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).

Jessica the Witch Cover

This happened. I finished writing the book itself but it won't published until October at least. Got to let the last book sink in - don't want to be insane. 

That will mean that I am capable of putting out 3 books a year? Damn. As long as they're Saccharin Valley Twits, I mean. 

Not finalized, but this was fun. I like making GAN people on Artbreeder and tweaking vector graphics from Vecteezy in Illustrator. Also, 3-D rotating GAN images makes them pixelated? Boo.

Elizabeth (supposed to be) on the left, Jessica on the right with glowing eyes (which is my indication of "magic" on these). The new girl, "Zoe Hardwick" (Piper) is reflected in the black mirror/ onyx slab.

It's 191 pages, which is probably the longest Saccharin Valley Twits book I've ever written.

The Babysitter, new and improved

I went ahead and published the heavily edited/ revised version of The Babysitter. I managed to delete 8 pages' worth of stuff that didn't need to be in there. Including all the Piper POV parts and the first conversation between her and Tobey... they're just planning stuff, it doesn't matter and the twins are the stars of the show so there should be minimal stuff from my characters' point of view. I left in the demon parts. A few people have read my book since it was first published, so I didn't want it to be vastly different. But, I realized that if the first book is a mess then no one will stick around for the rest of the series. (If they're like me and want to read the books in order.) The first book sets up Piper's backstory and her reason for wanting to kill the twins. So I think re-publishing it would be better than doing a "special edition." I do have that new cover with the GAN images, though. But if I did that I'd want to update all the covers (the ones I did in Illustrator). I tweaked the cover of Book 1 slightly, cleaning up some stuff (Piper's hair, Steven's ear, and all the strokes in their features that are "uniform" are now tapered because that makes it softer/more like hand-drawn than computer-drawn). Then I ordered a paperback copy for myself, so I can read the revised version and check for typos (AGAIN). Although some parts I've read so many times that I'm not sure I would notice if there were any mistakes. On one page it said "then" instead of "than," for years and years before I caught it.

I just noticed that two paperbacks of The Babysitter were sold in April... so I'm still worried about people being mad if they have to buy it again. But, that would be if they were as obsessive as I am. Hopefully they knew what they were getting into with the paperbacks. Maybe they could buy the Kindle version of the updated book. As a kid/teen I was always noticing discrepancies between different editions of the same book (With a Wave of the Wand by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones are two that stand out in my mind) so I don't want people to be mad or wonder what's up with the edits. Hopefully I'm thinking about this way too much.

Also Amazon keeps wanting to put this book in a "books about babysitting" category which is clearly wrong LOL. I put the disclaimer on there ("this isn't a children's book") and everything.

Then I went back to looking at my new book that I might as well finish. 

first critical review of The Babysitter...

I just noticed I have another review on Goodreads... a two-star one. I was initially put off by the criticism but then I was like, Well, I don't disagree necessarily. The problem with the first book is that I was writing it for 16 years, starting when I was a teenager. So I agree that parts of it are clunky... although, the reviewer said tedious. Hmm. I wonder if it would be worth it to go back and tighten it up a little... more so than I already have, I mean. I've been correcting typos and occasionally deleting unnecessary sentences (for the last 7 years, because I can't just leave it alone), and then re-publishing (and then if you bought the Kindle edition you could Update it through your Amazon account. I hope people really do that instead of sitting around with a "wrong" book they don't like.) Maybe it would help to delete the first-person narration from Piper's point of view... SVT had something like that in The Frightening Four (it was third person, but from the villain's point of view). I found it super annoying. But, I wasn't really invested in Eva Sullivan as a character... I mean, she wanted to kill the twins, so she had that going for her. But her backstory was stupid and didn't make sense.

I wonder if the meta stuff was what got tedious... I just wanted to show off my encyclopedic knowledge of SVT. I always hated it when something happened in SVT that was similar to a previous book but didn't reference that book, like they pretended it never happened. I guess that was because their sixth-grade year went on forever, repeating various holidays.

Then she says, it's not terrible but it's not brilliantly written either. Does it need to be brilliant, to be an SVT parody? SVT was really inane at times. But yeah, I guess it does need to be brilliant to be worth your time. (I am the same way with books--there are so many I want to read and I don't have enough time to get to all of them so a book has to be really good  to keep my interest.) I remember reading a Harry Potter parody in the early 00s that I thought was tedious. I was like, does this need to exist? It was in the book store and everything, like some publisher said, "Let's cash in on this trend even if it sucks." SVT took up so much of my time as a kid/ adolescent, I'm getting my "revenge" by writing these books. My therapist says I'm working through some stuff, by doing this. LOL. I am, but I'm also writing these because they're "easy" and because in my mind, if they're parodies of SVT, the stakes aren't as high as if I was writing original content. (I am writing original content, I just don't think it's any good, and I don't have a whole book to publish at this point).

