Villainy (the story) began in January 2014 when my best friend, Megan, sent me a writing prompt: “What does your villain do on Tuesday nights?”

Immediately a nameless villain with ridiculously normal Tuesday nights was born. And he became a part of an outrageous clash of cliché vs anti-cliché forces, one of two nameless characters I referred to only as “Hero” and “Villain”. “Hero” became a hero’s hero who talked and thought like an overstarched black-and-white movie. “Villain” became absolutely everything else.

Whenever those two said things that made me laugh in public, I scribbled it in my notebook. Their story created itself over the next month (but I wasn’t actually writing it down).

Megan and I haven’t lived in the same city since 2005 so we’ve mastered the art of email soliloquies, well-timed calls and picture spam (an email with no text, only pictures of quotes, fandom, projects, etc.) usually tainted with a healthy dose of randomness that somehow made perfect sense. After receiving one such email containing some Hero/Villain quotes, she wanted to read the Hero/Villain story.

My Reaction: “Well I guess those guys are goin’ on paper!”

Since then, I’ve crafted them fuller personalities based on the quotes, smiled when they developed hearts, and several drafts later I’m delighted to say that the completed version of these dorks is almost ready.

(Villainy will be submitted for final editing by the time the fall semester begins in August.)

To give you an idea, here are a couple of those early quotes:

#1)

• Villain: Meet me tomorrow at noon under the Calathian Stone and–.
• Hero: Come alone?
• Villain: (…) I was going to say to bring a clown but if you’d rather come alone then just bring spaghetti.

#2)

• Hero: (Determined) So we have a deal.
• Villain: (Grim) No.
• Hero: (?!) Why not?!
• Villain: (Grim?) I don’t feel like being consistent.  

Publishing Update: I plan to publish for October (yes, self-publish) which will allow me enough time to thoroughly polish any final final details while giving appropriate attention to my fall classes.