MASKs Commentary Track: Chapter 5

Thischapter was the  new twist on the very old idea that appeared in the last chapter. While the meeting between Rae and Trevor has always gone this way, what they do after has changed a lot. This time, I had quite a few people asking me how the characters might each establish that the other was one of the good guys. And when I thought back over all the ways that superheroes might prove their bona fides, there were really only two major ways. They can be introduced by a mutually trusted superhero (“Hey, Batman, it’s Superman. I want you to meet Captain Marvel. He’s probably not useless.”) or they can end up on the same side of the same fight.

For street-level heroes, that pretty much means stopping a street-level robbery, rape, or murder. I liked the idea of the convenience store that gets robbed all the time, especially since Captain Catastrophe is so much a creature of habit, so it made sense to have it get robbed again and have Mr. Chaidez be completely unfazed by the event, or even by Rae’s lack of a costume. This chapter gave me a chance to show off Rae’s relative discomfort with real-world criminals (this is her first real encounter with a gun) and Trevor’s easy facility with weapons.

Side note: the gun disarm Trevor uses is a real disarm, which I borrowed from krav maga practitioner John Konecsni, author of A Pius Man. John very kindly walked me through the whole process several times, and even sent me a couple of videos of the disarm. So there really is a solid, simple way to take a gun like this … I just didn’t include the precise details because it would slow down the scene and, since it took me three viewings of the video to catch what was going on, I figured Rae wouldn’t observe everything on the first try, in the dark, under stress. Character trumped technique here. (I also went with the simpler form of the disarm because it matched Trevor's mixed-style training.) But trust me, the gun disarm really does work.

This chapter also brings up, for the first time, the question of superheroes and guns. There are a lot of adherents of the Batman school in comics—good guys who will never, ever, ever use a gun. This may seem a little illogical for those who don’t have horrific childhood traumas involving firearms, but it makes life a lot easier for the writers. It’s hard to write the amazing adventures of Shooting-People Man without racking up an impressive body count. The Punisher already covers that territory, and any more principled use of firearms easily devolves into a standard cop drama. Unless you make the story about the gun—have your hero be a master of Gun Fu, etc.—firearms can really take the fun out of a written fight scene. So a lot of comic-book writers go out of their way to avoid making their heroes regular gun users, and that’s why Rae doesn’t know how to shoot. (This is also because I don’t know how to shoot, and don’t currently have the resources to pay for professional instruction for the sake of research—and I’m not stupid enough to pick up a gun and try to learn how to use it without an experienced professional helping me.)

Trevor, however, is pretty darn good with guns.

There are a couple of reasons for this. As the series goes on, you’ll find out more about his training and discover that he’s unusually good with projectile weapons of all kinds—his trademark weapon as a kid sidekick was a simple sling, and he’s an excellent shot with shuriken, throwing knives, etc. There’s something in his brain that works well with the physics of flying objects, and that extends to both bullets and arrows. (More on the arrows later.) 

The second reason is that I can’t imagine Jude training Trevor without making him familiar with guns. So much of their job involves gun-wielding villains and henchmen, plus the occasional cop with the wrong idea (because what superhero hasn’t been accused at some point of, say, murdering police officers in cold blood?) that they’d have to be experienced at avoiding getting shot, taking guns away from people, and (if necessary) using them. And Trevor, as you can see here, gets just a little scary when there’s a gun in his hands. Not all of his gun training came from his mentor. More on that later.

And oh, hey, this chapter marks the first time Trevor and Rae flirt with each other! Watch for the phrase “Blue Eyes” in later chapters … it will come to mean something rather different. 

By the way, I'm not a fan of the illustration on this chapter (and neither is Nicole), so it may change in the eventual ebook and printed versions. You have been warned.

This chapter’s musical selection is almost inevitable, since I privately refer to this chapter as “Everybody run, Trevor’s got a gun.” I give you Julie Brown’s timeless “The Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun”:

You don't want to read this.