As for being too long, yeah, my other books are shorter and I hope that reviewer will try one (and find it to be better written!) The Kindle editions are pretty cheap, though. I guess as a reader I'm more inclined to buy a Kindle book (from an author I haven't read yet) if it's $0.99. But I don't think $2.99 is terribly expensive. I've wasted much money than that in my life on stupid things.

I'm still working on the latest book. I reached the point where it was a hot mess and didn't seem salvageable. But then I went back and planned out my plot a little and re-read some stuff that I had written that I liked, so... whatever.

Anyway, if anyone else read The Babysitter and liked it (or even if you didn't), could you leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads? Or just a rating. It's nifty to see people reading my books, and I appreciate the feedback. 

ETA: this review actually gives me an idea to revamp The Babysitter. I was going to release a "special edition" at some point with bonus content, which included the gallery of character images I made on ArtBreeder. The plot of the first book was always kind of convoluted, because Piper turns into a demon at one point. Since the summary says "the babysitter is a witch," that's like, "Well, that escalated quickly." Then there was unnecessary world-building/ rules of magic. SVT does have magic, as illustrated by several books where one or both of the twins makes a wish and it comes true. But witches and demons are kind of a stretch. So it goes off the rails a little and then returns to its parody origins at the end. I could take out the demon parts and re-publish, still with the gallery of characters. And make it $0.99 so if you already bought the book it would be discounted/ you wouldn't be buying it again at full price, but if you were reading the shorter version and liked it, you could then buy the "expanded world" version. 

Or maybe no one cares. I'll probably do this anyway since I am mostly publishing these books for myself and if anyone else likes them, that's an added bonus.

Jessica the Witch GAN

It's fun to make GAN images of the characters I've created.

In the upcoming book, Piper plays Zoe Hardwick, new student at Saccharin Valley Middle School. (Side note, how many "new students" have there been in SVT? Actual ones, not ones I made up. At least ten*). She's of mixed race this time. (Because the last thing Saccharin Valley needs is more white characters).

(in the book I describe her as having "zillions of freckles," but I can't do freckles in GAN...maybe in GIMP. Also she has glasses but adding glasses in GAN often goes a little weird.)
 

She also plays an elderly shopkeeper (for the new magic/Wicca/metaphysical store in Saccharin Valley). Who is kind of a punk. She has pink hair. And silver eyes, which I just stuck in there for shits and giggles (usually Piper's eyes give away the ruse, they're glowing green most of the time) but then I got the GAN to look like that, by accident. Her name is Cerridwen O'Connell.

She will serve as the Wise Old Person one of the twins seeks out for help. (See: Corrina in Super Chiller #9, although she wasn't old... but that kind of trope). Piper plays more than one character (much like the last book, and the one before it) because she is more powerful than Tobias, so her magic can sustain both disguises. (No one really cares about these things, but I think about them because I like making up shit/character development/world building).

Tobias plays her husband, Harlan O'Connell (he uses that alias a lot in my books, because in my mind he's not as excited about being in disguise as Piper is, and if the twins don't remember him because it's a different book, then it doesn't matter). He kind of aging hippie. 

"That's so right on, man." He's kind of a sleaze here, I may have to tweak him more.

Neither of them have been "old" yet. I guess because when I needed an old witch and and an old evil sorcerer for Book 2, I used Piper's "real" (outside of Saccharin Valley stories) grandparents. Oh, Tobias was the Magistrate in old Salem in The Babysitter II. So, this guy is seemingly a little less stern and more friendly and laid back.** And Piper was kind of old, briefly, in Book 6, The Babysitter II. She was "Faith Green", essentially May Brown from SVT #54 but a WITCH (obvs). Faith Green was middle-aged. I made a GAN portrait for her too. I want to be able to include these in my paperback books... they would have to be desaturated (to publish in black and white. Kindle versions can be color?). Maybe as chapter headers instead of a Gallery in the back, which is what I'm trying to do in The Babysitter (like a special edition).

