3 Things Batman Can Teach You about Creating an Icon

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Most writers want to create the next Harry Potter or Holden Caufield or Tom Sawyer – a character who resonates with the public, transcends race, class, and gender, and appeals to subsequent generations of readers.  In short, an icon.

Recently, TNT aired The Dark Knight – a three-hour blockbuster and the most recent in a long string of movies featuring a perennial American icon, Batman.  While watching the film for the fourth time, I became struck by how fresh it remains and how it reinterprets the character – keeping his essential qualities intact while updating them for a modern audience.

Batman also continues to star in multiple comic books each month, was the subject of a much derided (but still famous) 1960s TV series, and shows up each year as a costume for kids at Halloween.

Not bad for a character who dresses up like a bat, beats up bad guys, and is 72 years old.

So, what makes Batman an icon?  Here are three ideas:

1.  Batman has no powers.  He’s a self-made hero – someone who relies on his training, hard work, and wits.  This idea resonates with many Americans who see themselves as independent hard workers.

Most kids know they will never grow up to be Superman or Green Lantern (unless an alien with a powerful ring happens to fall from the sky into their back yards), but, with enough determination, they could become Batman.

One aspect fans overlook, however, is that Batman (Bruce Wayne) was born wealthy.  He has the resources to train, to create the Bat costume and gadgets, to hide in a secret but well-equipped Batcave, and to employ a butler to look after him. 

But, in a way, Batman’s wealth appeals to another American notion: the idea that we are, as David Brooks put it, “pre-rich.”  All we have to do is win the lottery, work hard, invest, etc., etc.

2. Batman is a loner.  Superman has Lois Lane.  Other characters have or have had steady girlfriends, wives, and soul mates.  But Batman, throughout his long history, has never had a significant other.  Sure, a number of women have come and gone (Julie Madison, Vicki Vale, Silver St. Cloud, to name a few), but none have come to the fore as the one he is destined to be with – except possibly Selina Kyle (Catwoman), but her status on the opposite side of the law precludes Batman from having a long-term relationship with her.

Instead of a regular love interest, Batman has a core group of “buddies” – Robin/Nightwing, Alfred, Commissioner Gordon.  They share in his mission but are not allowed to get too close.  Think this would be a detriment to the character's appeal?  Next time you're with a group of guys, listen to them talk about sports, their cars, their jobs, movies, or anything else that is external to their own lives.  Many men, in particular, like to keep that personal distance and to focus on the "task" at hand.

3. One word: gadgets.  Batmobiles.  Batarangs.  The Utility Belt.  Let’s face it: gadgets appeal to us.  Who wouldn’t like to be able to pull out just the right tool for the job, the right item for the occasion?  Plus, Batman’s gadgets are always cool looking.  In short, Batman is James Bond times ten.

Batman’s reliance on gadgets also separates him from other heroes, such as Superman (who has no gadgets) or Green Lantern or Spider-Man (who rely on one gadget each – power ring and web shooters, respectively).  The only major super-hero who comes close to Batman in terms of gadgets is Iron Man, who wears a suit of amour loaded with technological wonders.

But Batman’s gadgets seem to have a more working class appeal.  They rest in his utility belt until he needs them.  And when he uses them (such as the batarang), he grips them like a hammer. 

There are many other reasons why Batman’s appeal has endured – the tragedy of losing his parents at  a young age, his outlaw status, to name two – but these three factors resonate strongly in The Dark Knight. 

And there are many icons who appeal to us for other reasons.  Superman, as mentioned above, is virtually Batman’s opposite in every way.

So, what makes an icon?  Tapping into that deep reservoir of emotions and associations that make us who we are and who we want to be.

Who is your favorite icon and why?

Related articles

• 'Batman: Year One' clip: Iconic graphic novel gets the animated treatment (insidemovies.ew.com)
• The Dark Knight (1980′s - Present) (nespositobatman.wordpress.com)

Celebrities: Your New Best Friends

The other day, I asked my composition students to write a paragraph describing someone in their lives.  Most students wrote about a friend, a parent, a sibling, or even a child.  One student, however, wrote a glowing paragraph about Mike Vick, the NFL quarterback who served 21 months in prison for operating an illegal dog-fighting ring.

“I’m not judging him for what he did,” the student wrote.  “Mike Vick has been traveling across America[,] teaching people about the lesson he got from his behavior[.]  . . . He has been so humble as a sign of asking forgiveness to the American people.”

So it goes.  Every semester, I get a student paper championing Lady Gaga or Kim Kardashian or some other celebrity.  There’s nothing wrong with this on the surface.  Celebrities have always been a part of American culture, and they have a tremendous impact on young people.

Writing about celebrities also seems perfectly natural.  When I was in high school, I brought a book on the Beatles to school to do a book report on someone I admired.  Before I wrote a single word, however, I was informed that, at my conservative school, we weren’t supposed to listen to that kind of music.

