a dozen times if she would have let me die if I hadn't told her I loved her just then. Each time, she kisses me, deep enough to bite my lower lip, and clings to me like a life raft at sea.

Will and Andrew thought, when Katie and I moved in together, that she would be the one to Yoko the band. It was Billy, of all people, who explained to them what was really happening. I wouldn't expect such insights from Billy, but then again he'd known me the longest, and remembered where I got my scars. He’d caught me singing in the walk-in cooler at a pizza joint we both worked at as kids and recruited me all those years ago.

"She's not going to Yoko the band," he told them, drunk after the first performance following my razor-juggling accident. "She's going to keep us from being Nirvana without the fame."

From the mouths of babes and drummers.

"So who's going to play bass?" Katie said, breaking our sullen silence. Will's jaw dropped, as if he were offended we'd carry on without him. Looking at Billy and Andrew, I knew they were thinking the same thing—there's no new bass player. Just a bunch of guys who were a band ten minutes ago.

"I can learn," I offered.

"Parker..." Andrew this time.

"Seriously. How hard can it be? There's only four strings. I can play rhythm."

"No you can't," said Andrew.

"You can't even play the fucking tambourine," Billy said. "And... Andrew's been unplugging your amp since we did that last tour out west. You're really not good at the guitar. At all. Mediocre doesn’t even cover it."

"If Will can play bass, I can play bass," I said.

"I can play," Katie added. Billy tapped out another rim shot. "Oh, suck mine, Billy Cerullo, I'm a better guitar player than any of you guys."

"She's right," Will said.

Andrew stood there, looking hurt. That's what he did best, though, looking hurt. It was what he’d do any time we cut his guitar solos short.

"That settles it. She plays bass. Just call us the Smashing Pumpkins." I squeezed Katie's hand once, quickly, stood up, and threw my arms around Will in a hug. "Fuck it. Congratulations, you fertile motherfucker."

"You'll figure something out? Without me? I don't want you guys to stop..."

"We'll figure something out," I said. The boys nodded in agreement. We all knew we were lying, because never, not once in a decade, had we all agreed on anything. We couldn’t even agree on a case of beer at the liquor store together.

Ten minutes later, Will was leaving, headed home to tuck his girls in for the night. The door wasn't closed but ten seconds before Andrew spoke.

"Fuck me. It's over," he said.

Billy stomped on his bass drum three times and then wrapped the cymbal with his fist. Katie helped him break down his kit. I watched them talk softly as I unplugged the amps and gathered up the monitors.

"Good thing we didn't finalize that fucking tour," Andrew said, zipping the Fender in its case.

"Maybe we can get him out on the road one more time," Billy said. "That'd be..."

"Yeah," I mumbled.

In the parking lot outside, I watched the boys drive off, arguing. I had spent my entire adult life watching Billy and Andrew fight like an old married couple. I half-expected that one would whither away without the other. When they turned the corner and out of sight, Katie Jane bumped into me and pushed me up against her car. She buried her face in my chest. I could feel her breath through my shirt.

"It'll all work out," she said, voice muffled against my chest.

"I know."

She looked up at me, grey eyes twinkling. "I was serious about playing bass for you guys."

"I know. That's why I love you."

"Really?"

"Well, that and some other stuff. There's other stuff."

"One would hope." She paused. "Ever think about having kids?"

"Me and you?"

"Again, one would hope." She smiled. This one almost touched her eyes. "Yes, me and you."

"Would they let people like us have kids?"

"Nothing years of therapy and tons of medication can't fix for us."

"Therapy never worked for me," I said.

"Me neither. Or the drugs."

"Nope." Beat. "You helped a lot."

"Mm-hm. You too," she said.

We got into her car, and she took out a Patty Griffin album in favor of one of ours. I tried to filter out the sound of my own voice, to listen to Will's sound, but it was difficult to separate him from everything else. We'd been together too damned long.

"If things don't work out, I'll take you on tour with me," Katie Jane said.

"I don't think the folkies will like my music."

"Nah," she said, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "But I think they might like you."