I sometimes wonder if people actually read my books, if they have a preference as to how the twins are "terrorized." Like just Piper & Tobias messing with the twins, or Demon Piper? Or along with the vampires I made up? (I just realized there are 4 vampires, that seems excessive now, LOL. Lydia, Fox, Lucia & Vesper***). At some point I was like, don't create any new characters; just Piper is fine. But then Tobias, her boyfriend gets sucked into it. Mostly because he likes watching Piper work, not because he particularly has a jones for fucking up the twins' (and occasionally their brother's) lives. He treats it like his girlfriend's amusing hobby, and he's just hangin' out.

And also, are you here for the imitation SVT, or the "DIE DIE DIE" situation? Or the humor, which I hope is funny. Sometimes I write things and LQTM.**** (And sometimes I write things that I think are funny, and then go back and read them and they seem forced/ cringeworthy.)

I probably won't use all of these for the cover, I may just have Zoe and the twins (Elizabeth looking scared/ concerned as seen below, Jessica looking witchy if I can swing it.)

*Nora, who everyone made fun of, Brooke, who everyone thought was a snob, Arthur, who turned out to be a prince, Maria, who was a child actor in Hollywood before SV, Brian Boyd, who brought white supremacy to SVMS (or he was just a prick)... now I want to go look at all my SVT books and add more. Kala the Native American, but that was a Super Chiller.

**He's still a STRANGE MAN but as we've seen in SVT books, the twins encounter strange men quite often and are somehow never in any danger.

***BTW, Lucia and Vesper are lesbian lovers but that sort of thing isn't mentioned in Saccharin Valley

****"Laugh Quietly to Myself" a la Demetri Martin

Psychic Sisters/ Jessica the Witch

 

Well, it happened again. I started writing another Evil Story. This one is based on something from SVT #70, Psychic Sisters. I actually had the idea for this story when I was 12, but I hadn't invented Piper the witch yet so it went a little weird. (I started writing The Babysitter when I was about 16... pushing forty now).

 

Here's a blog entry on that book that I just found. Basically, the twins become convinced that they're psychic and decide to perform in the talent show, after amazing their friends with many feats of apparent mind reading. (Also Jessica carelessly makes psychic predictions for several people, that very handily turn out to be correct). I always thought it was weird that they weren't really psychic. Like, the twist was they overheard their mom talking on the phone while they were sleeping in the den watching a movie marathon, and their unconscious minds soaked up all the information she was giving. I guess it was supposed to be a "twist" even though several books already established that the twins had a kind of psychic connection (as twins tend to do, having shared a womb)--one could tell what the other one was feeling and would feel it if her twin was in any kind of danger and that sort of thing. So, to say they aren't really psychic is kind of stupid. 

 

First of all, let's deal with the cover here. Maria is a legless torso, how unfortunate (I assume it's Maria because she's the only Black sixth grader ever mentioned). Also the twins' faces look a little different that usual, maybe because they've been drawn in profile. (See also: the cover of Super Chiller #4, The Ghost in the Bell Tower.) Finally, Who's that guy? I decided it was Todd when I was younger. Also I appreciate the inclusion of a crystal ball even though in the book they never did that, but they did sit under a pyramid of a broom, a mop, and a yardstick. 

Anyway, at the end, there's this (excuse my defaced-SVT comments... this was my second copy of this book, because the original had been written in and drawn in too much to be able to continue re-reading, so I'm starting over):

 

    Janet patted Jessica on the back. “You did it, Jessica. You put Sweet Valley Middle School on the map, you made the Unicorns look great, you generated publicity for the hospital, and…” she darted a look around to make sure Ellen wasn’t listening, “you put a spell on Ellen that kept her from singing. Why didn’t you tell us you were a…” Janet lowered her voice to a whisper, “…witch?” She shook her head. “You really do have amazing powers, Jessica.”
    Tamara Chase nodded solemnly. “Just think of all the really great stuff you can do.”                

    Jessica's mind was racing. If her friends thought she was a witch, she would really have it made.

Janet, the president of the Unicorn Club, is convinced that Jessica is a witch because she supposedly hexed Ellen Riteman into blowing her vocal chords the night of the talent show (so she couldn't go on and embarrass everyone with her terrible singing.) Um, ok. Jessica gets really excited about her friends thinking she's a witch, but then she sees her sister's angry face glaring at her (Elizabeth is her conscience) and makes a hasty excuse as to why it wouldn't be a good idea to keep using her "psychic powers." ("We're retiring them unless the police or the FBI need us," LOL).

