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).