New IG page, new fans!

Very excited that I started an Instagram page (link at right) and got new followers (sometimes I'm old and forget that nobody reads blogs anymore)! People who are actually interested in reading my books! That makes me very excited. I started designing bookmarks, too, just for shits and giggles and then decided to get them printed at Vistaprint. I only ordered 15, tho, because I'm not sure how much demand there is. 

Now I have to make sure all my books are correct because people will be buying them (the paperbacks, I mean; the Kindle versions can be updated).

I mean, maybe.

well, this is fun.

ChatGPT is mesmerizing. 

Prompt: "write a Sweet Valley High story that combines fantasy and horror, about a new student at Sweet Valley High who is very mysterious, named Piper Quintin, with unnaturally red hair and luminous green eyes, who dresses all in black and wears Victorian boots. Piper turns out to be a witch who casts a spell on Elizabeth Wakefield's boyfriend Todd Wilkins and makes him fall in love with her, breaking Elizabeth's heart, and who also steals Jessica Wakefield's position on the cheerleading team and turns all the other cheerleaders against her, so both twins are miserable, but they must work together and do a little sleuthing in order to discover a secret about Piper that reveals her weakness so they can defeat her."

>>It was a new year at Sweet Valley High, and the arrival of a new student was causing quite a stir. Piper Quintin was a mystery, with her unnaturally red hair and luminous green eyes, always dressed in black with Victorian boots that clacked ominously in the hallways.

Elizabeth Wakefield, the school's resident journalist, was eager to get an interview with the enigmatic Piper. But when Elizabeth tried to approach her, Piper only gave her a cold stare and a haughty smirk before turning on her heel and walking away.

Meanwhile, Jessica Wakefield, the school's resident cheerleader, had her sights set on becoming captain of the cheerleading team. But Piper had also set her sights on the coveted position, and soon she had managed to turn all the other cheerleaders against Jessica, leaving her out in the cold.

To make matters worse, Piper had cast a spell on Elizabeth's boyfriend Todd Wilkins, making him fall hopelessly in love with her. Elizabeth was heartbroken as Todd seemed to have forgotten all about her.

The twins knew that Piper was up to something, and they were determined to find out what it was. They did some digging and discovered that Piper was a witch, with powers beyond their wildest imaginations. But they also learned that Piper had a weakness - a rare and valuable gemstone that was said to be the source of her power.

The twins set out to find the gemstone, hoping to use it to defeat Piper once and for all. They tracked down an old bookstore in the outskirts of Sweet Valley, where they found a dusty old book that contained the key to the gemstone's location.

With the book in hand, the twins set out to find the gemstone, braving the treacherous wilderness and overcoming countless obstacles. Finally, they reached their destination and found the gemstone, shining brightly in the center of a dark cavern.

They took the gemstone back to Sweet Valley High and confronted Piper, who was busy casting spells on unsuspecting students. The twins held up the gemstone and Piper recoiled in horror, her powers fading away as the gemstone drained her of her strength.

With Piper defeated, Todd came back to his senses and returned to Elizabeth, and Jessica regained her position on the cheerleading team. The twins had worked together to solve the mystery of Piper Quintin, and had emerged victorious.

But as they walked away from the defeated witch, the twins couldn't help but feel a little uneasy. They knew that there were other mysterious forces lurking in Sweet Valley, and they were always ready for the next challenge.

I asked ChatGPT to write an "evil story"

Prompt: "write a Sweet Valley Twins story that combines fantasy and horror and is also meta, about how 12-year-old twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, who both have long sun-streaked blond hair and blue-green eyes, with matching dimples in their left cheeks, are left with a new babysitter who turns out to be a teenage witch, named Piper, with red hair and green eyes, who wants revenge on them for being terrible characters who rotted the minds of pre-teen girls back in the 80s and 90s"

Once upon a time, in the idyllic town of Sweet Valley, Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, the beloved twins with long sun-streaked blond hair and matching dimples in their left cheeks, were left alone with a new babysitter. Their parents had gone out of town, and they needed someone to watch over them.

The babysitter's name was Piper, a teenage witch with red hair and green eyes. At first, the twins thought Piper was just another teenage girl, but soon, they discovered her true identity.

As soon as Piper realized who she was babysitting, she plotted her revenge. Elizabeth and Jessica were infamous for their perfect lives and unrealistic expectations that they set for pre-teen girls in the 80s and 90s. Piper, who was once a huge fan of the series, now hated the Wakefield twins for what she believed was the perpetuation of toxic beauty standards and shallow values.

That night, as the twins lay in their beds, they heard strange noises coming from downstairs. It sounded like chanting and spells. They both got out of bed and crept down the hallway to investigate. As they approached the living room, they saw Piper in the middle of a circle of candles, chanting in a language they didn't understand.

Suddenly, Piper turned and saw them. Her eyes were filled with fury, and her voice boomed through the room. "I curse you, Wakefield twins! You will suffer for your sins against young girls everywhere!"