As a 12-year-old, I was like, Boo, you're no fun anymore. What if the Unicorns went on thinking Jessica was a witch? She'd have to prove it, and teach them some spells like she promised. Then the spells wouldn't work, and she'd be humiliated, right? But this is where my character Piper comes in. She casts a spell on Elizabeth at that party and makes her think Jessica pretending to be a witch is all a joke on the Unicorns. So, Elizabeth lets Jessica go on and make up shit. Then, clearly Jessica does end up with some kind of magical powers (courtesy of Piper, bwahahahaha), and maybe they get out of control or they start to scare her (maybe she summons a certain demon we haven't seen since Book 1? Haven't decided yet).  So then she has to find someone to help her. Luckily, there's a new magic shop (or, there's a magic shop, if there never was one in the first place) in town, and the proprietors are Piper and Tobias in disguise, with completely new aliases. I feel like most readers would know by now that if I describe any new character, no matter the age, it's very likely to be Piper or Tobias in disguise, or one of their friends (like the vampires in Books 4 & 5).  I always love inventing new aliases for them (at one point Piper lists them all and it's absurd how many different disguises she's used to try to fool the twins. Piper = the Count Olaf of Saccharin Valley Twits).

The "witchcraft" will be a mishmash of my encyclopedic knowledge of Wicca (I've read a shit ton but I don't practice) and some SVT-friendly supernatural powers/fictional witch bullshit. (I always want readers to know, that I know that real witches are not evil and don't go around becoming demons and terrorizing twins with their supernatural powers. Haha.)

There's also a new girl at school, because there always is. And she's mixed race, for once (like Piper is in "real life"--she's white-washed for SVT). Everyone was always so white. I started looking at how Black people could have the MC1R gene and be gingers. I always thought gingers were beautiful as a child, and I always wanted red hair (I have boring brown hair but I do have green eyes like Piper). But I didn't realize it comes with getting sunburned super easily. And mad freckles.

I have about 35 pages so far. This one will be a Super Hideous Edition like the last one, so it needs to be around 180 pages. Or at least 150. I was working on it a lot this past weekend, stayed up too late like back in the day.

Tentatively titled Jessica the Witch (super boring/ suitably ambiguous like all my books are). I might still have the story I wrote when I was 12, maybe I could post it here. It was handwritten. 

Publishing New Book

OK so I just uploaded the paperback and Kindle versions of Steven's Evil Twin to KDP. I had to tweak my "series" a little so the numbers would line up. Because Book 7 of Saccharin Valley Twits (The Twins and Their Rock Star Witch Babysitter) was Super Hideous Edition #1. So, it said on the Amazon listing that it was Book 7 but on the spine it says 1. Amazon KDP didn't seem to have a problem with that, but when I tried to make Steven's Evil Twin Book 8 but also Super Hideous Edition #2, it said you need to fix this before we can publish. So instead of calling it "supplemental content" (where it wouldn't be numbered), I made a New Series called Saccharin Valley Twits: Super Hideous Editions. That's the way they're listed on the inside page with all the book in the series in order.

Long Story Short, Steven's Evil Twin should be available soon. And then I may just continue writing these... I got a direct (positive) comment on these on Facebook, so that makes me happy that I have a real fan. But I also want to finish a book in my series that involves Piper and Tobias (my characters in Saccharin Valley Twits) but in their own world.

Steven:

 

Steven's Evil Twin (bwahahaha):

Steven's Evil Twin Update/ Cover

Well, I finished writing Book 8 (or Book 7, if Book 7 was really Super Hideous Edition #1). I have it saved as a .pdf and an .epub, all ready to go, but I don't think I'll publish it for another couple of months, because I just published The Twins and Their Rock-Star Babysitter in January (I think? It seems like awhile ago).

Here is the cover, in the same style of the previous book with GAN portraits and vector graphics from Vecteezy. I should subscribe to that website... I've subscribed to ArtBreeder, Adobe Illustrator, and Ultimate-Guitar.com (not related, I was just trying to remember everything). Not Photoshop because I use GIMP. And I haven't played with Blender in a while. Too overwhelming.

Anyway.

I may have to blur out the body text on the "newspaper clipping" because it's that Lorem ipsem nonsense (fake Latin). If it was a James Mathewuse (or for the later SVT books, Bruce Emmett) cover, they'd just do scribbles (because it was painted by hand and not digital art).

 

ETA: I think this is going to be another Super Hideous Edition because of the page count.

