Magna Edition #1: The Magic Christmas

Even though we already HAD a Christmas in Sweet Valley Twins' sixth grade (Super Chiller #1, which had 3 Christmas ghosts a la Dickens), we're having another one because this one is MAGIC. I wrote and drew in this book, like allllll my other SVT books. I will have scans of some pages of Copy 2 (yes, I defaced the book so much, I had to start a new copy... well I didn't HAVE to, but that's how I roll) added to this post at some point later.
Anyway. This one is the first MAGNA edition, which means more pages to read and delight or whatever. The Magna editions were all Christmas stories (except #100 which was technically also a Super Chiller), so there were two more Christmases after this, each plagiarizing a well-known movie ("It's a Wonderful Life" and "BIG," if ya wanna know).
In The Magic Christmas, the twins' grandparents give them each a (creepy) antique porcelain harlequin doll, which both turn out to be magic. Dolls are *really* princes of a magical land, under a curse. So the twins solve the riddle and follow them headlong to magic-land, to have their own magical adventure (and this was way before Harry Potter, so it was just a general fantasy pastiche). And the grandparents were in on this. They knew about the riddle and the curse. They were shopping for Christmas presents and thought, "Hey, let's give our granddaughters those HAUNTED antique dolls and plunge them into a dangerous adventure in a magical fantasy land." "OK." I mean, it's possible they thought the twins were too stupid to solve the magic riddle that opened the portal and turned the dolls back into princes. But, the twins had magical help from their riddle-solving dreams, aka plot device. (If they hadn't solved the riddle, they'd just go back to being mad at each other about their respective Christmas presents, without a handy Magical Land to make up in, and there'd be no plot).
And naturally, even when threatened with monsters and non-sexy evil sorcerers (evil sorcerers should always be sexy, but in a book for twelve-year-olds, he was just old and smelly with a long-ass beard; BOO), the twins, with the aid of their magical princes, managed to survive and not get magically maimed/ eaten by a bludrat/ devoured by a serpasaur.
Yeah, the author made up new names for magical beasts. Should've been clever, but I'm so over it. The mermaids were called "mermanons" and had scales up to their shoulders, because bare boobs were too risque, I guess. (I hated that kind of mermaid as a child. I thought Disney's "The Little Mermaid" and its seashell bras were Gospel). The basilisk was a serpasaur, etc. Except the unicorns were still called unicorns. WHUT. When I read this the first time at age twelve, I was like, how come they aren't called something weird, too, like "unithorins"? Answer: who knows. Or the writer got tired of making up shit.
Another thing: The princes have the same exact personalities as the twins, but the boy version. Dorin is thoughtful and considerate, and will make a good king. Adair is reckless and just wants to party/ go to war/ be a rash and thoughtless ruler. *BUT* each twin is paired with her opposite in personality. (For those keeping score at home: Jessica is paired with Dorin and Elizabeth with Adair. because the twins are separated for most of this adventure, each blindly following their doll-turned-prince into who-knows-what.) These pairings are because the author assumed that 12-year-olds would subscribe to the "opposites attract" deal, not having taken Psych 101 yet, to learn about The Matching Hypothesis. Yes, there's romance at 12. The twins each get a crush on their respective prince, but then they go back to Sweet Valley after the kingdom is saved and forget all about them. They are given the choice to stay in "The Hidden Kingdom" but choose to go back to dumb old Sweet Valley, of course. Even though the Hidden Kingdom has MAGIC. I would have stayed and gotten fat and lazy on magic, y'all. All the cool clothing and books I could conjure. (I am both twins, because I like both fashion and reading). OK not really.
Anyway, the main reason for mentioning this book on this blog is because it was the only SVT book with a real fantasy sequence. Like, it wasn't a (dumb/implausible) dream like Elizabeth's in The Class Trip. So, therefore, I could have my witch character Piper come visit Sweet Valley and wreak havoc and it wouldn't be much of a stretch. Keep this in mind when you read Book 1, The Babysitter.
(I couldn't have a sexy evil sorcerer, because in a book for middle schoolers, that isn't allowed.)

HEY LOOK A COMMENT

woot I have a comment on Goodreads

(that I am obsessing over)
I'm glad that line was appreciated even though I thought it was kind of clunky/ more "tell" than "show"/ not a proper joke...
..and then this reader apparently stopped at 77%? maybe because she thought it went really weird/ hated it? (Hello, Obsess-y.)
Well, then she gave it 3 stars. OK thx!

Sweet Valley High covers, with captions

Special Christmas - Liz: "Ooh, what is it??"

Jessica: "It's EMPTY bwahahaha!" (you know that would totally happen)

Spring Break, based on their expressions: 

Liz: "OMG FRANCE!"

Jess: "THE AIR IS SO CLEAR"

All Night Long - Sorry, Jimmy Art, but the guy you painted does look like a gay porn star.

Power Play - Jess: "Let's wear gingham blouses and have a staring contest"

Liz: "All your outfit needs is a chianti candle and a menu" (stole that joke from MST3k)

No Place to Hide - Liz and Jess, based on the position of their hands:

"My face!" "My clavicle" "They've been touched!!"

Deadly Summer: "HERP DERP" "AHHH"

SVT "Evil" Stories

I started writing these SVT stories when I was about 16. I used to call them "evil" stories because they really turned me on, but since I was getting turned on by witches and demons and power-over, I felt weird about it. (Really wanted to work on them for Creative Writing Class in 10th grade, but was mortified at the thought of someone READING them. Or having to read them out loud, myself. Especially since they were essentially fan fiction for a book series I was embarrassed about reading). In retrospect, every time in my cycle, as a teenager, that I needed to masturbate, I was probably writing/re-writing "evil" stories. (I didn't own a vibrator at 16, had to get my jollies somehow).