But what troubles me about this most recent experience is how the student interpreted the phrase “someone in your life” to mean a celebrity – a person he had likely never met and knew of in the same way most of us learn about celebrities: through the media.

Now, I’m not questioning his choice of Vick as an idol or the sincerity of Vick’s humility.  Being the non-sports fan that I am, I hadn’t even heard of Vick until I read the student’s paper.  And the celebrities of my generation were also known for bad behavior and acts of public contrition.  Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney served ten days in a Tokyo jail in 1980 (the year Vick was born) for attempting to smuggle marijuana into Japan.  After expressing regret over his actions, McCartney went on to have many more solo hits and even to be knighted.

However, the student’s paper got me thinking about the huge role celebrities play in our lives, how they become like intimate friends to us, and how we buy into the narrative of fallen celebrities making comebacks  – and the dangers this narrative poses.

Celebrities matter to us for at least three reasons:

We get to know them better than we know most of the people in our lives.  Our families and friends may have secrets they keep from us.  If we ask too many questions, they may tell us to mind our own business.  But celebrities’ lives are out there for all to see: the good, the bad, the ugly.  If a celebrity makes a mistake, you can bet it will be all over the news.  (Think of Michael Jackson dangling his baby over the balcony, or Michael Richards or Mel Gibson making racist remarks.) 

Constant coverage may seem to glorify bad behavior; however, it also serves a vital purpose in showing us the “truth” behind our idols – truth they can’t hide.  There is a sense of security in knowing the truth, no matter how ugly it gets.

It’s a one-sided relationship.  Celebrities ask nothing of you.  They don’t hit you up for money.  They don’t tell you to clean your room.  They do not ask you for the intimate details of your life, and they do not judge you for your own mistakes.

Celebrities, in short, can be anything we want or need them to be.  They are like the toys we played with as children: malleable, always available for our love and affection.

Celebrities make many of the same mistakes we make and come out winning.  Vick is a good example of this.  According to Wikipedia, he declared bankruptcy and was released by his former team, the Atlanta Falcons, after his conviction; however, he has since been reinstated by the Philadelphia Eagles. 

Of course, not every celebrity makes a comeback – Pete Rose, for example – but those who do assure us that we, too, can recover from mistakes.

In this sense, celebrities serve the same function fairy tales used to, before they were cleaned up by Charles Perrault and Walt Disney.  Early versions of Cinderella, for example, were replete with blood and gore, and real consequences for bad behavior.  Scholars such as Bruno Bettelheim believe that early fairy tales were meant to mirror children’s deepest, darkest feelings, not give them pristine role models to emulate. 

When a celebrity rebounds from a disastrous personal mistake, we rejoice – because if they can do it, we can, too.

And, on the surface, that’s fine.  Yet celebrities these days are so skilled at manipulating the narrative, of spinning it to their advantage, that one has to question what is really truth and what isn’t.

Think of Charlie Sheen, who spun his outlandish behavior into enormous media attention.  Even celebrities who have no apparent connection with him were asked to comment on him, including Sharon and Kelly Osbourne, when they were interviewed by Piers Morgan months ago.  And all the celebrities trot out the same blather: they think Sheen’s making a mistake, he’s ruining his life, etc.  But is he really?

And, for that matter, why is it that celebrities’ opinions matter?  Why do we need to know what they think about other celebrities, the president, the war in Afghanistan, or anything, really?  Yet they get asked.  And they opine.  And we eat it up.  (Or at least the media attention given to every celebrity utterance suggests we do.)

The downside to all of this?  The attention we give to celebrities distorts our perception of reality.  It creates false expectations of what we (especially young people) look for in real relationships.  (Think of girls who believe they need to look like supermodels in order to get boyfriends.)  It can mean that we overlook the real people in our lives – people who hide things from us and who demand something in return for their friendship and love, people who may reject us because we’re not perfect. 

What does all this have to do with writing?  Not much, really.  Except that many of us aspire to being the next J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown, or (fill in name of your choice).  Celebrity authors – and the characters they create – are not immune to the narrative and both the benefits and dangers it poses.

8 Things Blogging Can Teach You

It’s been a little less than six months since I started “The Semi-Great Gildersleeve.”  I’ve posted 30-odd times about topics ranging from the writing process to getting published, from philosophical ramblings on the importance of super-heroes to chapters of my novel-in-progress. I’ve linked to other blogs, I’ve tweeted, and I’ve Facebooked (if that's even the right term).

So, what does it all add up to?

What have I learned from blogging? And what can blogging teach you, should you decide to start one (or even if you already have)?

1. Patience. It takes time to build an online platform.  A knowledgeable friend recently told me it takes a year to build an online audience.  With that in mind, the next thing I've learned is . . .

2. Gratitude. It's gratifying to look at your stats and see "hits" checking out your blog on a regular basis.  Not all of these "hits" may be regular readers.  Some may have discovered your blog by accident.  Some may be spambots.  But at least there's a reasonable expectation that SOME PEOPLE know you're out there and some of those are interested in what you have to say.    

