Hey, guys! This marks my first blog post on this website!
I've been wanting to host a site like this, a website bursting at the seams with creative content for readers of all ages, since I was 12 years old. I had just finished reading the wonderfully zany and cosmically cooky middle-grade book, "The Strange Case of Origami Yoda," written by the incomparable Tom Angleberger, and my creative juices were flowing. I thought, since the series-inspiring Star Wars Saga had an Expanded Universe of ongoing content--novels, comics, and the like--why couldn't the Origami Star Wars Saga?
It was then that I decided to co-create the Origami Yoda Expanded Universe website; a website which still houses new paper puppet stories to this day! I got first-hand experience at running a website, tempering the expectations of a growing fanbase, and releasing multiple story initiatives of my design to enthrall a generation of young readers and writers. However, this was not enough for my 14 year old mind. The stories I started to crank out on the Expanded Universe website, dealing with a group of children in the grounded reality of a middle school where some kids like to hand out advice using paper Star Wars puppets, had started breaking the barriers of normalcy and leaping into the realm of the fantastical. I guess it all started with the Wishing Skittles. Or the kid who always wanted to set things on fire. One of those.
It became clear to me that this pre-existing universe from my personal writing idol was not the proper outlet for my admittedly exuberant concepts. Tom Angleberger's universe thrived off its own type of whimsy and wonder. I was inspired to craft a world of my own. A story initiative that was wackier and less restricted by the laws of reality. A school where speech balloons proclaim enthusiastic onomatopoeia, like BANG! and POW! A city where its citizens were used to pre-teen pyromaniacs. A planet where colorful candies came from the cosmos. A world where kids could fly.
So, naturally, I gravitated towards the villainous side of things. I mean, I'd watched Sky High enough times as a youngster to know there were superhero schools out there, encouraging students to properly utilize their superpowers in a warm and welcoming learning environment. Where was that kinda love for the SuperVillains?
That's when I came up with SuperVillain Central: Whirlwind's Wrath.
Wait, what's that?
That's not the title of my book?
Oh, gee. I guess I still had a bit of a learning curve to get through before I made the book of my dreams, SuperVillainy High: Firewhirl's Frenzy, a reality.
But that's another story...
-Josh
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