Okay, so I'm a geek.

Sue me. I love super-heroes. I love comics. When I was young, I lived for the latest issues of X-Men, Teen Titans, Avengers, Iron Man... And like many people like myself from that generation of comic readers (including a majority of my friends, now that I think about it), that love never really went away. I'm still buying them. Still reading them. And now even writing them.

It was a few years ago, when I was still living in Phoenix, that I was really trying to make a run at breaking into comic writing. Sadly, that particular run ended with me writing several scripts for a company that went belly-up, but at least there was an ad for one of my stories in one of their comics. I was trying to put together some writing samples, so I wrote a few self-contained eight-page scripts, just to show I could tell a story (and actually knew what a comic script looked like). One of them was called "Hits and Kisses", and was a little one-gag number. The basic idea was that this great super-hero team clashes with their rival villain team in the downtown streets. Major super-hero battle. In the middle of it, the youngest member of the hero team, a character I just threw together on the fly, faces off against the youngest member of the villain team, who also happens to be female. They end up colliding in the sky and falling, together, into the back seat of a convertible. They're in very close company as they try to shake off the fall, and try a few angry words at each other (she does at him, at least...he's not the angry words kind of guy), but suddenly, in their daze, they're kissing. Suddenly it's an awkward, smiling moment of innocent mutual attraction, and their good-vs.-evil struggle has turned romantic...in the back seat of a car, no less, which I thought was kind of clever. The rest of the story is mostly them talking about liking each other, but about how it could never work, him being a hero and her a villain and all. And during all this, this epic hero battle is going on in the background, with these other heroes and villains oblivious to what's going on with the missing hero and villainess. It ends with him trying to convince her that they should at least give it a try, and at this point, the villains are leaving and calling a retreat. She quickly looks around, indecisive, and grabs a bearer bond out of the air (I didn't mention—the villains were coming out of a major robbery with these things, and when the fight started, the bonds starting flying all over the place and littering the streets) and writes something on it. She gives him one last quick kiss, and the bond, then flies off along with the other fleeing villains. The other heroes show up at the car, seeing that the villains have made their getaway. They check on our hero, the kid, and surmise that he lost his fight with the girl and she got away. One of them says something like "there's always next time" to the rookie, and their leader verbalizes how much they need to find the villains' secret base. The young hero looks down at the bond, and the girl has written the address to the secret base on it, with instructions to pick her up Friday night. The kid smiles and hides the bond away.

The kid, by the way, was named "Windjammer", and the girl, "Delight".

It was just a little throwaway story, but I really liked that angle...the little Romeo/Juliet thing between hero and villain, exploring what a relationship in that context might be like. I even had a thought for a couple of little one-shot sequels that I could write. Just liked the idea of exploring that relationship. And though he was thrown together quickly, I really started liking the Windjammer character, too...sort of a doofy, clueless, but well-meaning rookie unaware of his own good looks....or the ramifications of romancing the enemy.

So that summer rolled around, and it was time, again, to head to the San Diego Comic-Con. Friends and I had been meeting up there for years, and it had become an annual tradition, a chance for us all to see each other again though we were spread around the country. So it happened this year the group of us that showed were all also members of the Clobberin' Times APA, and all writers. Most of us had written some fiction for the Times off and on, and had been part of a round-robin kind of story in the past. So the idea came up of us creating a shared world, where each of us would create a character, chose a city for that character to live in, and write fiction about that character. Sounded like a fun idea. We hammered out the rough details there at the Con (and because it was at the Con, the name for the project turned into ConTinuum), and all took some time to think up what kind of character we'd want—we'd need to all figure that out to make sure no one was stepping on anyone else's creative toes (you know, two speedsters in the world, or two characters with a bird motif, or two alcoholics, or whatever). I went through a couple of different ideas, but ended up coming back to Windjammer. Again, I'd liked the character a lot when writing the comic story, and had been thinking about all kinds of different directions to take him. This seemed like the logical place to properly explore all those ideas.

And so Windjammer appeared, along with all the other ConTinuum heroes, in the first ConTinuum section of the Clobberin' Times, back in...what was that, '95? '94? I'm getting so old I'm starting to lose track. I knew from the start that I didn't want these stories to just be about combat and heroes and villains. That stuff's interesting and all, but I'm really more interested in the characters themselves...how they view the life they've chosen (or been thrust into), how their relationships stand up to that lifestyle, what they do when they don't have the mask on. As a result, these stories have ended up being as much about Shane Doleman as they are about Windjammer (if not more, depending on the chapter). My particular slant on the typical hero thing, to differentiate myself from the other ConTinuum characters and stories, was to look at the fame aspect of being a hero, to see what happens to a fairly normal guy when suddenly he's on the cover of every magazine in the world and is adored by millions. That, to me, is interesting, and I've had a lot of fun exploring that. I also wanted to really look at relationships, and how they help shape who we are. So I've given Shane several different voices in his life—from Porter, his conscience and mentor, to Jerry, his grounding in "real life", to Delight (yes, who also made the passage from the comic), who represents the dark side of power. Indecision is one of the main personality traits I built into Shane, so giving him lots of big decisions (from life choices to romantic) also keeps things interesting. And his choices are going to have big consequences, because these stories are all leading somewhere. I can't help myself—I always think in epic terms, and grand arcs. So when I started things with Windjammer—seemingly a light-hearted, simple character and stories that would reflect this—I couldn't help but think big. There's an enormous backstory involved here, and a definite beginning, middle, and end to the whole thing. As you'll see when reading the stories, the "interludes" that pop in from chapter to chapter seem to come out of nowhere and don't seem to fit (must be the John Byrne fan in me), necessarily, with what's going on. But it's all part of the greater whole, and will all start to mesh as time goes on, and will all make sense in the end...if I live long enough to finish the whole thing, that is (one of the many downsides of thinking big. Ask Mr. Dark Tower, Stephen King).

I do hope you enjoy the Windjammer stories found on this site. If you like quick, episodic stories that you can get in and out of in a brief sitting, however, I'm afraid these may not be for you. These stories are BIG. It's just how I write, and often have to apologize for it to people who just ain't into the bulk. See, me, my taste in novels runs along the thousand-page monster (I've actually read the unabridged The Stand a couple of times), so I think this just comes through when I write. If this isn't for you, might I heartily suggest you try K.C. Ryan's Americana page, and the stories you'll find there. These are some really great stories that won't put your butt to sleep while you're at the computer desk reading them (K.C. knows how to actually be concise with his ideas. Weirdo). Kaye's Argent Vite stories are much the same way, and I hope we'll have all of those online sometime in the near future, too. But if you like to fall into something big, and if you don't require non-stop flying fists and energy blasts to hold your attention, Windjammer just might be for you. Give it a try and please...please...feel free to write and let me know what you think!

Welcome to Phoenix, my friends. And to the world of Windjammer.