Back when I wrote real-life stories instead of superheroes and fantasy, I used to tell a lot of stories around holidays. Christmas, as I've mentioned, is my favorite - I get both melancholy and excited for it every year - but New Year's is a close second, because it is inherently about renewal, and letting go, and starting fresh. 

This story is partially true - the characters are fictional but I did in fact used to drive to the beach every New Year's Day morning to watch the sun rise. Then I got old and tired and didn't want to stay up all night anymore, and I got so very tired of the cold. But this is one of my favorite unpublished stories, so I wanted to share it here. I hope you like it. 

The first glass of whiskey soured in my stomach, my body immediately and inexplicably repulsed by it by the third sip. It's funny how you can be a lifelong drinker, how you can stay loyal to your particular poison for years on end, and how that poison can still sometimes turn on you, can tell you, no son, not tonight, you and I will be parting company for the evening, and leave you, sober and cold, to face the world alone.

I dumped the ice and remnants of golden liquor in the sink and poured some tonic water into a new glass, over ice, with a lime. It wouldn't have the same benefits as whiskey, but at least no one would ask why I was choosing not to drink on New Year's Eve.

The house was set off the beaten path in a small, upscale neighborhood of a small, upscale suburb twenty or twenty five miles north of Boston; it was the old family homestead of an old friend whose parents had passed young, and whose siblings had decided, in their honor, to maintain this house, despite having moved away, to the city or to the country or anywhere else but this moneyed little town, as a place to gather, as a place they could share and call home. It sat on the edge of a pond, now mostly frozen, black and gleaming and visible from the back porch.

I pulled on my long, black wool coat and stepped outside. It was raining; I remembered New Year’s Eves as a teenager, going into the city, temperatures bitterly cold, winds biting as we crossed footbridges over Storrow Drive, arguing about where to go, who would take our fake IDs, who would not check for them at all, whether we should just give up and find a warm place to hole up and hide. If there was a reason to believe in global warming it was nights like this one, were cold rain coughed and spat down on us, melting the Christmas snow as the year came to an end.

I turned my back on the pond and looked in through the sliding glass doors at the party within. I knew most of the guests, some well, some marginally, a few intimately, in those ways adults, when looking for something to do and someone to wake up with on a given day, know each other intimately and fleetingly. I had a few old friends here--the host, and Bethany, recently returned from six months' business in northern California with a taste for Napa reds and the kind of tan you can only get on the west coast, a few others. But mostly it was a gathering of names and faces I had known a year or less, people I had just begun learning about, people I knew I might not know still, in a year. I found myself making bets in my own head, wondering who would still sail in the same waters as I did in twelve or eighteen months.

I started, perhaps crassly or rudely, giving them titles and nicknames as I watched them sip their drinks and wait for the year to end. The Marathoner, she of the kindest demeanor and sharp wit; the Scientist, one of my new drinking buddies, who liked to take stabs at combining his research with conspiracy theories; the Cub Reporter, young, idealistic, who had for a short time reminded me what it was like to chase after a dream with rabid intensity; the Failed Writer, brilliant and unmotivated, with her cocaine habit currently in check but teetering on the verge of addiction. The Once Dancer, now moved on to other dreams, like becoming a playwright and marrying a rich husband. The Would Be Rock Star, who was clinging onto his dream, one I once shared but gave up long ago, who reminded us all that while music might be a young man's sport, it's an old man's war to win.

Bethany stepped onto the porch, pulling the sliding door closed behind her and a pack of Parliaments from her purse.

"Why in God's name are you drinking tonic water?"

"It's gin and tonic."

"Bullshit, you hate gin. You picked an odd night to become a teetotaler, Jason."

I shrugged.

"What are you doing up here?" she asked.

"Wondering how many of those people in there will still be in my life in a year," I said.

Bethany took a sip of her wine and moved next to me, to look inside, following my gaze.

"You ever think maybe you're the tourist?"

"What's that?"

"You're the tourist. We don't disappear on you, babe, you disappear on us." She smirked, carefully holding wine and cigarette in one hand while she moved to fix her unruly cloud of wine-red hair, pushing it out of her face. "I'm speaking from personal experience, you know. You drop off the radar very easily."