This is a personal blog. That’s why it’s going up on Sunday. If you’re looking for a bit of cheery, angsty entertainment, that’s what tomorrow’s for (and do come back for that; it promises to be good).

I wasn’t going to blog about the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This isn’t A Pius Man. I’ve been avoiding Facebook and Twitter all day. I’m not going to any of the various memorial services and public commemorations. It just feels wrong to stand in a crowd of mourners and hear people talk about What This Meant To Our Country, or What God Has To Say About This. I’ve never cared much for nationalism, because America for me has always been a nation of ideas, and it rises or falls with them—so what should I care about the dirt? And I have about as clear an idea of what God has to say about the whole thing as I’m likely to get any time soon, because I’ve asked him over and over, and listened very carefully, and it seems he’s said all he’s going to say for now.

I don’t have strong personal memories of the day of the attacks. I was in California, not New York. I remember getting up for school at 5:45 a.m. and hearing that the first plane had struck—I immediately thought of a plane that accidentally hit the Empire State Building in the 1940s. The first tower fell as I was driving to class, and I remember shouting at the car radio when word came down about the Pentagon—“What are they, morons?” I knew it was intentional by then, but these had to be the stupidest terrorists on earth. I remember talking to a friend outside a classroom before the first class started, and a teacher stepping out to tell us the second tower had fallen. My high school was in the flight path of an international airport, and I remember the eerie silence as flights were grounded, broken in late afternoon as I was doing my calculus homework by the unfamiliar snarl of a military jet passing overhead. I went still, and just listened.

The president of my class joined the Marines right after graduation. A childhood friend, born the day after I was, was already in boot camp the day of the attacks. Last I heard he was in Afghanistan. A decade slid by, with two wars that met with varying public support. People told me I should be all for kicking the terrorists’ asses, or shouting No Blood For Oil, or doing just about anything except what I was doing, which was what I’d been doing all along: listening. Listening, and thinking.

And what I think is this:

September 10, 2001 was my eighteenth birthday. And every time I see those photos from the day after, glimpse those videos, I think: welcome to citizenship. Welcome to adulthood. This is the world. You will vote about some of this. Your friends will die for more of it. You might die, too. What will you do about it?

I write stories about hope. I write about unlikely heroes bucking the odds. I write about people who make a difference, however small, however strange. I don’t write about nations, or great battles, or the clash of civilizations. I don’t care. In a thousand years all anyone will know about my lifetime is that three thousand people died and touched off a bloody conflict that will probably be going on long after I’m dust—and those future historians will all be missing the point. This wasn’t about politics, or economic forces, or religion. It was about people who made choices—horrible choices, impossible choices, magnificent choices. Three thousand of them died; many others lived.

So I write about people who choose to do the right thing, even when it’s hard. I write about people who choose to fight when they must, and to refrain when they should. I write about people who don’t give up. I write about people who change the world in small, strange ways, and sometimes in large, strange ways.

I don’t claim to speak for any of the victims who died on my first full day as a citizen. I didn’t know them, and now I never will. I doubt they’d all approve of what’s happened since, but I doubt they’d all oppose it, either. That’s the trouble with three thousand unique individuals—you’ll never get them all to agree perfectly on anything, especially anything about life and death. But that’s three thousand choices out of the world now, and it’s my hope that if I just write enough new choosers, maybe the people who read about them will change the way they make choices of their own. Maybe they will listen, and think.

Welcome to the world. What will you do about it?

How to subscribe to MASKS--for free!

So you want to subscribe to MASKS, eh? Maybe get all those lovely chapters delivered to you free of charge? Well, here’s how!

First, some instructions from the lovely Melanie Hatch of Portland, Oregon, on how to subscribe to Masks via RSS (Real Simple Syndication) on your computer:

1. Install Google Reader (it’s free!) on your computer.

2. Go to www.PocketCoyote.com.

3. There should be a logo near the upper right corner of the page that looks like a little square with a dot and two quarter-circles coming out of it (see the picture to your right). When you hover over it, it turns orange. Click on that; it takes you to an RSS feed page.

