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.

Book 6 is live

OK, I tweaked Book 6 and republished it. Had some typos to fix because I finished it in a swift bout of mania. I just ordered an author copy of the paperback, for myself. (I had ordered 4 & 5 too, but they haven't come yet).
I also went back and added blog/FB author info to each Kindle edition. I should probably add the author bio. It's only in Book 6.

 

 

I finished Book 6

Well, I've had a lot of free time on my hands from my stupid forced work break (it happens every year) and not having a car because my car died and has been at the dealership getting repaired for a fucking month. I've mostly been focusing on finishing Saccharin Valley Twits. (both the writing and the illustrating). I had the 6 titles planned out and listed from the time I published the first book (6 years ago??) but I didn't have the stories really finished (to my liking, trying to find all the typos and mistakes) or the covers finalized.
Then yesterday (Or the day before... all the days blend together when you can't go to work and don't have a car, and when you can bum a ride, you have to run errands) I finished the last book - The Babysitter II. I actually thought it was pretty great. Funny, creative, weird, and a satisfying ending to the series (although I wasn't under any obligation to provide one, seeing as how Sweet Valley Twins spawned Unicorn Club and Sweet Valley Junior High and petered out around 1998).
Which was a big deal for me (the feeling good about it), since I usually am embarrassed about the things I write (especially these "evil stories".)
And I had the cover illustration for Book 6 pretty much done. Now I've got a template in Illustrator so all the elements of my SVT-book-parody cover layout are consistent from cover to cover.
So then I was like... have I gotten this thing (horror-parody of Sweet Valley Twins, using my own characters, a witch and her warlock boyfriend, tormenting the twins and occasionally their brother, as revenge for being sub-par reading for kids and taking so much of my time/ attention for all those years) out of my system??? Maybe. Piper and Tobias, years ago, broke away from SVT and started to occupy their own original stories. Or really, they existed in their own world first and then magically travelled to this parody of Sweet Valley.

I just haven't finished (again, to my liking) one whole book (non-Saccharin Valley Twits) that's good enough to (self-)publish.
But I kind of always thought I could continue this series (since I had oodles of ideas for messing with the twins [magically, that is], left over from all the stories I wrote as a teenager). I would just add the titles to that listing inside the front page (just like Sweet Valley Twins used to do).
Now I'm like, let's finish this, and publish it, and then from time to time re-read the paperback copies of my books in my continuing quest to make the text PERFECT, and re-publish them when necessary (printed books will hold the typos forever, but luckily not a whole lot of paperbacks have been sold - about 11 in the last 6 years - and the Kindle versions can be updated by the readers without them having to buy it again).
So, really, I suppose I'm done. I'll still continue to deface Sweet Valley Twins books, because that's a kind of art therapy. But I probably won't write any more "horror parodies." At least until the first 6 books gain momentum and become more widely known (which they may not, but I can dream).
I'll still write, but it won't be Sweet Valley Twins. It'll be asexual urban fantasy or whatever.
I really don't think anyone reads this blog (I should put a link in Kindle & paperback editions) but if you have been, thanks.

ETA [May 2021]: Haha this didn't happen; I keep writing them.