"Let's get it on!"
Afterword
Back in high school, English class was not a course I did well in and if you asked me back then, writing a book was not on the bucket list. If only those same English high school teachers could see me now. Through the past few years in developing the Powered Personnel idea, I've had false starts, rewrites, feedback, worldbuilding, character design, and redesigns among other things, wash and repeat times five. Writing in a professional sense is hard, but learning the mechanics and ingredients that go into a book or any work is rewarding. I think I once considered writing as a career when I wrote fanfiction in my teens. Though I ended up in a much different career, this project was more out of enjoying action and super-strong female characters, both in fiction and non-fiction.
Powered Personnel was born from other projects with the question of how capitalism would mesh with people who have superpowers. Imagine being able to fly to work, would you still buy an electric car? If you could survive out in space, would real estate be cheaper for you? And the biggest question, how much buying power do you actually have if you are a cosmic consumer?
I can only imagine the sheer amount of income tax you will pay at the cosmic level; better have a herald with a business degree, just saying.
- K.A.M.
Acknowledgments
First person I’d like to acknowledge and thank is author Joshua Pantalleresco who got me going in writing with the basics. I can finally say to him that I’ve joined the ranks of having a book on my shelf with my name on it. He talks to a lot of other authors on his award-winning podcast, Just Joshing, which exceeds six hundred episodes at the time this book was published.
Brad C. Baker is a legally blind swords and sorcery author whose world building and hard science styles helped shape some ideas in Powered Personnel. We'd debate on superhero mechanics often during development. He currently writes the Spirit of Amathrain series which is still in progress as of the time this book was published.
I met Brad at the Toronto Sci-Fi and Fantasy writing group led by author David F. Shultz. The group there was welcoming and I am thankful for the help on getting to know the business of publishing and learning to review works in constructive styles which is hard to do in the current age of social media.
Portrayals of women were very important to me. So, I made sure I had, you know, women who kept me accountable on how the book presented its female characters. I'm very thankful I had Kaija Rayne as my editor and Lizzie Dunlap as the cover artist and look forward to working with them on the next one.
The Superhero-Fiction on-line group led by Jeremy Flagg and Trish Heinrich was awesome for bringing authors together and supporting this genre. Superhero Fiction in novels is still a developing genre and I would invite you to check out their website, especially if this book piqued your interest at www.superhero-fiction.com to see many more superhero books. They have a discord server and I am often on there. So, say hi if you see me there and definitely let me know if you read this book.
Thanks again to all of my previous alpha and beta readers who read different versions of this and other stories through the past few years of development, with a special shout out to Tom Warin.
Last and certainly not least, thank you for reading this book and I hope you'll check out the next one. Go to www.poweredpersonnel.com to sign up for the newsletter to keep up to date on news, new releases, and maybe some surprises along the way.
About the Author
K. A. Maxwell claims to not be a career author. But, he has been published as a photographer in a couple non-fictional publications and even tried his hand at online media among his other experiments. As a digital media developer, he writes code for big websites and writes about the fictionally real lives of superheroes.
For all things Powered Personnel and to sign up for the newsletter, visit: www.poweredpersonnel.com.
Or, if you want to take a look at K.A. Maxwell's digital media side, visit www.kmax.me.
Powered Personnel: The Big Startup Page 17