Allen Steadham's Blog: From Allen - Write Away! - Posts Tagged "novel"

I started writing at the age of ten. Back then, I created my own comics, almost entirely superhero-related. I grew up on DC and Marvel comics. I read Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and the Avengers. But when I found the Uncanny X-Men, I found a new muse. I related to the brooding Scott Summers (aka Cyclops - long before he became the unlikable dude he is today). I created my own original superhero team and forged stories around them, their powers, their foes, the battles with those foes. Then I developed their character and relationships. They even became a generational superhero team. I wrote and drew them for twenty years, they became like family in a way.

But my own life changed and my need for drawing superhero scenarios dwindled. I got married, got a "real" job, became a father and became a Christian.

My wife had always been my "editor" for my comics, I trusted her (and still do) implicitly. So I wanted to create a new comic with her, a Christian comic. We took our time and prayed over it and eventually, Due East was born. Due East was more of a slice-of-life comic. It was about a multiracial family with a mixed-race (Chinese and Caucasian) man who married and African-American woman and they had two daughters. But conflicts arose, they separated and divorced. Still, they stayed in touch regarding their children (the oldest daughter lived with the father who moved to Canada for his job and her sister lived with her mother in Texas) and their love re-kindled, prompting him to move back with plans to re-marry. The spiritual aspect of the comic involved the younger daughter's best friend, who was a Christian. The series debuted online as a webcomic in 2007 on The Duck Webcomics and won Best Spiritual Comic and Most Profound Comic at The Duck Webcomics Awards in 2008. Due East ran from 2007 to 2009.

By 2008, my wife and I got used to scripting Due East's pages before I drew them. This became instrumental in ironing out plot details and dialogue.

A few years after Due East ended, I started a new webcomic called Super Chibi Girl (SCG) about a mixed-race (Caucasian father and African-American mother) young woman who gets involved in an extraterrestrial civil conflict that breaks out on Earth. I scripted the pages of SCG the same as we did Due East. SCG ran from 2012 to 2014.

In November 2013, I challenged myself to participate in National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) and write a 50000 word first draft for a book. I had a simple premise: take characters and story elements from my first superhero team comic (which was called "The AR-MEN," no relation to the X-Men), modernize those elements and make a Christian novel with superhero characters -- without actually making it a superhero story!

I named the novel Mindfire , after its lead protagonist, a young woman named Leia Hamilton. She had superhuman powers of telekinesis (moving objects with her mind) and pyrokinesis (the ability to set objects on fire). I revised plot elements so Leia did not know that her father had been a superhero once and her mother had been a supervillain.

Mindfire quickly turned into two stories in one, each affecting the other in unforeseen ways. It became a mystery which gradually unfolded. The characters with more-than-human abilities were tragically human and flawed. No one was perfect but all were striving to be something more than they were. It became a story about love and redemption.

I self-published Mindfire on Amazon in June 2016. It is 286 pages long and geared towards teens and older.

Since then I have been working on a trilogy of science-fantasy books with a young woman as the protagonist. And they have spiritual and Christian elements as well. I hope to release "Jordan's World" this year.

Thanks for reading this!