3. Understand User-Tracking Tools.  Still a work in progress for me!  Back in May, I posted Google Analytics' source code (if I even have the terminology right) onto my blog.  For a few weeks, it tracked traffic, and then, after June 13, it showed my blog had flatlined, even though I knew it was receiving hits.

It turned out that GA had changed its code and you had to copy and paste the new code onto your site.  (Someone recently told me you have to paste this code onto every page!)  This is still a learning process for me, but it shows the tools that are out there to help bloggers grow their audience.

4. Find the right image. We're a visual culture, and readers expect to see something other than text when they log onto your site.  If you're a struggling writer like me, you can't afford to pay royalties for clip art, so sites such as Microsoft Office are a Godsend. 

The six-figure silhouette I’ve used for some of my novel chapters has turned out to be a perfect fit!  Each silhouette could easily represent a member of the Power Club's eventual lineup.  (Guess who's who!)  

On the other hand, it can be frustrating and time consuming to search for just the right image.  Some images have been selected for comic effect, others to create a sense of mystery.  A few have admittedly been a stretch. 

5. The benefits of networking. If you want people to visit your blog, visit theirs.  This is not as mercenary as it sounds.  Reading other blogs is rewarding – particularly writing and publishing blogs.  I’ve learned a lot through sites such as Wordplay and A Newbie's Guide to Publishing.  Interacting with other bloggers creates an all-important sense of community.

6. Know what your readers want.  I'm also still trying to figure this one out.  But it helps to have a target audience.  That is, don't expect the Whole Wide World to beat down virtual doors to read your blog.  Target readers who have the same interests you have.  My blog is geared toward writers -- particularly first-time authors who are serious about becoming published.  

But this blog also exists to promote my own work and to build a buzz for my novel-in-progress, The Power Club™.  Sometimes I feel that the two goals at cross-purposes (after all, my target audience for the novel is YA), but it's gratifying to see so many hits on my novel chapters.  

7. Begin. Just Begin.  Though I created this blog in 2009, I didn’t “launch” it until March of this year.  Why?  I had no idea why I was launching a blog to begin with – it just seemed to be the thing to do (which is never a good reason to do anything).  Even after I joined a writers’ group and learned the necessity of building an online platform, it took months for me to overcome inertia and dive right in.

But I’m glad I did.  If nothing else, I’ve learned the most important lesson of all:

8. Taking chances is worth it.

Excerpt: Power Club Chapter 3: "Attacked!" [part 2]

Image via Wikipedia

Now that September is here, I'm going to scale these blog posts down to once a week.

I hope you've enjoyed these glimpses into Damon's world.  If you have, leave a comment.
*

            The long, narrow alley—a purple-gray mixture of concrete and gravel—stretched the length of the block. Damon had never ridden his bike all the way down the alley before and hadn’t gone there at all since the year after he had moved to the district.  He and Eldon had wandered down there when an older kid jumped out of the back yard at the end of the block.  He said his name was Larry and that he owned that end of the alley, which he called “Larry’s End.”  When Eldon told him that no one owned the alley, Larry stretched his fingers apart.  They grew like huge spider-legs.  Larry chased Damon and Eldon halfway up the alley and told them never to come back.  Damon hadn’t, ever since.  But he was older now and riding a ram-handle-barred ten-speed.  He decided to chance it.

            Damon glided down the bumpy surface of the alley, his bike gaining momentum as he went.  He watched the pavement roll by beneath him, carefully looking out for rocks or other objects that might throw him.  The middle part of the alley smoothed out, and Damon took his feet off the pedals, pretending he was riding his bike on a high wire with a moat full of crocodiles underneath.  He almost didn’t notice as he approached the end of the alley.

            He heard leaves rustling behind a gigantic rose bush on his left.  He stopped his bike and said, “Who’s there?”  No one answered.  Damon shrugged and began pedaling again.  The end of the alley was just a couple of houses away.

            He was riding very close to the garages and back yards on his right.  As he approached the second to last garage, something shot out from the other side—a long, thin stick that looked like it was covered with skin!  Damon shook his head, not believing what he was seeing, and swerved to miss the stick.  However, the stick bent itself and followed him.  Before he could swerve again, the stick jammed itself into the spokes of his front tire, bringing it to a sudden halt.  Damon and the rest of the bike, however, kept moving.

            The world spun around and battered him from every side.  Pain shot through his knee and the rest of his body.  Jumbled images—the bike, the ground, a garage, a face, the rose bush, the ground again.  He cried out, his voice a broken stream of sounds. 

            And then everything stopped.  He was lying on his back, the concrete and gravel digging into his skin.  The sky and rooftops continued to spin—he felt sick to his stomach.  Pain everywhere. 

            “That was stupid!”