Steven’s Evil Twin

Well, this is happening: ANOTHER "Saccharin Valley Twits" book. I thought I was done writing more books and was just going to continue re-reading my first 7 books and correcting any typos I missed. But, I’ve been writing like a maniac the last few days. So here we go again. (In my author bio for Polly Esther Rayon in the Saccharin Valley Twins books I keep saying I'll write a "proper" book someday... well, I am writing NON-Saccharin-Valley-Twits-horror-parody-mashups, with the characters I made up, in their own world, but there isn't a whole book finished yet. Just lots of parts of several different books in a series).

I keep re-reading (and defacing) SVT books and being like, "This could be a story. This could be a story. Just change this and insert Piper here. Bwahaha, etc." So this series could go on and on if I chose to keep writing (stupid) stories. I mean, several ghostwriters wrote over 100 SVT books. So yeah.

Anyway, the very obvious story idea is taken from #106, Breakfast of Enemies, where the twins star in a cereal commercial (completely forgetting that in Super Chiller #5, The Curse of the Ruby Necklace, they were already in a movie as extras. I guess that wasn't "canon" because it was a Super Chiller. Not that there's much continuity in SVT books anyway). So Steven wants to audition for a commercial too, but they’re only holding auditions for twins. So he goes out to find someone who looks like him. In the book it’s very stupid, but in my story, he finds exactly the right person. He gets all excited to audition but then the “twin” takes over his (dull, teenaged) life. Bwahahaha.  Steven's evil twin is played by Tobey, Piper's boyfriend. Piper herself is the commercial director, for the twins, and puts them through various embarrassing situations while they're filming. (Like making them dye their sun-streaked golden blonde hair RED. Jessica is horrified, LOL. And they can't refuse because they're under contract and getting paid oodles of money. Although, I just re-read the book after that, The Twins Hit Hollywood, and they did similar things when they were being bossed around by obnoxious actress Connie Boyer. Had their outfits changed, hair dyed brown, were made to wear brown contacts). Also, from the very beginning of my series, I had been calling the SVT cereal "Corny-Bobs" instead of Corny-Os. Just to change the name for parody, but I didn't really think it through. So now I've come up with my own branding/ slogans for "Corny-Bobs" cereal. I don't want my book to use too much of the same writing as SVT #106. That's just a jumping off point. So I'm changing as much of it as a can (obviously, so it's not plagiarism/ a rehash of the same book; I do that with all my books).

I also vaguely remember a Sweet Valley Kids book (back in the 90s, when you would physically go to bookstore and look at all the books) where Steven was jealous of the twins so he wanted to be a twin. The cover illustration was their nine year-old (? I think, since the twins were seven) brother next to cardboard cutout of himself. Which he wouldn't even be able to do back then, because getting a photo blown up and printed life-sized was expensive. LOL. That was just the cover, though, in the book I think he did try to get another boy to play his twin. And hilarity ensued, presumably. Or awkwardness.

So this plot is even more puerile if it's already been done in the younger series. BUT I have my characters, Piper the witch and Tobey the warlock.

It feels like the later books in the Sweet Valley Twins series got stupider. Not just the different cover art--like every book from, say, #87, on got progressively dumber, with ditzier twins and more rehashed plots. But, it may also be because that's when I stopped buying them new--like I "grew up" and decided I was too old for them (around age 13, after reading them for about 3 or 4 years). But then as an adult I went back to "collect them all" for reading and defacing. And making evil stories out of.

I have only like 65 pages. I need probably twice that for a proper book. And I have to figure out what to do about a cover. If I'm using GAN I have several images that could be Steven:

looking 17 instead of 14 (hard to make exact ages with GAN)...

looking serious with lopsided hair

your teeth and hair are stupid

too bland

too cute (but Jessica's friends think he's cute. I just think this is more like Todd or someone)

looking weird and pensive with one googly eye

I think I like the top one the best. On the SVT covers he always looked at least 25 years old when he was supposed to be only 14. And he only appeared a few times. I'll duplicate that GAN image and changed the expression slightly, if I can make him look "evil" using GAN. But the problem with generating portraits with GAN is that you only get like, a headshot. So I'd have to make it look like an actual photograph on the cover, like I did for The Twins and Their Rock Star-Witch Babysitter. Or it can be made to look like actual headshots, even though neither Steven or the twins have any since they're not professional actors. That can be one of those things where the cover presents the story information differently or is flat-out different than the actual story. I assume because James Mathewuse, who did the SVT covers, got only an outline of the story to work from, and made the cover illustration when the book hadn't been written yet, or something. 