4. At the top of the RSS feed page, it says "Subscribe to this page using", and then there's a drop-down box that defaults to Google and a button saying "Subscribe now." Click that button.

5. Sign in with your Google account and/or Google Reader username and password. You may be given the option of sticking the feed on your homepage or in Google Reader. Pick your poison.

Melanie adds: “If you have some other pet RSS reader, those instructions might differ, and setting up Google Reader to begin with is a little more of a pain as I recall... but that was all I had to do. The trick was just finding the RSS feed button in the corner.”

Now, if you'd like to subscribe using an Android smartphone, we've got some lovely instructions from Ashley Zeldin of Calabasas, California. She also recommends using Google Reader, which is available in the Android App Market, or doable in your Android browser if you prefer. To subscribe via the app:

1. Install the Google Reader app. 

2. Upon first use of Google Reader, it will ask you to add your Google account and accept the permission request from the pull-down Notifications screen. You can add multiple accounts by following the onscreen instructions.

3. Once you've synced your account with the Google Reader app, press "Menu" and select "Subscribe" (circle icon with + inside). Enter the URL pocketcoyote.com and press search. Confirmation will briefly appear at the bottom of your screen. 

4. Press back (the back arrow) to return to your Google Reader home and posts will appear under "All Items"; "Pocket Coyote" will be listed under "Subscriptions" with an orange RSS icon at the left. To rename, press and hold "Pocket Coyote". From the pop-up menu, select "Rename subscription..." and enter whatever you'd like into the text box, then press "Rename" to save the change.

5. Return to your Android’s home screen by pressing the Home button. If you have unused space on the home screen where you want the Google Reader app shortcut to appear, press within that space and hold. If you don’t have space on the home screen, scroll to another screen with empty space where you want the shortcut to appear, then press and hold. Or simply press “Menu”.

6. An “Add to Home” screen will appear. Select the “App” option. An “Add app shortcut” screen will appear. Scroll down to Reader. The shortcut to the Google Reader app will now be a blue RSS icon overlapping a red RSS icon on your home screen or the designated screen; if you pressed “menu” to start, you may get a red notification at the top saying, “No space on this screen. Drag to another screen to place”, so simply scroll to another screen with empty space. Now you can place your shortcut, and have easy access to Masks!

To subscribe via Google Reader in your Android browser: 

1. In your Android browser, go to Google Reader, http://www.google.com/reader. You have to sign in to Google if you’re not already signed in.

2. Bookmark the Google Reader page by pressing “Menu” and selecting the “Add bookmark” option (the icon looks like a book with a bookmark hanging over the front and a + at the lower right). A “New bookmark” screen will show the name of the bookmark, “Google Reader” (it may include a number, which you can just delete by pressing the backspace key on the keyboard which pops up when you press inside the text box), and the location of the bookmark. Press “Done” to save to bookmarks. Confirmation will appear briefly at the bottom of your screen.

3. Return to your Android’s home screen by pressing the home button. If you have unused space on the home screen where you want the Google Reader bookmark link to appear, press within that space and hold. If you don’t have space on the home screen, scroll to another screen with empty space where you want the link to appear, then press and hold. Or simply press “Menu”.

4. An “Add to Home” screen will appear. Select the “Shortcut” option. An “Add shortcut” screen will appear. Select the “Bookmark” option. The bookmark you just created for Google Reader should be the top left option. The bookmark to Google Reader will now be a red flag-like icon with a white star on your home screen or the designated screen; if you pressed “menu” to start, you may get a red notification at the top saying, “No space on this screen. Drag to another screen to place”, so simply scroll to another screen with empty space.