"That's because I'm a spy, you know."

She laughed.

"Is that the excuse this year? It's because you're driftwood. You just pass on by, most of the time. Except for the unlucky few, like me, for whom you keep turning up like the proverbial bad penny. Every time I think you're, you know, overseas in the Peace Corps or dead in a ditch somewhere or doing time in a Mexican prison, you show up at a holiday party."

It was my turn to shrug. The rain was coming down harder now, some old and angry storm system growing furious at its own inability to freeze over and drop snow. I looked at my watch.

"Ten til."

"I used to love New Year's Eve," she said. "I swear I used to think you could feel the whole world changing beneath your feet on nights like tonight."

"And now?"

"And now it's just a reason to think you're getting older and realize it's harder to find someone to plant one on you at midnight whom you do not find repulsive."

"Hey," I said.

"I'm not kissing you at midnight. I know where you've been."

"That is not what I was going to suggest," I said. "But I've got an idea."

"Does this idea involve kissing at all?"

"No."

"Okay then, I'll listen."

"I'll explain after midnight," I said. "It looks like they're waiting for us inside."

***

Someone turned on the television, where a mummy in a suit was MCing the dropping of the ball in Times Square. I'd been to Times Square on New Year’s; virtually every New Year’s Eve event is overrated, and it is just a matter of scale as to how overrated it is in comparison to any normal night, and Times Square is the most overrated of all, just based on sheer numbers and hype. At midnight people cheered, people kissed, new lovers and old friends, chaste and full of lust, in with the new, in with the old, out with whatever you happened to be tired of at the time.

Me, I just threw back the rest of my drink as though it were more than quinine and water and watched.

Some time between one and two in the morning, Bethany found me again and asked about my plan. I explained it to her.

"You're out of your mind," she said.

"Why?"

"Because it is cold, it is raining, and there are more drunks on the road here than an Octoberfest road race."

"Trust me. It's always worked in the past."

As the party wound down we gathered our coats and headed to my car. We drove to my apartment, a half-hour away due east; we drove in silence, watching police cruisers prowl like sharks in dark water for drunks on the road, peering into passing vehicles filled with men in disheveled suits and women in silly silver hats, looking boozy and tired and sad. Somewhere along a minor highway we saw a small foreign car embedded in the divider, surrounded by cops, the passengers downtrodden and wet and horrified, but unhurt.

"Amateur night," Bethany said, the only time she broke the silence of the drive. Otherwise, it was just our breathing, the sound of the wheels whispering against blacktop, the rhythmic pattern of wiper blades against glass.

At my apartment I brewed a pot of coffee and found Bethany warmer clothes. We found a pair of hiking boots an ex-girlfriend had left behind that were just a size too big, which she used to replace her heels. I ditched my suit for a pair of jeans and a heavy hooded sweatshirt. Wool hats for both of us, my heavy mittens for her, a pair of wicking gloves for myself, long, mismatched scarves, a waterproof yellow coat for her in place of the expensive winter duster she had worn to the party. We filled a thermos with coffee and dug out a pair of travel mugs from the recesses of my kitchen.

"Think this is overkill?" she said.

I shook my head.

"You like the cold even less than I do. It's not overkill."

And, an hour before dawn, we were back on the road, headed for the sea.

***

The road to the shore was empty and dead at five-thirty in the morning. The rain had stopped, and temperatures never fell below freezing; everything was coated with a wet gleam, freshly washed. I picked the beach because I knew they did not bar their parking lot during the winter, for locals to run their dogs on the shore. I knew also that the lot was just a short walk up over a hill to the shore. January is a terrible time to go walking down dark paths to the ocean.

I pulled the car right up to the sand, near one of the pathways. We got out, pulling our hats down low--Bethany wrapped her scarf across her face, leaving just her eyes visible--and we got out, carrying out coffee.

"You're making this up as you go along, aren't you," she said.

"Nah," I said. "I used to do this every year, when I was a kid."