            Damon struggled to crane his neck and see who had spoken.  An older boy, thin and with short, cropped hair, approached.  He was older now, but Damon recognized him immediately.

            “I told you a long time ago, this end of the alley belongs to me!”

            “Larry!”

            “That’s right.”  The boy proudly held up his right forefinger, which was several inches longer than normal.  “My power’s grown some.  I can stretch one finger at a time and make it hard as metal . . . perfect for stopping twerps like you.”

            “You don’t own this end of the alley!” Damon bellowed.  He was trying not to act hurt.

            “Yes, I do,” Larry replied, his finger shrinking back to normal size.  “This alley belongs to me and my friends.”

            Friends?

            A boy with shaggy blonde hair came out from behind the rose bush.  Damon recognized him as one of the eighth graders from the playground.

            “We’ve never actually met,” the boy said as he stood over Damon.  “Name’s Rusty Reddick.  But I know all about you, Neumeyer.  See, I’ve been watching you and that four-eyed geek practice your powers at school.  I know what you can do.  Let’s see if you like what I can do.”  And as he said this, he leaned back and looked at the sun and his body began to glow.

Excerpt: Power Club Chapter 3: "Attacked!" [part 1]

    For earlier chapters, see the menu on the right.       

            Damon met Arick at recess every day for the first month of school.  Andy would sometimes join them, but other times he would go off with some of the other boys and play football.  Damon couldn’t understand why.  The boys had all agreed that they wouldn’t use their powers to play football, but, to Damon, that sounded like no fun.

            Instead, Damon and Arick met on the lower playground, which was conspicuously free from eighth graders, and went through their paces.  Damon strained to make the darkspace darker, but, for awhile, nothing happened.

            “Maybe it was a fluke,” Arick suggested.

            Damon didn’t believe that, so he continued to strain, and to even practice when no one else was looking—in the cloakroom or in the basement at home.  He couldn’t tell if his darkspace was getting darker—his night vision worked just the same—but somehow he could feel the darkness changing, growing stronger.

            And then it happened again. 

            “It’s like making a cake,” Damon said, amazed.  “I keep piling layer upon layer, like it was chocolate frosting!”

            Arick had to strain to see through each layer.  Eventually he could do it, but it took him longer every time.

            “If my radar vision continues to grow,” he boasted, “maybe I can join the Army as a spy!”

            Damon didn’t want to join the Army.  He wanted to join the Power Club or start a special club himself.  If he and Arick kept this up for another year, he figured, they'd be old enough to start their own.  

            But they didn’t keep it up.  “Recess is for fun," Arick said, as the weather started to change and the first leaves started to fall, "not for working harder.”  And that was that.  Damon wondered if the Power Club would practice with him, even if he wasn’t a member, but they said no.

            “We don’t have time for amateurs,” Vee said.

            Damon burned at those words.  He didn’t want to be an amateur.  He had grown up across the alley from Kyle and Vee, and Danner lived just across the street.  It bothered him to see them running by his house—Kyle teleporting at will, Vee racing up and down the block, Danner growing so high he could step over cars—while he could do nothing.  He couldn’t even show them how much his power had grown since the try out.

             “Damon, you’re worrying too much about this stuff,” his mother said after he had spent one day too many ragging on about increasing his power.  “I don’t want you to forget what it’s like to be a normal kid.”

            “But I’m not normal,” he said with pride.

            Her face stiffened, as if she were holding something back.  “There’s nothing wrong with being normal.”  She looked out the window, where the leaves on the tree which stood silent guard in the back yard were starting to change color.  “It’ll be getting cold soon.  Why don’t you go outside and ride your bike?”

            Damon didn’t want to, but he didn’t want to tell her why.  Dad had spent a lot of money to buy Damon a ten-speed to replace the bike that had been stolen.  It was a sleek, two-toned blue bicycle with racing stripes and handlebars that bent forward like a ram’s horns—the kind of bike Kyle was riding a year or two ago.  But Kyle had just helped his father rebuild an old Mustang and was anticipating driving it when he got his license next year, and Danner was talking about getting a motorcycle for his next birthday.  Compared to a Mustang and a motorcycle, a ten-speed seemed childish. 

            Dutifully, he went outside anyway.  Maybe he’d go across the alley and see if Kyle wanted to play catch or do something that didn’t involve powers.  He trotted down the back steps into the alley and saw that Kyle was, indeed, in his own back yard, holding a ragged baseball above the head of his ash-colored Beardie pup, Fergie.  The little dog yipped and jumped on Kyle’s legs.

            “Here, Ferg!  Here, Ferg!” Kyle shouted, then he arched back—“Goooo get it!” —and tossed the ball.

            The pup bolted after the ball, but there was a fft!—and the ball vanished in midair, to reappear a second later back in Kyle’s hand.  Frantic and confused, Fergie darted back and forth.  Kyle burst into laughter.