5. You can now add the Masks feed. Visit http://www.pocketcoyote.com to add by pressing the gray RSS icon at the top right of the screen. You should get a screen with the option to add to Google Reader, but if the subsequent screen is a jumble of text and code (like it was for me), you can add the feed manually. Return to Google Reader and press “Add a subscription” (it’s the link to the right of the blue box with white + icon just under the Google reader logo). Type in the feed URL, pocketcoyote.com. You should receive confirmation in Google Reader however you do it.

6. Then add themasksblog.blogspot.com while you're at it!

Thanks, guys! Pocket Coyotes are on their way to you in gratitude for your help!

But we're still missing instructions for the iPhone and iPad ... Apple fans, this is your chance! First user to submit working instructions for the iWorld gets a Pocket Coyote of their very own ...

MASKS Commentary Track: Chapter 4

This is the oldest piece of Masks you’ll get to see, I think.

I began writing Rae Masterson’s adventures in January 1998, mostly to amuse myself and see if I could actually write a story every month. For a while, the serial was biweekly; I’d write a story every two weeks, and the people who’d become my friends (mostly by pilfering my notebook) would get to read another chapter. But you can’t expect brilliant decision-making from a fourteen-year-old, and after a couple of years and about 60 short stories, I started to get a little antsy. I wasn’t going to be a kid forever, and there were a few legal problems with the stories I’d written so far—namely, my penchant for having copyrighted characters swing by for a team-up. I thought nothing of having Captain America pop in for an issue, or having one of Rae’s friends have a long history with Lee Falk’s wonderful character The Phantom. Now, I wasn’t charging for these stories, and I was reasonably sure that no lawyer in his or her right mind was going to sue a fourteen-year-old for a few handwritten stories … but the fact was that by the time I was seventeen, I was a much better writer than I was at fourteen, and I wanted a do-over. So shortly after my seventeenth birthday, I rebooted a series that had been written as Rae’s diary and made it an ensemble piece. I called it Masks.

Trevor showed up in chapter two.

 He was supposed to be a one-off character, a playful jab at a trend in the Bronze and Dark Ages of comic books where every kid sidekick seemed to meet a horrible and socially significant fate. From Speedy’s heroin addiction to Robin getting blown up to a hundred lesser sidekick traumas (turned evil! infected with AIDS! joined a pop band!), it seemed like kids couldn’t catch a break in comics. So I decided to create the ultimate screwed-up sidekick, someone who wouldn’t just be a tragic figure but would legitimately scare the hell out of readers.

And, as I’ve blogged before at length, I just couldn’t bring myself to kill the guy off on schedule. Trevor was badly damaged, yes, and he’d made some terrible choices, but underneath all that I knew that he just really, really, really wanted to be a hero. I write stories about heroes, about people trying to do the right thing. I have a soft spot for the guy who tries to do the right thing even though the deck is massively stacked against him. And what could be more heroic than a character who does battle not only with villains, but with himself? And so that chance meeting on the rooftop, which was supposed to end in a violent death, ended up being the start of a very complicated relationship. Trevor was supposed to be the bad boy of the supporting cast, but he fell in love with Rae, and eventually she with him. And he made it into the novel, and here he is, meeting her on the rooftop once again. The running and dancing have always been part of the story; his fear is new, but I think it keeps things fresh.

Some random notes on this chapter:

1. Roofrunning—I did not invent the word, or the concept. Superheroes have been roofrunning for at least 30 years, and calling it that for at least 15. They’re usually low-power heroes, guys who can’t fly and don’t have a fancy vehicle, and they creep and jump and run over rooftops in whatever neighborhood they protect. It’s a bit like parkour or freerunning, I suppose. I first ran into the concept in Daredevil comics from the 1980s, when David Mazzuchelli used the sequences to show off his ability to draw complex landscapes and lithe superhero anatomy. I picked up the word “roofrunner” from an issue of Nightwing that dated to … the late 1990s, I think, but don’t quote me. I know the phrase “rooftop express” was more common in that series, though. Anyway, roofrunning is officially a superhero tradition. So there.