I also ended up making some GAN images that I call "Demon Steven":

because he looks a little bit evil in all of these. This could be Tobias disguised as Steven, or something. I didn't make the eyes red on purpose. You can really only go between "blue" and "brown" (green eyes are somewhere in the middle) but if you tweak other settings sometimes the features go weird in various ways. I like making Black women with sparkly hair that's pink or purple or blue. (It doesn't work as well for women of other races, for whatever reason. And GAN is kind of racist, because artificial intelligence always is). Again, that's not in the settings--hair can only be Black or Brown or Blonde (red hair is a combination of those settings, you know I've been making oodles of ~**PIPER**~ with GAN)--but it happens because the GAN goes a little weird when you tweak multiple settings. It's really engrossing and mesmerizing. See here.

Witchy Babysitter Piper

In chapter six of The Babysitter, Piper is revealed to be a WITCH (well, we already knew that, but the twins and their brother didn't; dramatic irony). She is described thusly:

In the master bedroom, Piper had pulled the shades and curtains tightly to block out the last of the evening sun. In the makeshift darkness, candles were placed around the room, flickering silently. Piper was levitating, legs crossed, two feet above the Wastefelds’ queen-sized bed. Her eyes were closed, and every now and then a shiny silver triangle placed on the perfect center of her forehead* would glint with reflected candle light. 

and

They arrived just in time to catch Piper levitating before she dropped down onto the bed. Her eyes flew open. They were glowing an intense yellow, no pupils.
“Surprise,” she growled in a deep voice.  
Jessica shrieked and stumbled backwards into her twin, who yelped. Steven was stuttering in panic. “S-she was floating!”
Elizabeth’s mind was racing. What had she just seen? Had Piper really been levitating? She refused to think about what this could mean. It was too bizarre.

So I made an image of that, with Artbreeder & GIMP (because it's fun)

looking happy in this image, because on Artbreeder if you have a photorealistic image and try to make it more angry, it turns into a weird cartoon.

rarr demon eyebrows (did that in GIMP)

 

before/after transformation... I always make her teeth a little pointy because she has "witch teeth" (something I made up, as opposed to "vampire teeth" which would just be pointed canines/ fangs).

*I've said this before, but when I was fifteen I read The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, in which the Stanley kids' stepsister Amanda is really into the "occult" and wears a silver triangle on her forehead, calling it her "center of power." So, that was a part of The Babysitter that was really old but stayed in as a nod to my teenage self.

Demon Piper Before/After

This is my latest, which I rather like... maybe this should be the cover of The Babysitter. But I want to do a die-cut situation like Super Chiller #9, Evil Elizabeth or #100 The Beast Must Die. I don't think I have that capability in KDP self-publishing. I could do a special edition with "bonus content". Except I'd want to do that on an anniversary. So like the 5-year anniversary of publishing book 1 would have been 2019. The 10-year anniversary will be in 2024 (holy shit).

More Demon Piper

 I keep making these

Piper with fangs (because it's fun, not because she's a vampire...) and liquidy no-pupil eyes

Demon Piper 4 (latest and favorite)

Demon Piper "Yaw" (in Artbreeder the YAW is movement from side to side, so this is a 3/4 view of Demon Piper's face).

Yeah, that's fun. I got my new copies of books 1 and 6 but I have found things I wanted to correct SINCE then. Ugh. I have 23 "wrong" copies of paperbacks. I'm still waiting for book 7 (the paperback copy I ordered, to come). I want to read it proper, as a book. I haven't read it since I finished it & published it. 

ETA: I got it a few days ago and read it and it was nifty except I found a couple of words I want to change and there's a conversation between Amy and Elizabeth that doesn't make sense because it's just the dialogue without "Amy said" or "Elizabeth said" and it goes back and forth so you should be able to tell who's talking but it goes Amy, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, instead of Amy, Elizabeth, Amy, Elizabeth. (Although real SVT books occasionally had issues like that, because they were such a rush job, being published every month)

ETA: I just fixed the problems with the "book content" and uploaded them to KDP. Also, here's if you want to look at my Artbreeder people

More Casts of Characters

Having too much fun with Artbreeder.