            Damon changed his mind about asking Kyle if he wanted to play catch.  Instead, he went to the garage, climbed on his ten-speed, and rode past Kyle’s yard without bothering to say hello.

Excerpt: Power Club Chapter 2: "Tryout" [part 2]

* * *

            So Damon practiced—at home, on his brother.

            Eldon was willing—he stood still in the east room until the darkspace appeared.  Then he tried to outrun it by dashing into the living room. Eldon was no Vee, of course, but he could run pretty fast when he wanted to.

            After a few times, Damon thought the darkspace was coming faster.  Then Eldon nearly collided with Mom as she was carrying a basket of laundry through the living room. “Your power is not a toy,” she scolded Damon.  “You don’t want El to fall and hurt himself like he did just before we moved to the district.”

            Damon hated it when she brought that up.  It was years ago and he could barely remember it.

            “But I need to practice,” he insisted.

            “Why?”

            Damon told her about the Power Club.

            Mom set the basket of laundry on the floor.  “Damon, I don’t want you hanging out with those boys.”

            “Why not?”

            “It’s bad enough that the district looks the other way and lets kids pick on each other.  But letting them form a club without adult supervision?  What if someone gets hurt?  You were lucky last time.  A guardian angel was watching out for you and Eldon.”

            Damon rolled his eyes.  He knew his mother wouldn’t budge when she started talking about guardian angels. 

            So Damon tabled practicing for a few weeks until school began.  On the first day of class, his new teacher, Mrs. Fox, told the class about special programs that would train them to use their powers for the military or to work in the district when they grew up.  But Damon couldn’t wait that long.  Not with the Power Club in his very own neighborhood.

            Recess was the only other option.  Kids were allowed to run around the playground and test their powers, with the teachers only hanging back to make sure no one went too far.  On the first day of class, Damon told his pals, Andy and Arick, to meet him on the upper level of the playground, by the basketball poles.

            Andy went first.  He stood facing one of the basketball poles and took a deep breath, then let out an explosive frost that covered the entire pole in seconds.  Next, Damon tried creating a darkspace around another pole.  Arick timed them, studying a stopwatch through his thick glasses.

            “He’s got you beat by four seconds,” Arick said seriously.

            Damon and Andy started to try again on different poles.

            “Hey, don’t freeze all the basketball poles!”

            They turned to see four older boys running toward them.  Eighth graders. 

            “Basketball poles are for playing basketball, dummies!” one of the boys, who had blonde, shaggy hair, taunted them.  “You’re going to ruin them!”

            “No, we’re not.” Damon said.  He knew that Andy’s frost breath would wear off in a few seconds and there were never any lasting effects from his darkspace.  But the older boys didn’t seem to care.

            “Get lost!” the blonde boy shouted.  He stood in front of one of the frozen poles and looked up at the sky.  Then Damon watched amazed as the other’s body began to glow, the air around them turning very hot.  The melted ice drained off the basketball poles and evaporated on the playground.

            One of the other boys bent over and transformed himself into something resembling a large, metallic ball.  Then all three of the other boys began to toss him around and throw him toward the hoops, ignoring Damon and his friends.

            Damon knew it was useless to protest that they had been there first.  One didn’t argue with eighth graders if one hoped to live. 

            “Come on,” Arick said, with resignation.

            They ran to the lower playground, where a swing set, a jungle gym, and a mock castle waited.  The lower playground was for younger kids, but they had already had their recess, so the playground was deserted.

            “What are we doing here?” Andy asked.

            “I want Damon to try his power on me,” Arick said in a self-important tone.

            Damon understood what Arick meant.  As Arick’s glasses had gotten thicker over the years, his radar sight had increased.  Damon stretched out his arms and released the darkspace over himself, Arick, and part of the playground.   When Damon’s night vision kicked in, he saw Arick take off the thick glasses and put them in his pocket.  Then Arick wandered around, as if he were seeing the swing set and the jungle gym and the mock castle for the first time.  He sauntered around the castle and through the swings and, to Damon’s astonishment, never collided with anything.

            “This is too easy!” Arick shouted in Damon’s direction.  “Can’t you do anything else?”

            Is that the best you can do? The Power Club’s rejection echoed in Damon’s mind, and being driven away from the basketball hoops made those words seem even louder.  I’ll show you!

            He concentrated, trying somehow to make the darkspace stronger.  Maybe I can make it solid!  But his efforts seemed to have no effect on Arick, who climbed the jungle gym and swung off of it with abandon.

            Then Arick stopped swinging.  He sat up on the metal bars and looked around as if he were lost.

            “Damon?  Damon!” he shouted, scared.

            “I’m right here,” Damon replied, opening a soundspace.

            “Where?”

            Damon commanded the darkspace to go away, and, instantly, it vanished.  Arick looked around, blinked, retrieved his glasses from his pocket, and put them on.  Then he cautiously climbed down off the jungle gym.

            “What happened?”

            “I don’t know.  Everything sort of disappeared.   It was like your darkness somehow got . . . darker.”