2. I have had someone ask me why Trevor never asks anyone out loud why there are hoofprints on the rooftop. To which I answer: how would you start that conversation? And anyway he meets the Masked Rider later, which should answer everything.

3. Trevor’s rules really are going somewhere. Oh, that boy has a screwed-up brain.

This chapter’s musical selection pretty much proves I’m insane. A few years ago I had to review Michael Bublé’s album “Come Fly With Me” for my college paper. It was the first time I’d heard most of the standards he sings, including his cover of Van Morrison's “Moondance.” It struck me at the time as an interesting soundtrack to this very scene, since no matter how many ways I write it, it always takes place at night with enough light to see by, and it always begins with running and ends with dancing. So here’s “Moondance,” the official soundtrack for doubles roofrunning.

Werewolf Blog Tour Redux--Eleven MORE Questions for Christine Johnson!

Longtime readers will remember the lovely Christine Johnson, who swung by last year to pimp her completely awesome werewolf novel Claire de Lune. Well, she's baaaa-aaaack, and she's got lots of goodies to spill about the sequel, Nocturne. So why am I still talking? Take it away, Interviewing Coyote!

1. Okay, we all loved Claire de Lune, your novel about a teenage girl who finds out she's a werewolf and has to deal with the life-imperiling personal and romantic fallout. What's going on with Claire this time in Nocturne? 

You’re so kind! There’s more life-imperiling in Nocturne. Of course. And a lot of trying to figure out who Claire’s going to be in this new life she’s been thrown into. There’s a threatening new girl, complications with Emily, and of course, dating Matthew creates its own set of difficulties. Poor Claire. It’s not an easy book for her, but I hope my readers like it!

2. Okay, enough Claire. What about Matthew, the hunky soccer star who was made a gardien of Claire's pack? Any dirt on him?

Matthew! He’s such a great guy. But you know, when your dad wants your girlfriend dead and her lupine family thinks men are just for, um, loving and leaving? That doesn’t make for the easiest relationship road. And that’s all I’ll say about that for now.

3. Claire's poor best friend Emily (did I get that name right?YES!) is continually out of the loop. Does that change in this story, or does she stay Lois-Lane clueless?

DUDE, I AM NOT GIVING YOU SPOILERS. But I will say that Claire genuinely loves Emily and she’s doing her best to keep her friend safe without abandoning their friendship.

4. In this blog, we talk a lot about world-building. How has Claire's world evolved since the first novel? Will we get to see any new corners?

You will! The other pack members have a larger role in Nocturne, so you’ll get to see more of them. Marie, Claire’s mom, and Lisbeth also have more air time. One of the things I liked most about doing a sequel was having the opportunity to explore things that weren’t in the forefront of the first novel.

5. I can't help noticing you're working a musical motif on these novels -- the first book was named after Debussy's Claire de Lune, of course, and now we have Nocturne. How does music tie into your work?

Mostly, in these books, it doesn’t. The titles of the Debussy pieces (he wrote several nocturnes) work so well as wordplay. Claire de Lune means moonlight, but could be read as “Claire of the moon,” which -- you know -- PERFECT for a werewolf book, right? And Nocturne is definitely darker than Claire de Lune was. Nocturne means “of or pertaining to the night,” which was so appropriate for the story and fit with the title theme I started with Claire de Lune. There will be a lot more music in my new project, though! *ooooh teaser*

6. What surprised you most when you were working on Nocturne?

How hard it is to write a sequel! I thought -- hey, I have the world built, I have the characters, let’s GO! It turns out, it’s just as hard as writing the first book, and maybe more so. Once the world’s “rules” are in place, they can’t be changed to accommodate your imagined story. You’ve gotta abide by the logic you’ve already set up, and that can be HARD!

7. What do you want your faithful readers to take away from Claire's new adventure?

I really hope they like the story, obviously, and I hope they see Claire as a girl who’s done the best she could with the (pretty crappy) hand she’s been dealt. But readers always take away their own ideas from a book, which is something I love. It’s so cool that a dozen people will take a dozen different messages from the same story. I wouldn’t want to tamper with that!

