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DC's Joker and A Look Behind Lightning

First, let me disabuse you of the idea that I think that I know so much that I could analyze a giant like DC. All that I am is a viewer with a humble opinion and a writer who wishes she could create a villain of the same caliber as the Joker, such that many actors aspire to play the part and then be labeled the quintessential Joker, Or that my character be the super villain of a major comic book series, Or that I have a villain who is the subject of a major motion picture of which the actor receives an Oscar. What writer wouldn't want that? What I am is a reader of the original DC and Marvel comic books.  Yes, the originals! My brothers and I had them all, and I would be filthy rich if my father hadn't gotten tired of our stacks of comic books and destroyed them all.  But anyway that's another story. This fact does not make me an expert either, but what it does do is give me the right to state my opinion along with everyone else. Next, my family and I go to the mov

Made-up or Real

When you write a book, you plot and plan and outline and create character profiles. You create timelines. You create names for your characters and personalities. You think about who's who in every character's life and how he or she will relate to others. You create a large scale environment and small scale environments that each character can go to when he or she needs to be alone or escape from the turmoils of the large scale environment and all the trauma that people and things bring into it. You research to make sure things are authentic.  I was just in a gaming store yesterday and watched some gamers engage in intense online combat. You do all that stuff -- but then, or should I say -- AND then characters take on lives of their own -- lives that you hadn't planned. They go off script and get into trouble, and then you have to save them. You can't sleep; you can't think about anything else, until you get back into the pages and save them.  So, I guess -- th

Jocasta -- The heroine

Jocasta is one of my main characters. She's a high school teacher who wants to do things to help her students. Teachers everywhere can relate to this. But is she too smart for her own good? Can a person change another person who doesn't think they need changing? Moreover, while there are males who come to the rescue, as males have always done and should do, females in my book have the dominant roles. We have so many male superheroes. And they are great! I love them! But, I've added to the pool of female superheroes. Jocasta and several other women come to the forefront, both wittingly and unwittingly, of A Look Behind Lightning , and while they don't have super-heroine costumes, they become --- (I need superhero music to finish this statement!)

Who are those people and what have they seen?

I think about nameless people in the past who scribbled in the darkness about things that we have never seen -- maybe we never will. Who were those people? What were their names? Why did they write about supernatural things? Did they have first-hand knowledge about what they wrote? We doubt the validity of these writings, but we don't know them or what they saw. Yet, when we sit in the darkness, we can feel something just outside our sight.  And when we look, there's nothing there. What looks over our shoulders as we do the things we must do? That's what drove me to write A Look Behind Lightning .