This isn’t a plug.  Please don’t run off to buy this book that’s been out since 2000-something.  The poem I posted made me think about this and I figured I should mention it instead of being outed.

As I was graduating college, my parents offered to pay for me to self-publish a book that I wrote in high school and edited through college.  It was a cheap plan and I had no idea that I had to do the advertising.  I thought ‘resume builder’ at the time and should have been smacked upside the head with an empty vodka bottle.  Crash and burn would imply that the thing got off the ground or moved anywhere.  This was a firework that didn’t even sputter when the wick burned up.

The story was about 4 teenagers from Earth who discover they’re reborn immortals chosen to defend the universe from 9 ancient immortals.  There were superpowers, magical weapons, stupid outfits, an old mentor that didn’t make it out alive, and romances that started before the book did.  It was horrible when I look back on it.  The clincher here is that the main villain was the mother of one of the male heroes and his twin sister was another of the villains.  Keep in mind that these villains were exiled from the universe for centuries, so I have no idea how I expected this Star Wars plot twist to work.  I think I have notes about them returning earlier than the mentor realizes and the main villain birthed the kids when she tried to retire from villainy.  I plotted out several books on this, which pales in comparison to Windemere.  A green-haired, golden-eyed alien with tendril skin and a space vampire?  You’d think I started drinking in high school instead of my second semester of college with this.

Still, I do look back on this as the first attempt that allowed me to cut my teeth.  If I didn’t make this unimpressive series then I probably wouldn’t have gotten it out of my system before entering Windemere.  I still maintain a few pieces from this series, but with a lot more polish.  The main villain will appear in a later series as a manipulative immortal slated to become the new goddess of love.  One of the heroes will be a personality/form of a hero with six beings in her head.  A few of the minor villains show up as denizens of Hell when a band of heroes have to go there.

The overall point here is that you shouldn’t throw any ideas out.  You never know if a bad idea can be a key to another idea.  Your main villain could be a great sidekick or minor character in a later series.  Even my space vampire got evolved for an all-alien series that I have planned out.  Not everything will be a gem, but some things just need the right circumstances to be useful.