11 February 2014

Babes in Spyland



This story has a strange history.

And I don’t just mean because there are a bunch of odd names and bizarrely evil masterminds in it.

No, it all started a long time ago. In our galaxy—it is not a Sci-Fi story. My friend (the awesome and creative “K”) actually created the world of the Super Secret Agency at least fifteen years ago.

One year for Nanowrimo I decided I wanted to play too, so I got permission to enter, tossed some new characters and silly situations together and had more fun than I’d ever had writing 65,000 words. I didn’t want to stop!

At this point (maybe five years ago now) I decided that I wanted to get a little more serious about writing. Because I’d had so much fun with the world of SSA, I figured that it would be a great place to start.

One caution I’ve heard over and over in the writing world is that you probably shouldn’t start with your “baby”—the story that you’ve been dying to write ever since you had a dream about it when you were six years old.

No, start with something you don’t care about, because you’re going to suck as an author for a while, and sometimes it breaks people to have their “baby” suck too.

It can all be fixed, I promise. But it takes time.

Anyway, I fixated on my SSA story because it is supposed to be funny, cheesy and more than slightly ridiculous. I figured I could do that.

So I did research. I plotted each set of agents, their timelines, their destinations, how long it takes to drive through Texas and about a hundred other things. I re-vamped it, re-wrote it and declared it finished the next spring.

Over the next two years, I vowed to write a YA fantasy novel that I would get published. I did that. Well, I wrote it, then tried to get it published. That didn’t go very well for a while.

A friend of mine (the slightly insane “T”) had a friend of hers get involved with BigWorldNetwork.com. They were brand new, and publishing stories on the web serial style (one episode at a time per week, like a TV series). “T” asked if I wanted to write a series with her. I declined, because she writes romancy stuff and has a totally different voice than I do when I write. So she wrote her own and I decided (because “T” pressured me) to send them a different SSA story. One I’d just written the November before.

I figured that BigWorldNetwork.com would politely decline it. After all, the point of the Super Secret Agency is to make people laugh.

To my shock and surprise, they accepted. Said they loved it and would like as much as I would give them.

So I signed up for five seasons, plotted it out (loosely) and went to Chicktopia.

Special thanks have to go "K" for allowing me to romp in her world, and to R&R for coming up with the name “Babes in Spyland.” I think I still owe them dinner.

That’s a brief blah, blah of the history of Babes in Spyland. All five seasons are now available in paperback and e-book from Amazon.



Seriously, if you need a laugh, check it out. It’s supposed to be cheesy nachos with more cheese on the side.


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