Here's the Cast of Characters from Book 1 (please excuse the bad graphic design):

and Book 2 (Aidan isn't exactly right, so that image is a placeholder; also, you can't tell that "Craig" has slit pupil eyes like a demon):

More faces

 

Apparently I published this to the wrong blog >:-P

I  keep rendering photorealistic portraits of my characters, using GAN (on Artbreeder) and GIMP (free software similar to photoshop). Here are some more faces:

 another demon Piper, from Book 1 The Babysitter

 

from Book 2 The Witch, "Fallon Morrison" (Piper disguised as a 12-year old), and in her "witch makeup"

 

witchy Fallon, in costume 

 

 

from Book 2 The Witch,  Fallon's grandmother Brighid, normal and in witch guise

 

 

another version of Brighid

 

 

from Book 2 The Witch, Fallon's "cousin" Craig, which is Tobias in disguise... who is a demon 

 

 

 from Book 3 The Fortune Teller, Piper as Lady Ostara and Tobias as her assistant Harlan O'Connell (who stole his look from Spike from Buffy, clearly). Lady Ostara has a light radiating from her third eye because she's a fortune teller and a psychic, tee hee. I gave her makeup in GIMP. Still working on that. The Blur tool is your friend. Also layer masks. Also different brushes, ones that mimic a pencil or crayon.

 

Demon Piper

OK so in Book 1 (spoilers if you haven't read it), The Babysitter, Piper is a witch who is disguised as a 17-year-old girl who is the twins' and their brother's babysitter while their parents are on vacation. She is trying to kill the twins, as revenge for when they wished on a magical Christmas carnival well to be grown up (SVT Magna Edition Big For Christmas, a rip-off of the movie Big) and were trying to drive a donut truck (as 12-year-olds in grown-up bodies) and caused a five car pile up. Later in that book, they found the carnival wishing well again (it disappeared after they made their wish, for the plot) and wished to be 12 again. But they didn't wish to reverse the effects of their first wish, so presumably anyone who was hurt or killed in that car wreck remained injured/ dead. So that was my backstory/ reason for Piper wanting revenge (like she was one of the other people in the five-car pileup). Which I personally think makes more sense than the SVT miniseries The Frightening Four where randomly, there's a new old haunted mansion, the Sullivan mansion (how many old, run-down houses are there in Sweet Valley?? at least 3), and all of a sudden, Mrs. Wakefield hates Halloween (she never hated it in other books! Is it too much to ask for a little continuity if we're making up villains who want to kill the twins?)

So, anyway, Piper reveals herself to be a witch, scares the hell out of the twins and their brother, Jessica "banishes" her (I decided that the Saccharin Valley Universe was trying to even the playing field seeing as how the twins are the main characters and even though they're in danger many times, they never actually die, so a book of witchcraft appeared at library for Jessica to check out and use), and then she comes back as a demon to terrorize them some more. This was a plot from approximately 22 years ago, when I was a teenager (and we didn't have self-publishing on Amazon) and really thought the demon-witch aspect was sexy (asexy, because I'm asexual and it's a horror-parody of a middle-school series, so no actual sex; I just thought that was cool. Better than fake-zombie girl/woman Eva Sullivan, at least). Now I think it's rather clunky (the reason she appears as a green-skinned demon with ram horns is because she has a spell to be possessed by a demon called the Nyx, which gives her demon strength but takes away her witch powers; and her demonic self has a weakness: iron; so the twins have a better chance of defeating her), which is why she doesn't appear as a demon in later books in the series... just a witch. A witch hell-bent on revenge, settling for casting various spells on the twins if she can't kill them. Because it's fun and vents my various frustrations with Sweet Valley Twins.

I was always trying to draw demon Piper, by hand in the SVT books I was defacing, in Microsoft Paint (remember, this was the early 2000s), my Corel software, and eventually in Illustrator. But it never quite looked the way I wanted it to.

Here's one from a clip art that I modified (although her hair looks pink):

doesn't look demon-y enough, just a girl face with horns. (also mouth misaligned)

 

Next I was playing with my Corel software (again, early 2000s) which had pieces of people (face, hair, features) that you could put together in Corel Print House Magic Lite (I know, I'm old):

this is Piper when she's revealed as a witch (with the silver triangle on her forehead, something I stole from The Headless Cupid)

then an attempt at a demon face (added in MS Paint) from the Corel Piper face, with clip art ram horns

then another demon face with different ram horns. Close, but not quite.

then in Illustrator, trying to make light and shadows, and horns, without a reference photo underneath. Also, I don't know what the face is from. But, it looks terrible. 