"A kid?"

"Relatively speaking. As a teenager. In college too, before I started going to bars and driving to the shore became a legal liability."

"Always this beach?"

"Whatever beach I was closest to, really. As long as it faced east and wasn't locked down for the winter."

Once upon a time, I decided, when I was young and romantic, to watch the sunrise on New Year's Day from the shore. I wanted the illusion of being the first person to see the sun hit this particular part of our world. I knew there were folks halfway around the world already well into the new year, living in the future, nursing their hangovers and starting their days. But that was their world, and this was mine, and I wanted to be here to greet the sun.

Funny, the romantic tomfoolery we engage in when we're young. You go a few times, you battle the cold, when you're too poor to have a good car with good heat, when you're too stupid to remember to bring warm clothes and hot coffee, when you think the universe revolves around you, and when the year begins when you wake, and when you say hello to the sun. Eventually you grow up, you move on, you celebrate the night and find someone to take you home or to take home with you, and you wake, in your bed or in someone else's, long after the day has begun, and you start the slow and creaking machineries of your body, shaking off the snows of a dead year to begin again. There's no time for little romantic notions like watching the sun rise when there is whiskey to be drunk and arms to be wrapped up in, when there is sleep to be had in a warm bed, far from the crashing waves of a black, bitter ocean.

Instead I just tell Bethany about the first time I came here--here being the shore, here being the beginning, not necessarily this beach, this place, this lifetime--the morning after the last time I ever worked with a particular rock band, singing cover songs and trying to win back some pretty girl who, at that particular moment in history, ruled my heart. She and I had gone to a stone tower in a small forest outside of Boston that night at midnight to watch the fireworks from afar, stupidly wandering into the cold night, trespassing after dark; and later we went to the shore, and watched the sun rise. It had been brutally cold that year and snow covered the beach, snow so old and hardened by the cold it had the texture of cheap Styrofoam, turning to frozen dust beneath your boots.

This year though, the rain was winning, and the snow was short on the ground, patches of white and beige like dying clouds against the black-brown wet sand. The sky was hazy and just starting to turn silvery white on the horizon.

"We're unlucky," I said. "On a good year, it's all pink and gold. I don't think we're getting a show this year."

Bethany was silent a moment. I looked down at her, taking in the waves with her large, gunmetal gray eyes, peering over a ridiculous mask of red and black flannel scarf.

"The last time I did this, I went alone," I said. "I think I was twenty. There was a man running his black Labrador retriever down the shore. I think he figured out what I was doing. Just sort of tipped his cap and wandered off, further down the beach."

Finally, she spoke.

"You are a ridiculous man, you know," she said, finally, her voice muffled by the scarf.

"I'm well aware."

"Although if I'm reading you correctly, you were an even more ridiculous boy."

"Also accurate."

She pulled down her scarf and sipped at her coffee. The sun rose further, and we could see it struggle against the cloud cover; in places where the haze was lighter, shards of red and pink started to break through. Otherwise, it was a concussive white, a creeping hope against the remaining darkness. A year of black and white and gray, with little by way of indigo and gold to show for it. They say what you're doing at midnight dictates what happens with the rest of your year, but I used to think, and sometimes I think I still do, that it is not what we do in those moments when an archaic calendar turns over that really matters, but simply what the world looks like when it opens its eyes the next morning.

Hello there, Year. We've been expecting you. Your predecessor was unkind, and we were hoping, perhaps, you might right a few wrongs for us. But if not, well, there's always the next guy.

We stayed a bit longer, until the coffee had grown lukewarm, and we had grown too cold, and eventually, we turned out back on the sun and stomped our way back to the car.

Bethany was quiet most of the ride home. As we pulled into a diner off Route 1, she spoke.

"I don't think I could do that every year," she said.

"It takes a lot of energy," I said. "It's hard to be motivated to stay awake, to stay warm, to get back on the road."

"That's not why I don't think I could do it," she said. "I'm not sure why. I just don't know if I could."

She paused.

"Have you ever watched the last sunset instead?" she said.

