(click for larger)

As drawn by Terry Blas.

Blurb for the back cover:
“Fabulous (sorry I had to use that word somewhere in here)”

Thom Creed is your typical average teenage boy. He plays basketball, has ranging hormones, has super powers and is gay. Ok, so many one or two of those things aren’t typical. But they’re all there for Thom and that doesn’t make his life easy. His father, a disgraced no-power superhero, hates the heroes who have superpowers and isn’t too fond of homosexuals either. After Thom’s mother mysteriously vanished (hehe) when he was younger, it’s just been him and his dad and things aren’t going well. Things start to turn around though when Thom is recruited in The League to train and learn how to use his unique ability to heal people. He gets assigned to the lowest group of trainees that have a difficult time rising the ranks in The League. But when some of the well known superheroes start getting killed, it’s up to Thom and his teammates to track down the killer behind all this while trying to maintain his relationship with his dad after he comes clean about his superpowers and gayness.

Hero was surprisingly enjoyable. I tend to stay away from gay-teen lit because I find it rather dull and predictable most of the time. This book however is different from the rest of them and is actually interesting. It depicts what it is like to be a superhero in an environment where it might not be acceptable. Sure, superpowers are a clear metaphor for being gay, but it’s a pretty awesome metaphor.

The rest of this cast don’t have the whole gay thing to fall back on as their defining characteristic, so instead they are interesting and quirky. Take for example Ruth, a lady who is much too old to be a superhero, but can see the future. Or Typhoid Larry, who can give people various diseases just by touching them. For the most part their back stories are cover well enough. Some of the smaller bit characters aren’t cover, but you learn enough about them.

In the end, this book is fabulous (sorry I had to use that word somewhere in here) and you should read it if you are a fan of the superhero genre. This book is also being made in to a Showtime series with the help of Stan Lee. You can also check out Perry Moore’s web site.

Second thoughts:
in the teen zone
The YA YA YAS

Day 12
Word Count: 11,626

Holy crap am I behind on my word count! I should be hitting the 20,000 word mark today but as you can see I am nowhere near that. I’m not going to give up though. I can still make it, right?

Other than that, the writing is really bad and I have a habit of running my main character’s head in to hard objects. He may have a concussion, and I am worried about his health.

Day 4
Word Count: 6,712

Today’s election day in case you were too wrapped up in reading to notice that. Today was a little harder to finish because I kept getting distracted by hitting the refresh button on CNNs homepage. While writing these past four days politics have slowly slid in to my novel. I’ve made two jokes about how nothing good has come out of Alaska recently as well as based one of the characters off of Ann Coulter.

Day 3
Word Count: 4,947

It’s day three. I’m doing fine keeping up. At the moment I am about 50 words behind where I should be by now. I’m not worried about that though. I plan on being able to spend a fair amount of time on Friday. My current problem is that what I am writing is rather dialog heavy. I need to develop my descriptions more.

It has come to my attention that this web site doesn’t function when you view it with Internet Explorer.

Also, it has come to my attention that some people still use Internet Explorer.

I’ll work on fixing this but I probably wont get around to it till next month.

Avast! Tina Fey, who you may more commonly know as Sarah Palin, is also a fellow book pirate!

Thank to The Hidden Side of a Leaf for bringing this important bit of information to my attention.

DAY 2
Word Count: 3,036

Yesterday was the start of NaNoWriMo. Getting started was tough because I had an English paper I had to write first. I finished that (barely) and was set to start writing my novel. But when one of my co-workers called out sick, I was called in to work which cut in to my NaNo time. My time yesterday was cut short.

Today I haev exiled myself to my favorite coffee shop. Where I have been pounding the keyboard for the last hour and a half. So far this has resulted in 3,036 words put forth from my novel. Originally I thought I was going to have a hard time filling 50,000 words based off of my novel idea. However, I am now worried that 50,000 words wont be enough.

No real problems so far aside from being a little behind. But I still have the rest of the day to work on it, so I should be able to catch up no problem.