 

Then still in Illustrator, using a photo of a dude wearing "Hellacious" FX makeup (I was perusing various websites like Scream Team looking at prosthetic makeup to use as a reference, but there were no female demons)

 

Then in Illustrator, but without a realistic portrait of Piper (although I used to scan magazine photos of models who looked like her - again, behold the early-noughts technology) so I ended up using a photo of someone (probably male) in "Gargoyle" make up from a Halloween kit of cheap prosthetics (Reel FX by Rubies? Something like that. I also used to hoard images from searches, inevitably of various prosthetic makeup kits on models). Looks demon-y but not female. (Also that necklace is a hot mess).

So, the whole point of this is, I finally discovered a way to use GIMP to modify the photorealistic GAN portrait of Piper to look demonic. So I used some GAN portraits of Piper. I made her slightly older in GAN so she would have lines on her face. In GIMP I used those lines to create the outlines of the demon features (pointier nose, chiseled cheekbones, witchy chin, heavy forehead). I did this with "move pixels" and "grow area". I made her teeth and eyes demonic - that's easy in Photoshop/GIMP; I've been doing that for awhile now using a layer mask - and added ram horns from a stock image. Used smudge/ blur and various filters to make it cohesive.

I think it turned out pretty good (for 20 years of trying to render this character!)

without horns, with open mouth (looking like the edges of her makeup needed to be blended better):

 

without horns, closed mouth, two different styles:

with horns:
 

 

 

 

So, that's fun. I'm also doing witchy versions - like "Fallon's" grandmother Brighid when she turns into a classic Halloween witch in Book 2, The Witch; Piper as "Faith Green" the older woman in Book 6 The Babysitter II (who's basically the evil twin of "May Brown" from SVT #54);  and I'll probably try to do Jessica in "hag face" after Fallon Morrison flings a curse at her (in Book 2). Then I can do vampire faces (Jessica turns into a vampire in Book 5 The Vampires Part 2); and I'll try to do demon Tobias too (in Book 1 it's demons all around, because in 1998 I was obsessed with the movie Legend and Tim Curry as the Lord of Darkness).

 

I just found another typo in The Babysitter. Dammit. Also I never uploaded the updated Book 2, The Witch, where I changed the name of Piper's "cousin" from Craig Ross to Craig Riordan (so he only has so many aliases in Saccharin Valley [Tobey, Tobias North, Harlan O'Connell, Craig Riordan], otherwise it's confusing. Also it's probably bad that he's described as her "cousin" but they're really boyfriend and girlfriend and not related*).

And I'm still waiting for my copy of Book 7.

*and also 17 and 16, respectively, and not her being 12 and him being like, 20, obvs, because ew

Book 7 (aka Super Hideous Edition #1) is live

I finished The Twins and Their Rock-Star Babysitter, read it 15 more times, and published it. So now there's a Kindle version  (which didn't like my dingbats so the clover at every chapter heading is showing up as an "A" 😠) and a paperback version with my spiffy GAN-and-vector-graphics cover.

buy Kindle or paperback book here

I ordered a copy of the paperback and I will read it AGAIN and check for any typos. (To correct and re-publish. If you buy the Kindle edition and I later correct mistakes, you can update your copy by going to your Digital Content on Amazon and click "check for updates" and then "update" and it will fix them).

Also, I just noticed in Book 5 I didn't turn off the hyphenation in the paragraph styles. Hopefully won't detract from the reading experience. I am obsessive about formatting, or at least about things that annoy me as a reader.

here's a chart a made of character in Book 7 (I love playing with GAN so I made all the main characters including ones that are Piper or Tobias in disguise).

Piper looks slightly different as Maeve - she is described as having copper hair and grey eyes (Piper has green eyes and ruby-red hair). Tobias first appears as Mr. Riordan, the rock star's agent. I kept picturing that character as a young Greg Proops (because he's nifty, Kittens McTavish*) so I tried to tweak the GAN as much as possible to make him Proops-y. I guess I could've uploaded an actual photo of him and used that but I feel weird doing that. Even though it's not uploading a photo, because the GAN "reads" the photo and gives you an approximation that you can then tweak. (I was going to do that with Fallon's grandfather in Book 2, because in my mind he looks like Creed Bratton... as an evil sorcerer).

 OH, another thing I did was make Saccharin Valley Twits a "series" on KDP. So it's official ("It's official... I can't have children" ~Debbie Downer, LOL)

* and also because I occasionally insert Whose Line honeys into my stories, because instead of making up a character's features to describe, I describe a person who already exists