"No," I said. "I'm better at hello than goodbye."

"I thought you might say that," she said.

And eventually, well-fed and overtired, we drove home, following the sun west, into another year, and all that goes with it.

Had fun reposting my pitch for an Aquaman project  few days ago, figured it'd be fun to share my Martian Manhunter pitch as well. This was back in 2014. I never did put a shapeshifter into the Indestructiverse. Adding that to the list with archers, speeders, and psychics. 

Premise: The Martian Manhunter is an entirely different take on the Superman Mythos. If Superman/Clark is the adopted foreigner, raised looking and acting like his adoptive family only to discover he is different, J'onn is the adult immigrant, who finds himself in a new country not aware of the culture or language, overqualified for any job he might apply for but unable to fit in because of his differences. The Martian Manhunter is an immigration story. 

He's very much like Superman in a lot of ways: an alien among humans who could be a force of destruction or dominance but instead decides to show them by example how to be better than what they are. He's a god who takes on the face of a man and solves little crimes, changes one life at a time.

The series should play into his telepathy. He is alone in the universe, the last of his kind, but is tied in through telepathy to the human condition, a million little thoughts, good and evil and everything in between, at his fingertips whenever he wants it.

Story arc: Let's look at the first four seasons. It's an ambitious arc but each season could represent a theme in his journey as accidental immigrant to Earth. 

Season 1: What does it mean to be human. How does he mask his differences. How does he use them to his advantage. How do they create a barrier to his understanding the human condition and all its beauty and darkness. J'onn explores this through taking on a private detective's life. He will need a guide, a connection to humanity to help him translate his experiences.  

Season 2: Embracing humanity, he becomes an inspirational force. He shares more of himself. He becomes both Martian and Earthling, like an expatriate in another country taking on their culture and becoming part of their fabric. J'onn's heritage contributes to the fabric of the Earth the way every new culture becomes a piece of America's always-changing face. 

Season 3: Humanity disappoints him. He is betrayed, by friends, by the government. Terrible decisions are made he cannot stop. War, death, crime. He starts to feel his connection to mankind slipping away. Spends more time in his Martian form, alienating himself from those who know him. Stops being a detective, starts being a superhero. Fixes bigger problems. Interfering, not fixing.

Season 4: Humanity rejects him. We do not want this green man trying to tell us how to be better. J'onn returns to the stars. Retires to Mars, alone with the ghosts of his dead kin. We feel his absence; only when his adoptive family really needs him does he return home to take on the role of both brother and protector. J'onn is called home, where he is needed. To make his adoptive home a better place. 

Themes: J'onn is inherently well equipped to learn about Earth. He can read minds, he can change shapes. Martian Manhunter should be the anti-Orphan Black--where Tatiana Maslany's chameleon-like ability to shapeshift into entirely new people with the same face, J'onn's face should change episode to episode--different actors playing him with different faces, so that the Martian can experience different races, genders, creeds, colors. He will see first hand how we treat those who are different from us--not just green-skinned, but a different hue of humanity. The Martian Manhunter can be a one-character ensemble cast. Clearly there must be a central actor to be his true face, and he will have recurring personas, but it will also be an experimental role--what would an alien being with an expansive ability for empathy be like? He wouldn't pick just one face. He would choose to be all of us. 

The biggest barrier to entry is his name. Neither Martian Manhunter nor J'onn J'onzz is particularly sellable. He arrives on Earth, lost and confused, and he takes the identify of a dead man, his first stolen face. John Jones. Private detective, deceased, mourned by no one. And the Martian Manhunter's first case is to find out why and how someone could die so very alone. 

What do you think? This is all for fun, but I'd love to hear what readers would want to see in their OWN version of Martian Manhunter. Are you a fan of the big green shapeshifter? 
​

So the new Superman trailer is out, and it's got me thinking about the Big Two comic book companies and how I'll likely never write for them - which I never expected to, and once the Indestructibles came about I needed to focus my dreams on my own characters, not one owned by big companies. But way back in 2014 over on my old blog I wrote a few posts about "what if they let me write..." and I've got DC Comics characters on the mind, so I figured I'd repost those old ideas here. 