Excerpt: Power Club Chapter 2: "Tryout" [part 1]

See the menu on the right side of the screen for excerpts from the Prologue and 
Chapter 1.      

  

"Is that the best you can do?” shouted Veryl Evans as he raced past Damon.

            “That’s not fair!” Damon shouted back.  “Hold still!”

            Veryl—or Vee, as he preferred—ran in circles around Damon, easily evading the darkspace. “If we were bad guys, we wouldn’t hold still.”  His voice seemed to come from everywhere.

Damon knew Vee was right, so he tried to make the darkspace come faster.  But it came slowly, as always, like a gentle cloud flowing out of Damon’s body.  By the time it had spread ten feet, Vee was cackling from the other side of Mackintosh Park.

            Damon inhaled, making the darkspace go away, and glowered at the speck of a boy who was a year younger than him but faster than anyone he knew.  Damon had been delighted when he’d heard that three kids from his own neighborhood were forming a special club.  He’d hounded Vee and the other two for weeks, begging them to let him join.  Finally, they agreed to a try-out:  Damon would have to best at least one of them in a contest of powers.  Damon had readily agreed, thinking that inside his darkspace, the others wouldn’t be able to see to use their powers.  Vee had just proved him wrong. 

            Damon turned to face his next opponent, Danner (“Don’t call me Danny!”) Young.  Though only a year older than Damon, but he stood two heads taller.  Damon commanded the darkspace to move as high as it would go.  Danner seemed disoriented at first, but he grew . . . ten feet, fifteen, twenty . . . and kept growing.  Damon’s heart flopped when he saw the boy’s head and neck disappear from the darkspace. 

            “Ah, nothing like a bath!” Danner’s voice boomed from somewhere above.  “But now it’s time to get out of the tub.”  Damon winced at the stupid joke, but it was he who felt stupid as Danner’s torso and legs turned and calmly walked away from the darkspace.

            “That’s a neat trick,” came a voice from somewhere near Damon.  He turned and saw that his third and final opponent was standing still in the darkness, arms folded about himself.  “Hey, it’s cold in here,” said Kyle Powell.  “I didn’t realize that darkness could get this cold.”  Damon smiled, thinking he still had a chance to impress at least one member of the Power Club.  

            He opened a soundspace and said, “What are you standing there for?  Why don’t you teleport?”

            Kyle started at the voice from nowhere. 

“I don’t teleport if I can’t see where I’m going,” he answered, looking around and squinting.  “Might merge with a wall or something.”

            Damon grinned with disbelief.  Not only was Kyle the most powerful of the three, he was also the oldest.  If Damon could defeat him, he’d be accepted for sure.  He closed the soundspace and rushed Kyle, planning to trip him.  A feeling of immense power overcame Damon as he rushed toward the unsuspecting Kyle, and then—

            fft!       

            Damon felt as if his insides were being scrambled.  There was no pain—just a sense that the parts of his body were being rearranged.  Blue sky . . . hot July air . . . and then he fell, landing on his feet and falling on his back.

            After several seconds, he began to feel less dizzy.  Kyle teleported ME outside the darkspace!   Damon didn't even know this was possible.  He craned his neck to see what the darkspace looked like from the outside.  There it stood, about fifty feet away: a huge, cloud-like inkspot floating on the park.  Awesome!  It floated for some time, and Damon wondered if it would just stay there and if Kyle would be able to find his way out.  Finally, the dark cloud faded into a murky grey and then vanished altogether, leaving only Kyle—standing where he had been and looking unfazed.

“You okay?” he shouted to Damon.

            “I thought you said you couldn’t teleport!”

            “I said I don’t teleport.  But I keep my teleporter field on, just in case.”

            Kyle jogged over to Damon and offered a hand, but Damon was already forcing himself up—queasy stomach or no.  Bad enough that he looked foolish.  He did not want to look weak. “You could have teleported me into a wall,” he scolded Kyle.

            “I doubt it,” Kyle replied.  “I know Mack Park pretty well.  All I had to do was make sure you were a few feet off the ground.”

            Vee raced back from the other side of the park, and Danner returned to his normal height.  Both were laughing at Damon.

            “That was so funny!” Vee said.  “You just appeared out of nowhere and began flapping around like a fish.”

            “Yeah, I guess you tried to sneak up on Kyle,” said Danner.  “I tried that once.  Learned my lesson the hard way, too.”

            His comment made Damon feel better, as if not all were lost.  Maybe the Power Club would give him another chance.  “So, what happens now?” he said.

            “Now, we vote,” Kyle said.  “In private.”

            Damon jogged several feet away and watched while the others huddled and whispered.  He respected their rules, hoping they would take that into account.  But when Kyle came over alone, his confidence melted.

            “We think your power’s neat, but you’re not ready to join the Power Club.  You need more practice.”

Excerpt: Power Club Chapter 1: "A Special Club" [part 2]

For Part One, go here.