8. Any new tips for the aspiring novelists out there? I know I've picked up a few new teenage would-be writers since I last interviewed you, and they are the sweetest kids ever. They'll pretty much eat up anything you say. (Isn't that right, guys?)

Write, write, write. Read, read, read. Develop a willingness to get up again no matter how many times you’ve been kicked and be willing to admit -- at the same time - that your writing needs to improve. And then sit back down in your chair and write some more.

9. What's this I hear about a new series starting up? Something about astrophysics? *NERD STARE*

HA! Right now, it’s a standalone and not a series, but yes. I’m working on The Gathering Dark, which is about dark matter and music and hot guys. Keira, the protagonist, is one of the most amazing girls EVER. Uh, not that I’m biased or anything. I’m super excited about it! It will be published by Simon Pulse.

 10. If we're looking for the latest scoop on Claire and your other characters, what should we do?

You can always follow me on Twitter (@cjohnsonbooks) where I talk a lot, about everything. I don’t autofollow, but I always read and respond to @ replies.

If you enjoy randomness, I’m your girl. Also, you can check out my website -- www.christinejohnsonbooks.com -- or “like” my Facebook page, Christine Johnson (author.)

11. Your obligatory gag question: What vocal warm-ups do you recommend for novice werewolves who don't want to strain their voices on their first howls?

Hee. Um, I’d recommend they find some opera they like and sing along. It’ll ... uh ... expand their lung capacity and the vocal range of their howling. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. Right? *falls out of chair laughing*

-------------------------------------------------------

Nocturne is available now from Simon Pulse. 

And if you'd like a little extra YA action with a side order of angst (and even a werewolf, albeit in a supporting role), feel free to check out my serialized novel, Masks, which you can read for free, right here.  You can even start reading with the current chapter if you don't feel like going back to the beginning--it's designed as an entry point. A new chapter goes up tonight at midnight!

Meet the new Rae!

This is just a fun little side post to show you guys I’m not completely slacking off while Masks is running on Pocket Coyote. Because Masks is my private project unless a publisher comes along and offers to do business with me, I’m working on using my day-job skills as an editor to put it together as a real live book and ebook. To that end, I’m going to have to do something I’ve never done before—design and shoot a cover. Now, technically I have used photo covers before on projects for clients, but I’ve never shot the photos myself. I’ve always had photographically inclined friends and colleagues to do it. Well, no one’s available and/or up for this one, so it’s DIY time. How hard can it be? (I know, I know, famous last words …)

Now, because this cover will be both the paperback cover and the ebook cover, it’s going to have to be an image that looks great as a postage stamp, because that’s the size of the thumbnail image most people will be seeing online. As I’m working on getting Masks optimized for smartphones, tablets, e-readers, etc., I have to make sure the eventual ebook will look attractive on them. And the ebook cover has to match the paperback cover to avoid unnecessary confusion, so I need a clear, simple, striking image to represent Masks to the world.

Naturally, then, I’ve set myself a completely insane task. I want to make a photographic version of my Comic-Con bookmark:

I’m fairly confident that I can actually sew a Peregrine costume. I’ve made more complicated garments before this, and the outfit is supposed to look like the work of an amateur seamstress. Plus I’ll be shooting it in low light, so I’ve got a lot of wiggle room. More importantly, though, I can’t just shoot an empty costume. I need someone to wear it!

Enter Johanna.

