Pump Up Your Book Chats with Joe Sergi, Author of ‘Sky Girl and the Superheroic Adventures’

Joe Sergi lives outside of Washington, DC with his wife and daughter. Joe is an attorney and a Haller Award winning author who has written articles, novels, short stories, and comic books in the horror, scifi, and young adult genres. Joe is the creator of the Sky Girl series of novels and the editor of Great Zombies in History. His first novel, Sky Girl and the Superheroic Legacy was selected Best of 2010 by the New PODler Review. Joe is a life-long comic fan who regularly writes on the history of comics and censorship for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. A complete list of Joe’s titles is available at www.JoeSergi.net. When not writing, Joe works as a Senior Litigation Counsel in an unnamed US government agency and is a member of the adjunct faculty at George Mason University School of Law.

———— INTERVIEW ———–

Thank you for this interview, Joe! Can you tell us why you wrote Sky Girl and the Superheroic Adventures?

I think it is fair to say that the entire Sky Girl trilogy was conceived in a comic’s podcast forum project and born out of a father’s love for his daughter.

The Comic Geek Speak Podcast is made up of a bunch of great guys that love comics. I have listened to them for several years and am still an active member of their forums. It was on those forums that I learned about a proposed prose anthology, which would be written by the listeners of the podcast. I wrote a story called the Return of Power Boy, a story about a middle aged accountant, who may or may not be a superhero. (The anthology was never produced and the story was later featured in A Thousand Faces, the Quarterly Journal of Superhuman Fiction and won a Haller for Best Writer from the ComicBook Artist Guild at New York ComicCon.) The story was a very dark tale of what happens when a super villain wins. One of the very minor characters was the accountant’s four year-old daughter, CeeCee.

Sometimes writers don’t create their characters, they channel them and that’s what happened with CeeCee. After the story was finished, I kept coming back to that little girl. What kind of life would she live, would she develop her father’s powers, and what would she do if she did? Well, CeeCee became DeDe, and the character of Sky Girl was born. 

Which part of the book was the hardest to write? 

As funny as it sounds, the hardest part of the book was keeping track of spelling. Sky Girl takes place in a multitude of dimensions. There are aliens, villains, and magicians in the book, each of whom have a unique speech pattern. Not to mention that the story contains numerous fictional scientific and magic devices. While it was certainly fun making up these devices (the Forget-Z-Not, a memory eraser created by the villainous Professor Z, is one of my favorites), I had to keep a separate dictionary to keep track of them. I soon realized why Bruce Wayne just puts the words Bat in front of his equipment; it makes it much simpler and easier to keep track of.

An additional challenge was Jason’s dialogue. Jason uses perfect English and doesn’t use contractions. This is deliberate. As a result, Jason’s dialogue is some of the hardest to write in the book because of the conscious effort it takes to not use contractions. I have to read it out loud and stress every consonant. 

Does your book have an underlying message that readers should know about? 

Sky Girl and the Superheroic Adventures is a fun story that I hope entertains. At a deeper level, it is about taking responsibility and growing up. I hope DeDe will serve as a role model. She is independent and strong and knows what she wants. But, she is also responsible and knows what she has to do. How she handles that, tell a lot about her character.

The move to have a Sky Girl, as opposed to a Sky Boy, was a deliberate decision. This is true for two main reasons (other than the obvious reason that I think female characters are fun to write.) First, I wanted to explore how superheroines react to conflict differently than their male counterparts and show how those different reactions turn comic book conventions on their head. A great example of this appears in the current book (Sky Girl the Superheroic Adventures) when Sky Girl meets Penny Pound, another heroine. The typical comic book convention is that the two characters would fight first over a misunderstanding and then team up to take on the real villain. As you will read, Sky Girl’s resolution to that conflict is unique and therefore less clichéd. Another example of the distinction between how girls and boys resolve conflict plays out in the third book, which is coming out next year. In one scene, a villain wants to prove he’s the best by challenging Sky Girl to a fight. Sky Girl responds, “Let me get this straight, you’re not going to hurt anyone or steal anything? You just want to fight to prove you’re better than me?” Bad guy nods. Sky Girl says, “Okay, you win. I’ve got better things to do today.” Then, she flies off, leaving a dumbstruck villain alone in the street. Faced with the same situation, a Sky Boy would probably take the challenge, fight, lose, and eventually emerge victorious in the inevitable rematch (probably with a new costume and chromium cover). The books explore these conflicts in a comedic way, because of course, Sky Girl’s best friend Jason (a diehard comics aficionado) finds her responses quite frustrating.