 

* * *    

           “Watch where you’re going!”

            Damon’s bike skidded to a halt.  He looked around, but he couldn’t see anyone.  Just a strange cloud, like a pillar of smoke from somebody burning trash.  But the voice had almost been in his ear.

            He had never been to this part of the district before.  This neighborhood was two blocks up the hill from where he lived, but it didn’t look much different from his own neighborhood.  White clapboard houses and brick bungalows dotted neatly kept yards with trees and street lights all around.  In one of yards, a woman raked leaves and two small children played.  They didn’t act as if they’d heard anything.

            Rattled, he started to say, “Who are you?” and “Where are you?” at the same time.  It came out as “Woo are you?”

            “Ha!  Dumb kid can’t talk.”  This time, the voice was right in front of Damon.  It was a kid’s voice, deep and nasal.

            “I’m not dumb!” Damon shouted.  The woman and two children looked at him.

            Damon felt as he wanted to crawl into the nearby sewer.  He started to pedal away, but the bike wouldn’t move.

            “You can’t go,” the voice said.

            It felt as if someone were standing in front of him and holding onto the handlebars, but there was no one there, only the cloud, which grew thicker and thicker, until it transformed into a grinning face.

            “You’re not supposed to use your powers in public,” Damon said.

            “You can if you’re one of us!” another voice said.  Damon looked up to see a boy with bat-like wings connecting his arms to his body.  The boy flew around and around.  “Don’t you know about the special clubs?”

            “Special clubs?”

            “The district lets kids form clubs so we can learn to use our powers,” said the cloud-face which expanded into a blocky boy, much bigger than Damon.  “Don’t you have a special club in your neighborhood?”

            “No,” Damon said.

            “That’s too bad,” the cloud boy said.  “‘cause if you’re part of a special club, you can use your powers in public.  The district lets you do whatever you want.”

            “Why would they do that?” said Damon, skeptically.

            “Who knows?” said the batwing boy.  “Maybe they’re training us to be an army of some kind.”  He landed next to Damon.  He was tall and thin, his face contorted into a goofy smile.

            “Or maybe they just want to see what we can do,” said the cloud boy, “so we can work together as a team and get rid of the weak kids.  What’s your name?”

            “Damon.  What’s yours?”

            The batwing boy's goofy grin turned into a scowl.  “You don’t get to ask us our names!  This is our neighborhood.  You don’t belong here.”

            “Yeah,” said the cloud boy, “and since we can use our powers in public and you can’t, that means we can do anything we want to you.”

            Damon felt a chill go down his spine.  He looked over to the yard where the woman was raking leaves, but she was pushing her two children inside her house.  

            “Now,” said the cloud boy, gripping the handlebars of Damon’s bike, “give us your bike.”

* * *

            Five minutes later, Damon ran all the way home.  He had put up a fight, but it was no use.  Even if he had been allowed to use his darkspace, it would have come too slowly.  The cloud boy had puffed his cheeks and blew Damon right off the seat of his bike.  Damon tried to fight back, but it was no use against a boy whose bat wings could pummel Damon from all sides.  Damon took off only when the cloud boy said he was going to call in some other members of his special club.  Besides, there was no point in fighting them.  Damon would simply tell his mother that two boys had stolen his bicycle.  Mom would call the district police, who would take care of it.

            Damon’s house stood on the corner of 92^nd and Felcher Streets.  The two-story looked like a mansion compared to the smaller houses on the same block.  Its triangle roof arced down on both sides of the north-facing side while the east side of the house jutted out from the overhang.  A semi-circle porch stretched from the front door all around the east side and overlooked a concrete retaining wall that bordered the sidewalk like a garrison.  One of Damon’s friends said the house looked like a castle.  Damon liked that idea and, even now, he pretended he was a knight who had been accosted by highwaymen.  He would tell “the queen” what had happened and she would send for reinforcements.

            Damon leaped up the five stairs leading the back yard and zoomed past his brother, Eldon, who was playing with some friends.  The younger boys shouted at him, but he paid no attention.  He did not want them to see him in this condition.

            “What happened?” his mother asked with alarm when he entered the kitchen. 

            Rapidly and out of breath, Damon told her everything.  When he had finished, his mother took a paper towel and began to blot his cut lip.  “Hold still,” she said.

            “Mom!” he said.  Where are your priorities?  The bloody lip can wait. “Call the police so they can get my bike back!”

            “Don’t worry about your bike.  Your father and I will buy you a new one next spring.”

            “MOM!!”

            She lowered the paper towel and sat back in her kitchen chair.  “You said that the boys were part of a special club?”

            “That’s what they said.”

            “Well, they were probably right.  Remember when we first moved to the district and your dad’s car was stolen?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well, it wasn’t really stolen.  It was destroyed by someone who could collapse metal on itself.  When your dad reported it to the police, they said that sometimes kids who belong to special clubs are allowed to do things like that so the district can see what they can do.  The district gave your father a new car, but he had to promise not to say what had really happened.”