My previous model, the lovely Carolyn, is super insanely busy between work, finishing school, and getting engaged (mazel tov, by the way!). Also, the changes between the current version of Masks and the previous draft require Rae to have a slightly different figure. Remember Rae complaining about the “artist’s conception” where she was six feet tall and obviously a guy? I decided that this time around, Rae was going to be a little less well-endowed, both because it got me around the everyone-stare-at-the-girl-superhero problem and because it would give her something to be a bit insecure about—and this draft demanded insecurity. So I needed a slightly more boyish Rae, and Carolyn’s friend Johanna was handy. It didn’t hurt that she had long hair, which Rae also acquired in this draft. (Please note: unlike Rae, Johanna is not at all insecure. This is probably because she’s brilliant, gorgeous, and a skilled martial artist who can deliver a vicious beating to anyone who tries to make her feel insecure. You have been warned!)

I know, I know—she’s blond! Suspend your disbelief for a while, okay? I can do amazing things with Photoshop. Well, actually, I can do amazing things with GIMP, because I can’t afford a copy of Photoshop. Although I do find it funny that her coloration is much closer to Trevor’s than to Rae’s. But because the Peregrine costume covers most of the body except for the upper part of the face, build was more important than coloration, and both were more important than facial structure.

Anyhoo, Johanna is an experienced martial artist and an avid cosplayer, which should make the photo shoot go quite well. We took these test shots in a local park so I could, if necessary, use them as reference for Nicole’s art. Nicole eventually went with a less photorealistic look for the weekly illustrations (she can produce them faster this way), but the photos are neat anyway, and give you a glance of the un-GIMPed Johanna as she appears before I work my costuming and photographic magic.

I’m only sorry we didn’t have a convenient rooftop to shoot on …


Oh, and come back tomorrow for an interview with Christine Johnson, author of Claire de Lune and the newly released Nocturne!

MASKS Commentary Track: Chapter 3

Believe it or not, I’ve always had a hard time writing school stories, even when I was in school. I’d throw in a classroom scene here or there, but there was nothing especially scholastic about it—my characters could have been talking on a street corner as easily as in a classroom or a hallway. I never had any really good ideas for stories that could go on in a school, perhaps because I regarded school as a place to keep my head down so no one would notice me writing. But when you write stories about American teenagers, you have to deal with school somehow—either explain what they’re doing (or not doing) about their education, or why education is not a factor. Mention their schooling or homeschooling, or set your story in a post-apocalyptic world where all the schools have burned.

Or, in my case, set your story during summer vacation and have your characters be really weird people.

This chapter introduces the Hawkins Foundation, a scholarship program that will become very, very important in the lives of Rae, Trevor, and my other characters. It’s a lot more than an honors program, as you can see, and it’s a bit more than a school for superkids, too—but we’ll get to that later. For now, I’ll content myself with a little behind-the-scenes anecdote: in the first draft of this novel, Rae and Trevor were high-school seniors and going off to college in the next book, where they would meet Soleil, Tammy, and all these other characters. Then their ages got dialed back to sixteen, but I still needed the Walker University tunnels and other features, so the summer program was created and I got my main cast all together in the first "season."

This chapter also gives us our first glimpse of Rae’s family in the form of her remembered argument with her father. Rae’s parents will not be terribly present in these stories, but the fact that she has a family and is mostly estranged from it will be a big part of her character. Masks is very much about people building substitute families—Trevor and Rae, Golem and Moon, Soleil and Tammy, and eventually others as well—and so there’s some groundwork for that going in here. Masks are the kind of people who don’t quite fit in with normal life, and so they tend not to fit in with normal families, either. They build their own, eventually, and because these masks are young, they’re just starting that process.

Brief random notes on Rae’s new friends at Walker University …

1. Tammy is based on a real person, who is actually named Tammy and dates from when I used to randomly write my friends into my fiction, usually because they asked me to. The fictional Tammy is considerably more perky than the real Tammy, but no less loud and random (watch for the phrase “invisible clowns” in a later chapter). The real Tammy came up with the line about grubbies, partly as an in-joke—she is something of a fashion plate, while I live my life in black T-shirts and tatty jeans. I don’t think she’s ever had the bad grace or cluelessness to suggest I “change out of grubbies” when I’m wearing my favorite outfit, but she might have done it at sixteen, and that’s all that matters to me.