Funny enough, I actually used a lot of my concepts for Aquaman to build a world for Echo and her crew. 

​I'll post my pitch for Martian Manhunter tomorrow. 

Atlanteans are eco-terrorists. 

Humanity is destroying their kingdom. Their planet. They are preparing to go to war, an alien and unstoppable culture which has been the slumbering giant of earth's superpowers for thousands of years. Like something out of a Lovecraft story, strange men are rising up out of the sea, sinking warships, murdering fishing vessels.

An aircraft carrier is torn wholesale beneath the waves on a Wednesday morning. Not a single human being aboard the craft is ever seen again. And all of its ordinance has been taken.

The next day, three nuclear submarines disappear without a trace.

Oil rigs are attacked in the night. The contents of their drilling gone. Their workers nailed to walls with coral-like knives. Written on the side of one massive oil tank: "The sea is ours."

Manning a lighthouse for his dying father, Arthur Curry does not yet know he is the only who can stop this from happening.

At night, Arthur dreams of the sea. He sees through the eyes of dolphins as they ride the wakes of ships. He feels the cold waters of deep trenches where sharks stalk prey.

When he hears whalesongs, he understands the words.

Arthur thinks he's losing his mind. He tells no one of these dreams.

One night, a dream wakes him. He had been seeing through the eyes of a sea lion, dancing in the currents. A vast maw of teeth rose into his vision. He felt a thousand stings as those teeth tore into his body. He felt the sea lion dying. It wakes Arthur from his sleep. He walks down to the water, careful not to awaken his father. He sits in the sand, staring out at the sea.

And he wonders if he is still dreaming when a woman rises from the waves, her skin pearly white, her face so similar to his own. She knows his name.

"Arthur, my son. You are unique in this world, and we need you. We need you before it's too late for all of us."

Basic premise: war is coming between the Atlanteans and the surface dwellers. The Altanteans plan to use our own weapons against us. Between oil spills, nuclear accidents, overfishing, and global warming, we have all but destroyed their world and they see extermination as the only option.

Arthur Curry (we never call him Aquaman) is the only living half-breed between man and Atlantean, an ill-planned love affair between a sailor and a princess of Atlantis who fell in love with the sky. He can breath air and water; is incredibly strong; is nearly bulletproof and heals at a remarkable rate. He will live hundreds of years if the world doesn't kill him first. He doesn't control sea life in the classic sense but he can jump into their bodies (like wargs from Game of Thrones, really), taking temporary control of any beast in the ocean.

It will be his job to bring both worlds together before there's nothing left for either of them. Opposing him are the hardliners on both sides, and by his side is a young Atlantean named Mera and a lunatic who calls himself King Shark, who is both friend and enemy...

Season 1: focuses on Arthur's dual nature and the fact that neither culture wants him. He was raised on the surface and feels some loyalty to protect them. Through his heroism, he earns the begrudging respect of the Atlanteans and is able to broker a temporary peace... 

Season 2: Shattered by Ocean Lord, who ascends the Throne of Atlantis and targets the surface for war once again. In a medieval challenge for control, Arthur must battle his birthright and become King of Atlantis. He does this, defeating his half-brother, just in time to... 

Season 3: See himself betrayed by the surface. A cabal of corporations and government agencies work to remove the Atlanteans from the equation entirely. Arthur sees all of his work torn apart by greed and ignorance. He heads his Atlanteans against these surface dwelling threats, but when they are defeated... 

Season 4: He finds himself disappointed with both sides of his nature. With a small group of companions, Arthur heads deeper into the ocean to find himself and perhaps a way to unite both sides of the conflict, or to never return and let the two sides destroy each other. 

Throughout the series costumed enemies will be rare. Threats will be larger in scale, as he has to work against the mundane but dangerous surface dwellers and the brutal yet elegant intrigue of Atlantis. In the end Arthur is a simple man who is thrust into the role of king and savior, a role he never wears well. 