            Damon thought this over.  The new car was smaller than the one he had been told was stolen.  It had only an AM/FM stereo, not a CD player.  It didn’t even have electric windows. 

            “Anyway,” his mother was saying, “if you keep quiet about this, maybe the district will buy you a new bicycle, too.”

            “No way!” Damon said, convinced that the district would probably get him a smaller bike. “I want my old bike back.”

              “I’m sorry, honey,” Mom said, brushing his hair in a way that told him there would be no reinforcements.  The queen just sat there and wiped blood from her knight’s lip, which stung when she touched it.  Damon felt like he had been stripped of honor. 

            “I want to join a special club,” he said.

            “There aren’t any in this neighborhood,” she replied curtly. 

            “Then I’ll start one.”

            “You’re too young.  Besides, why do you want to start a club?  Just go outside and play with your brother and his friends.  Forget about the bicycle.”

            But Damon could not forget.  He lived in the district because he had to, because he had a special power.  But he couldn’t use that power in public—unless he joined a special club.  Damon said nothing more about it, but secretly he decided that if a club ever got started in his neighborhood, he’d be the first to join.

Excerpt: Chapter 1: "A Special Club" [part 1]

  Another excerpt from my novel, The Power Club™.  Very few people have seen this chapter.  Let me know what you think.          

           “Damon!  Don’t do that in public.”

            Damon started at the sound of his mother’s voice.  She had been standing over at the cash register of Anilora’s Grocery Store, talking to Anita, the elderly lady who owned the store with her husband, Loren.  Damon had been way over by the pop cooler, chatting with Brandon, a boy he’d just met.  Brandon had said, “If you show me your power, I’ll show you mine.”

            So Damon exhaled, and the darkspace came.

            The boy freaked out—sometimes they did—and tried to run away, but he couldn’t see where he was going.  As soon as Damon’s night vision kicked in, he could see the boy fumbling his way past the cooler and the potato chip rack.  Damon laughed—he didn’t mean for it to be funny, but it was.

            And then he heard his mother’s voice. 

            He closed his eyes and inhaled.  The darkspace vanished.

            “I wasn’t doing anything!” he protested as his mother marched over to collect him.  “I was just showing Brandon—”

            “And was Brandon showing you his power?”

            Damon glanced at the other boy, who lowered his head and snickered.  Damon realized he’d been tricked again.

            “You don’t even have a power, do you?” Damon accused the other.

            Sheepishly, the other boy shook his head.  “My sister does.  She can see through metal.”  He then took off, leaving Damon to face his mother alone.

She planted her hands on her hips.  “Damon, you know you’re not allowed to use your powers in public.  You don’t want the district police to send you to Alaska.”

            Damon was too old to fall for this.  Only the worst kids, the ones with powers they couldn’t control, got sent to the special facility in Alaska. 

            “What’s the use of having a power,” he protested, “if I can’t use it?”

            A familiar cackle roared from near the cash register.  Anita, who was much shorter than Damon’s mom and bent over, came out from behind the counter.  “My Hector used to be the same way,” she said in that lilting drawl that indicated she was about to take over the conversation.  “He used to be able to levitate things, you know, and he just had to show off.  One day, the district police gave him a choice,” Anita said, looking directly at Damon so he couldn’t possibly miss the point of the story.  “Either he could stop using his power or have the null operation.”

            “What happened?” Damon said, eyes wide with terror.  The null operation was a strictly voluntary procedure that kids with powers could undergo when they were older.  The operation permanently stripped away a power.

            Anita looked down at Damon with a hang-dog expression.  “What do you think?  Hector had the operation.  He lives in Portland now with his wife and kids.”

            Damon let out a breath of contempt for the injustice of it all: Being forced to lose one’s power was the worst thing he could possibly imagine.  He had never met Hector, but he felt empathy for him.

            “But you and Loren stayed?” Mom asked.  Everyone knew that when a “special child” lost his or her power, the family was forced to leave the district.

            “We were the only grocery store in the district then,” Anita said wistfully.  “That was before the mall was built.  The district let us stay because they wanted kids like Damon to grow up in a normal neighborhood.”

            Damon winced.  He hated the notion that things were done in the district just for him and for other kids like him.  It reminded him that he wasn’t “normal,” after all.

            “Tell you what, Damon,” Anita said, turning to retrieve something from the counter.  Damon knew what it was before she turned back.  Sure enough, she bore a jar full of flavored candy sticks.  “Mind your mother, and I’ll let you have one of these.  Is root beer still your favorite?”

            Though Damon was too old to be bribed in this fashion, he didn’t want to hurt the old lady’s feelings.  Besides, free candy was free candy.  Even so, he carefully hid the root beer stick among the bags of groceries as he carried them out to the car, just in case Brandon or some other kid was watching.