Super Hideous Edition: The Twins and their Rock-Star Witch Babysitter

I had a scrap of a story that didn't go in any other books. It's taking part of SVT #55, Brooke and Her Rock-Star Mom, and making the Rock Star into Piper. (And she's not Brooke's mom. Haha. Still a witch trying to kill the twins [and knowing she can't, settling for tormenting them]).

I kept working on it until I had like half a new book, but then it became a hot mess. If I finish it and publish it, it will be a Super Hideous Edition. You know how, in SVT, there was the main series, books 1-118, and then there were Super Editions ("more pages, more fun"), and Super Chillers (scary, mostly ghost stories) and Magna Editions (even more pages and always Christmas, so they had like six different Christmases in the same year)?

It'll be like that. Outside the main plotline, "special" edition. Although there's really no continuity in my series so it probably doesn't matter. (And Book #1 The Babysitter says it's a "Super Chiller"; they all are technically.)

Anyway, instead of "Coco", Brooke's mom, the seemingly-French hot new rock star, Piper is Maeve, and she's seemingly Irish. (I know, everyone is super WHITE in my books, but that's how SVT was, and it was stupid/wrong, so I'm commenting on that [hopefully it's understood that I'm commenting on that and not perpetuating racism). So I suppose her music has a kind of Celtic influence. It doesn't matter how weird her music is, though, because all the kids at Saccharin Valley Middle School LOVE it. Why, because the new songs are a spell, a kind of hypnotic siren song. It mesmerizes everyone and naturally Elizabeth has a "funny feeling" while Jessica just goes batshit fangirl for the new rock star. (Instead of "Coco Crazy" it's "Maeve Mania", tee hee.) Tobias appears as her agent but also the guitar player in her band. The rest of her band are probably going to be the other characters VLC and I made up: Fox and Lydia, the vampires; and Lucia and Vesper. Although they're in the periphery of the story. It's mostly Piper and Tobias perpetrating the cool-new-rock-star evil spell.

So, that's a thing. I might start a cover illustration for this.

Another trope, another dollar

One of the things I do differently (from the real SVT Super Chillers) in my plots is that Elizabeth still has to bail her twin out, even when the events are supernatural. Like, in SVT, they must've decided that Elizabeth always bailed Jessica out/ tried to rescue her anyway, so let's switch it up and have Jessica, the irresponsible twin, have to save Elizabeth. This is prevalent in #3 The Carnival Ghost (Liz is controlled by evil ghost who makes her forget her twin... too bad it didn't take) and #9 Evil Elizabeth* (Liz wears a haunted mask that she found in a dog's mouth and it makes her more like Jessica, horrors! And since there can't be *two* Jessicas, Jessica has to save Elizabeth and make her be saintly again).
I guess it's more fun to have Jessica be the one haunted/ cursed/ whatever so I can point out that no matter how annoying Jessica becomes from this transformation, it's par for the course for Elizabeth. She will always want to save her bitchy annoying twin and make her "back to normal" even if "back to normal" is awful. Dolt.
So I pushed that even further by having Jessica be turned into a vampire. This happens in Books 4 and 5 (a two parter) which I haven't published yet. I re-read them recently and I really rather love them. They are humorous. But they deal with pubescent vampirism, so maybe that's weird. Like I took the sexiness out of vampirism completely (because I had to).
Also, all my books take place on Halloween, because that's the best time for spooky things to happen in books for 12-year-olds. Various SVT Super Chillers took place around Christmas (Super Chiller #1, #3), on Spring Break (#2, #6), and Mysterious Summer (before or after 6th grade? No One Knows)(Super Chiller #4, The Ghost in the Bell Tower, the one I've defaced the most and have 3 copies of, all defaced slightly differently)(Also Super Chiller #8, another camp story, even though there already was a camp story with Super Edition #3), and were not as scary. Like they weren't even trying.
Plus, having it always be Halloween is a comment on how many times they've had various holidays in this series, and how they've been going to 6th grade for 10 years. In fashion terms, they've gone from jumpsuits to Doc Martens. I usually pretend my books take place in the 90s rather than the late 80s because that's when I was reading SVT, mostly.

*Elizabeth didn't really turn evil - she didn't go on a killing spree or anything. She was just mean/ bitchy/ a punk.