*** 

So what do you think--does Aquaman deserve a shot? Or better yet... is there room in the Indestructibles world for its own Atlantean adventures? (EDITOR NOTE: Turns out, there was!) 

Trying something new out - I used to write a lot of very short fiction, before I got into the superhero business, about tiny moments and ordinary people. Little love stories. And I used to write a lot of Christmas and New Years stories, because this is the time of year I feel my mortality the most. I'll post a few this year. True story: these shorts got me my big break with PFP Publishing for the Indestructibles. The owner, Peter Sarno, loved my prose and wanted to publish a short story collection. But the superhero stuff was more marketable, so we went that way instead. Anyway, here's a love story about Christmas and goodbyes. 

For years people have asked if the digital Indestructibles short stories would ever be available in print. I've always said: once there's enough to fill a print book! And now there is. Tales from the Indestructiverse is a new anthology collecting every online-only short story as well as seven brand-new stories. These feature: 

• The first crossover with the Echo and the Sea cast 
• A horror story from an Indestructibles team from centuries ago 
• A never-before-seen villain's origin story that once appeared in the City of Heroes comic book
• And much more! 

I've always wanted to get stories like Gifted, the Soloist, and Blood & Bone into print, so I'm psyched to finally be able to offer it as a paperback. Available now on Amazon or through my web store here. And if you prefer ebooks, it's also available as a complete collection in Kindle. 

Coming up on the ten-year anniversary of the first Indestructibles book and I keep thinking about perspectives that have evolved and how it'd be different if I wrote it now, especially because a few recent readers have said it feels like it was written today. 

A few of the characters weren't intentionally written to be ND, but definitely are - Emily for sure, Kate very likely, maybe Bedlam. Arguments could be made for others. 

In the years since the first edition came out, I've occasionally wondered if Jane is ace/demi. The book was marketed as YA but didn't fit with a lot of the prerequisite tropes, and there wasn't much romance involved. Not by design, just how the characters reacted to the world. 

Emily's pop culture obsession was intentionally evergreen so it wouldn't age out. She likes old nerdy stuff. Would change: she makes jokes a few times about a series I don't want to be associated with anymore, of course. But it feels weird to retroactively edit those out. 

(Speaking of, as the resident Whovian Em would have adored Jodie Whittaker's Doctor, but her favorite remains the 9th. She would have imprinted on Eccleston's feral energy.) 

I absolutely would have avoided the ship having an "AI" persona given what's happening now, but it's such a sci-fi trope I'm not too mad about it. I started working with AI researchers a few years after the book came out; I know so much more now. 

​More to follow... gotta step away for a bit but it's interesting doing a look back at one's own work as a writer. 

It's finally here - a full-cast audiobook of the Indestructibles (Book 1)! Available on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes, the book is produced by Spoken Realms and features the voices of: 

• Gail Shalan as Entropy Emily
• Jennifer Jill Araya as Jane
• Lauren Ezzo as Kate
• Mark Sanderlin as Titus
• Neil Hellegers as Agent Black
• Shiromi Arserio as Val
• Steven Jay Cohen as Billy
• Marni Penning as Bedlam
• and author Matthew Phillion as Doc Silence. 

​
If you enjoy audiobooks, spread the word - the success of Book 1 will determine if we're able to produce the full series in the same format, so be sure to tell your fellow readers! A preview is available on all three apps as well as on TikTok (for those of you who are BookTok fans!). 

At long last, the Indestructibles are coming to Audible! Currently in the last leg of production, book one will be available very soon - featuring a FULL VOICE CAST bringing all of the Indestructibles to life. Listen to the sample below to hear voice actor Gail Shalan as Entropy Emily from Emily's first day with super powers. Stay tuned for more details to follow! 
The cast: 

• Jane - Jennifer Jill Araya
  
• Kate - Lauren Ezzo
  
• Billy - Steven Jay Cohen
  
• Titus - Mark Sanderlin
  
• Emily - Gail Shalan
• Agent Black - Neil Hellegers
• Bedlam - Marni Penning
• Val - Shiromi Arserio
• Doc Silence - Matthew Phillion