Then one day I mentioned the "evil stories" to my psychologist at the time (they were mostly a secret: only my best friend Sa knew about them) and she was like, " 'Evil'... like Men and Little Girls??" and I was like OMG NO. *That* doesn't turn me on. Ick. I tried to explain that it was Sweet Valley twits and their babysitter was a witch (with supernatural powers, not a Wiccan) who was terrorizing them, because they were awful characters in bad literature... it didn't sound right. Piper and Tobias are supposed to be teenagers in my stories anyway, so that makes it not as bad, I think. (They don't do anything sexual to the twins and their brother, they just terrify/ bespell them, for funsies.) Although it gets a little sketchy with the scene in #1 The Babysitter with (demon) Tobias and Elizabeth. But that was toned way down from my original incarnation. He's a teenage hipster demon, not Tim Curry in Legend*. Also nothing creepy/sexual could happen in SVT, because they were 12, and even when Jessica lied about her age and tried to date a 16-year-old (Book #15), Nothing Bad happened and the guy just was embarrassed about it. SVT is far removed from real life, something I make fun of in my books. Obviously, because the publishers didn't want to freak out middle-school girls with Cautionary Tales. Not until Sweet Valley High, anyway, and even then, the twins (Jessica, mostly, and Elizabeth after coming out of the personality-changing coma) narrowly avoided rape/kidnapping/murder on what seemed like a regular basis, with no emotional scarring. In regards to that in SVH, just WHUT.

I sometimes think I should be writing Sweet Valley High parodies, because then the twins actually have the potential to be murdered (like Margo tried to do in The Evil Twin). But then there can be no supernatural stuff**, which is what I like the best. Also, they can't be killed either way, not for being annoying, at age 12 or age 16.

*I will probably end up talking more about Legend later... Tim Curry as the Lord of Darkness and Robert Picardo as the swamp witch Meg Mucklebones: So Nifty
**except for the (stupid) vampire and werewolf trilogies. I will review the vampire ones on this blog since Robin Hardwick didn't seem to have as much fun as I did (and I was defacing them, not just reading/ reviewing them)

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.

Alternate Universe Sweet Valley Twins

The rising action in the narrative of my dreams is paved with used books (literally - stacks of books exist where they don't in real life, creating walking paths and walls). Used books, like gumball machines that I can use without putting in a quarter, are something I see in my dreams a lot. They are always secondhand paperbacks, stacked with the spine facing up like at the library book sale. I am hunting through the titles until I realize I'm dreaming and get Lucid. This usually happens when I come across the Alternate Universe Sweet Valley Twins books. The Alternate Universe Sweet Valley Twins books are books that seem like real Sweet Valley Twins books, until I notice that the number is wrong or the title is weird or the cover picture is completely different (and not just because it's Bruce Emmett illustrating instead of James Mathewuse, like the overhaul they did in the late 90s). See here:

(same book, different cover illustrator)
I call them Alternate Universe because they seem like they could exist at first - because one time, in an older copy of a real SVT book, the title listed for the next book (listed at the end, where they usually ask a question and say "Find out in the next book [title]") was different than when the next book actually was printed/ published. Like, #33 was listed as The Wakefields' Visitor at the end of Book #32 but when #33 really came out, it was called Elizabeth's New Hero. Clearly just publisher oversight due to the fact that the next book in the series comes out every month. But the alternate title would exist in a parallel universe.
I like to think that Piper, my character, exists in the Alternate Universe Sweet Valley Twins books. Of course, once I happen upon one in my dream, then realize I'm dreaming, the book changes/ ceases to exist. It's hard to hold onto things in dreams. Sometimes I get lucid enough to realize, "Damn, my brain is awesome for being able to completely recreate, visually and as a tactile sensation, a mental version of all these books." With title and layouts and cover pictures and text inside that I can sort of read, sometimes.

A Trickle of Royalties, Can't Complain

Got a notice from Amazon KDP saying a deposit would be made soon. I sold a smattering more copies of the Kindle versions of my books. Yay! Love that game. Although if it could explode into popularity, that would be nice too.
I was just reading The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent and thinking about Book 6 again. I haven't published it, so there's no need to worry that it's in poor taste. (In it, Piper the witch sends the inane twins back in time to Salem Village, 1692. Or actually, a facsimile in which the twins' family, friends and teachers all play a part.) They don't get hanged though, because the twins have a special immunity to being killed, from being the main characters (and from being 12, in the SVT series). Even when put in various dangerous (and/or supernatural) situations. I guess I'm just commenting on how fucked up that time period was, with the religious zealots, and the humorless Puritans and the sexism and racism. Women were owned by their husbands, slaves were owned by their masters, and children weren't allowed to play. It was bleak. And they were thoroughly convinced that they were doing their god's work. (It was entirely possible that they could sentence a 12-year-old to hang for a conviction of witchcraft, that's how serious they were. Although sentencing fictional characters to hang just for being annoying would be... odd.)
Furthermore, by "Sweet Valley-izing" it, I'm commenting on how resilient the twins are, no matter how ridiculous (and unrealistic) the dangerous situation is. (At some point Piper will give up trying to murder the twins, because it just doesn't work. Haha)
At any rate, waiting to see if I ever get reviews (or comments on this blog) concerning the first 3 books before I publish the next 3.