Constant readers of this blog will have noticed several posts that link back to the Masks blog.
News items and essays she dealt with have inspired a few blog entries, and even a few stories .... my story "God Hates ... Superman?" is actually stolen from her original blog title of the same name.
Masks has appeared all over the blog, including: “So, you want to be a writer?” and Disasters to Marvel At: A Comic Discussion, and others.
Madam Hendershot inspired Writer's Rules For Villains; and The Masks Blog beat up on Fred Phelps before this blog did.
Masks also made a brief appearance in one of the first stories on this page, Boys of the Old Brigade.
Now, what the hell is Masks?
Masks is a novel series written by Rebekah Hendershot, who has been a friend of this blog and its supporting pages since day one. Seriously, she provided the first comment on the entire blog.
Masks is, essentially, what would happen if you had someone who wanted to seriously write an original novel about superheroes. She's it. Unlike some novels, like Soon, I Will Be Invincible, or other novelists who spend more time making fun of the genre than actually enjoying it, Rebekah is having fun with it. Imagine if Jim Butcher wanted to write an original comic book, you get Masks.
Masks also tries to make superheroes "real"-- rule one, NO SPANDEX.
It's a book written for those people who want something more edifying than Twilight, and without a retarded fanbase... Rebekah is far too polite to beat up on Twitards. Obviously, I don't have that problem.
Her premise: Something killed off the superheroes of Los Angeles. And it's still there. Cue Dracula theme.
Now, the only thing standing between the civilians of LA and supervillains is .... a sixteen-year-old girl with a snark function permanently set to "kill." When she sees a "real" hero from out of town try to assassinate a second-rate villain right in front of her, she rides to the rescue -- and is now a target. She has allies ... after a fashion. She's aided by a screwed up Tim Drake meets Winter Soldier, she has a demon coyote who's stalking her, and a cowboy grim reaper seems to have an interest in her as well.
And that's the first sixty pages.
There's a love story in there as well, but I can only cover so much.
Over the last year or so, she has supported gamers, comic books, and Young Adult fiction that men can read (YA fiction that isn't Twilight.)
When you check out her blog ... and what are you still doing here reading mine? .... you might notice some common themes between her blog and this one. A lot of writers are similiarly warped. We're weird that way.
Like all good comic books, she's on the forefront of writing. She has managed to take all the right things and blend them together, throwing in science fiction and magic in a way that I haven't seen since David Weber's "Hell's Gate" series, or even his recent novel "Out of the Dark." And Lord knows that any fantasy elements in Masks is about ten times better than any fantasy used in Star Wars recently.
One day, Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden will come up against a mad scientist, and it'll look a lot a Masks novel. Or, Butcher, or even Laurell K. Hamilton, will try to write something that is a solid mystery, and it may be as good as the Agatha Christie-like Zephyr Street.
All in all, it's a fun ride. If you have the time, you might want to get on. And buckle up.
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