The room was engulfed in a bright light, and the twins felt a sudden surge of fear. When the light faded, they were no longer in their home. They were in a strange, twisted version of Sweet Valley where everything was dark and twisted.

As they looked around, they realized that they were inside a book. The world was full of horror and fantasy elements, and they were characters in their own story. They had to find a way to break the curse and escape back to the real world.

Elizabeth and Jessica soon realized that the only way to break the curse was to rewrite their story. They set out on a journey through the twisted world of Sweet Valley, encountering witches, ghosts, and monsters along the way. They used their wits and their charm to overcome each obstacle, and as they did, they slowly started to rewrite their own story.

As they approached the end of their journey, they realized that the new story they had written was different from the old one. It was more realistic, more diverse, and more empowering. They had learned from their experiences and had grown as characters.

Finally, they broke the curse, and they were transported back to their own world. When they opened their eyes, they saw Piper, who was now crying. "I'm sorry," she said. "I was wrong. You're not terrible characters. You're complex and dynamic, just like real people. And you've taught me that beauty comes in many forms."

From that day on, Piper became their friend and ally, and the Wakefield twins continued to inspire young girls everywhere with their stories of empowerment and growth.

 

Tweaked #4 Cover Illustration

 I also re-drew Jessica on the cover of Book 4, The Vampires Part 1. Now she looks more like Jessica on the cover of SVT #75... but turning in a vampire.

See here

Updated Cover Illustrations

I just tweaked the covers for #1-3 with some newfound Illustrator skills: using the blur effect for the shadows (to make the edges less harsh) and rendering the hair a little more realistically. They looked a little messy. I'm uploading them now. Elizabeth looks a little weird in Book 3, I may have to redraw her. 

 

Super Hideous Edition #3 is live

Super Hideous Edition #3 Jessica the Witch is now available in paperback and for kindle and has undergone its first round of typo corrections. I always order the paperback copy and then read it like a "real" book so I can catch things that I may have missed when it was a Pages file or a PDF. 

That is the longest book I've ever written. It was fun. I hope it makes sense. 

Also I'm working on a hardcover "special edition" of Book 1, The Babysitter. I added two pages of character galleries (GAN portraits from Artbreeder of my characters) and it has a new cover. There's one scene that I completely rewrote (see previous entries about "That escalated quickly"), I hope nobody minds. (If you were one of the people who ordered a paperback of the first book in April then it doesn't have the changes yet. I didn't want people to have to buy it again but I also couldn't leave it alone because it seemed clunky & terrible and I want my first book to make a good impression so people will want to read the others. Otherwise it's pointless.)

Then I went and looked at all my GAN images for each book and started doing character galleries for the other books. So those may be added to the paperbacks or I might do hardcovers of the other books at some point.

It is batshit that I have written 9 books. Although I should say "written" because they don't count as real books in my mind.

Heavily Edited Book 1

I just re-published Book 1, The Babysitter, and hopefully I'm done messing with it. I started to think I should take out the demon parts (it says the babysitter is a witch, so if she later turns into a demon, well,  That Escalated Quickly) but then realized her occasionally being a demon might be mentioned in later books. Definitely in the latest Super Hideous Edition (that I haven't published yet). In all the other books, she's just a witch, but maybe the twins remember her being a demon... or at least, they remember her trying to kill them.

But I decided to make a different major change (spoilers ahead):

So, Piper turns into a demon to foil two would-be burglars of the Wastefeld house. She kills them by ripping their throats out (with her demon teeth). I suddenly realized this might be too violent for the age range I'm parodying (even though I warn about "magical violence" in my blurb and also, I say it isn't a kids book). This part of the plot needed to stay in for a later part to make sense. So I changed it so that she doesn't kill them, but they get scared and run away. There were deaths in the SVT books--I'm thinking specifically of in The Frightening Four when Eva Sullivan killed the gardener Mr. Brangwen... but that happened "off screen". So maybe the deaths here, front and center, would be incongruous. Or put people off. I don't know, I haven't had enough people read my books yet.

And then later a police officer shows up and asks the Wastefelds if they know anything about the burglaries... because the van the two guys were driving is just left on the street. That made sense if Piper killed the burglars, but not if they ran away (if they survived they'd want to drive home and leave no evidence of the attempted burglary). But, even if we as readers know that that makes them sloppy criminals, the twins and their brother don't. Because they don't know what happened that night with Piper and the attempted burglary. I couldn't take this part out either because the police officer (who is Tobias in disguise) is vital in helping them determine where to find Piper to defeat her for good. I decided that the universe had to level the playing field, because it's Saccharin Valley and Nothing Bad ever happens to the twins... at least not permanently. And in SVT books they were often able to "solve the mystery" very easily, so I'm making fun of that. If the babysitter was a witch, they'd still have to be able to defeat her.

I sold 17 paperbacks recently, so that's both exciting and terrifying. I want to thank the readers who purchased the paperbacks (because they're more expensive.) Maybe you're like me and sometimes want to hold a book in your hand. I hope you aren't disappointed. (Or maybe you read them on Kindle or Kindle Unlimited and liked them enough to buy the "real" ones).