2. Soleil is also based on a real person, although she’s departed much more from her original. I knew a girl in high school who happened to look exactly like Snow White and who had, if not the wickedest sense of humor I’ve ever encountered, something very close. She was brilliant, sarcastic, and inclined to drum her fingertips together and say “Excellent,” in the manner of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. To the best of my knowledge, she was not a were-cat, but I’m not sure she’d tell me if she were. Her name was not Soleil. I wish to state for posterity that Soleil Faulkner is much meaner than the person she’s based on. She just turned out that way—another case of my characters having minds of their own.

3. Mike Glass is not directly based on anyone I know. Probably. In my head, he looks like a teenage Michael Chabon, and I’ve never been able to understand why. Keep an eye on him; he is not your average RA.

4. Robert Paine Hawkins will get his moment in the sun before the book is out, so I won’t spoil too much here … except to say that his name still makes me laugh. Years ago, I was a fan of a comic book called Marvel: The Lost Generation, which was all about a bunch of Marvel superheroes who lived and died before the ones we know (Spider-Man, the X-Men, etc.) became active. My favorite character in that comic was a gruff and cunning cape-and-gadgets guy named the Black Fox, who died in the first issue (not that that kept him out of the story, which was told in reverse chronological order—it’s complicated). His real name was Robert (Bob) Paine. The name “Black Fox” triggered my auditory memory, which is excellent but random. I have accidentally memorized hundreds of hours of random noise, especially music and dialogue tracks from movies. And I can’t read the phrase “black fox” without hearing this song from The Court Jester, one of my favorite movies as a child:

So now Bob Paine was inextricably linked in my head with Danny Kaye’s character, Hubert Hawkins (who was not actually the Black Fox, but the hero of the film, so there). After that I really wanted to name a character Robert Paine Hawkins, and when I needed to name a scholarship foundation, the name surfaced. My Hawkins doesn’t actually have anything to do with either of his inspirations—he’s just named that to make me smile and because I wanted a mysterious old man with three names. And no, he is not secretly a retired superhero named the Black Fox, although he does have a secret or two.

And then we have the program-within-the-program, the alpha track. This came out of a true story, more or less. I was a major academic overachiever as a kid, top of the class in everything, even the subjects I hated—which were pretty much all math. I was good at math; I just didn’t enjoy it at all. However, I did two years in junior high in an annual competition called Math Olympics, mostly because the practices got me out of P.E. The first year I took top honors in the logic-problem category, but in the second year I got seriously skunked by a boy about half my size—and the fact that it was a boy was especially irritating; logic was where young male math geniuses traditionally foundered in that competition. A few months later, I entered high school as a freshman and found myself in an English class whose teacher asked each student to bring in an object that introduced him or her. I brought in a small wire-frame horse I’d made from random craft supplies, mostly because I wouldn’t have time to read an entire short story. And a runty boy in the front row brought in a logic medal from last year’s Math Olympics. My nemesis and I had landed in the same high school. I whispered to the girl next to me, asking who this brat was, and she whispered back, “Oh, that’s ___. You know, the freshman who’s taking calculus?”

I was on track to take calculus as a senior. Suddenly I didn’t feel quite so bad about getting skunked, though I did feel pretty small all of a sudden. I think that’s where the alpha track came from—the idea of a high achiever discovering a level of achievement that’s completely impossible for him or her. I let Calculus Boy go academically unmolested, mostly because I still hated math no matter how good I was at it, but I think that if he’d been a writing prodigy, I would have set my sights on proving I was better than he was. That’s just who I was at fifteen. Anyway, that’s where Rae’s reaction comes from—and as you’ll see, it will get her in lots and lots of trouble.

This chapter’s track is the only Hoobastank song I like, “Right Before Your Eyes.” I decided when I first heard it that it was a great theme for the dramatic changes Rae goes through in Masks, and it eventually became a kind of theme song for her. I am not responsible for the Spider-Man fan video, although it does sort of rock.