The second reason I chose to write about a female superhero is much more personal to me – the birth of my daughter. As a proud geek daddy, I wanted to share my hobby with my daughter and looked for characters to inspire her. Sadly, I found very few. With a couple of exceptions, most of the female characters from early comics were merely eye candy fawning with unrequited love over the male protagonist or were relegated to the role of guest star (or even hostage) in their own books. Even the few that started as everywoman characters (like Kitty Pryde or Cassie Sandsmark) rapidly developed into über pin-up babes in the 1990s and 2000s. In keeping with this trend, I tend to get a lot of Sky Girl sketches from fans and professional comic book artists that are too suggestive for a16 year old heroine. I try to address this phenomenon in subtle ways — like having DeDe dress down Jason when he makes a sexist joke – or with Sky Girl’s refusal to put a symbol on her chest or wear skimpy clothing. Thankfully, things have gotten a lot better for the modern female comics character, but the industry still has a long way to go. Female characters should have the same chance to grow, develop, and overcome adversity, just as male characters do. 

My hope is that Sky Girl represents a strong female role model who always tries to do the right thing. She isn’t perfect. She makes mistakes. But, she learns from her mistakes and, most importantly, she never gives up. In Sky Girl and the Superheroic Adventures, Sky Girl has to deal with some heavy emotional things like the death of her father, the fact that her mother is moving on with another man, and the ever-changing relationships around her. But, just because she allows herself to be emotionally open and vulnerable, that doesn’t mean she is weak. Dealing with adversity makes her that much stronger when she triumphs over it. 

Do you have a writing tip you’d like to share? 

I had the privilege of meeting Ray Bradbury at San Diego ComicCon before he died. I asked him if he had any advice for writers. He said the best thing a writer can do is write. “Do what you love and love what you do.” He said, “Write for yourself and don’t do it for the money. And don’t let anyone give you money unless they believe in what you do.” Then, he had to get to a signing. Before he left, he asked me if I was a writer. I said I love to write horror, sci fi, and fantasy. He smiled and said, “That’s good.”

Since becoming a writer, I encounter a lot of people at festivals and shows who tell me they want to be writers and have all these ideas. I tell them to just sit down and write. Most people say they don’t have enough time. To be frank, time is the one thing that everyone has the same amount of. Some people have connections, others have money, still more have talent, but time is the ultimate equalizer. During the time I wrote Sky Girl, I was working an 80 hour a week high stress job, teaching part time, and taking care of a newborn baby with my wife. I still made the time because the story had to be told. And if something is important, you make the time. Admittedly, that time was often in the middle of the night for me. But, it was also when a television show came on and I chose to turn it off and use that half hour to write. I also cut off video games (I’ve since picked them up again).

Writers write. That’s pretty good advice. I’ve heard the same advice from Stephen King, Janet Evanovich, and Andy Schmidt. I try to live it. Because I have a very demanding day job (which contains a lot of writing in and of itself), I don’t hold myself to word, page, or time limits. But, I do make sure that every single day I sit down and write something. 

Would you like to tell us about your home life?

I currently live outside of Washington DC, in Northern Virginia, with my wife and daughter. When I don’t write about zombies, superheroes, and aliens, I work as a Senior Litigation Counsel in an unnamed government agency and am also a member of the adjunct faculty at George Mason University School of Law where I taught Unincorporated Entities.

I’m originally from New Jersey. My family still lives there and I visit the state as often as I can. The first book was set in my home town of Colonia, New Jersey. And while Colonia still continues to be the primary setting in Sky Girl and the Superheroic Adventures, I also was able to explore more locations. However, given that this book is a series of interrelated adventures, as opposed to an origin story, I was able to include a lot more locations outside of Colonia. A number of locations in New Jersey are featured in the book, including an attempted robbery of the First Bank of Colonia; a secret portal located at The Edison Memorial Tower and Museum in Menlo Park; and a hunt for the Jersey Devil in Jenny Jump State Park. I should also mention that there are cameos and references to many of the unique NJ places from my youth, like Merrill and Roosevelt Parks, the Menlo Park Mall, and the Krauzers convenience store where I used to buy my comics, as well as some imagined places, like the Colonia Memorial Cemetery.

New Jersey, and especially Colonia, is the perfect setting for this book. The fact that it isn’t New York makes it perfectly plausible that super villains would want to hide out there. It also allows Sky Girl to have a small town upbringing, while still being able to face big city challenges. New Jersey was Hollywood before there was a Hollywood and Las Vegas before there was a Las Vegas, and still has the best pizza in the world. The fact that two-thirds of the state is wide open space allows the potential for knock down drag out fights with no property damage or injuries in later volumes. Not to mention that New Jersey has its own cryptozoological creature, the Jersey Devil, which was great a great character to play with in the Sky Girl story.

When I was older, I moved to New York for college, law school, and my first job. I lived under the shadow of the World Trade Center in a Tribeca neighborhood that also made its way into the book. In the late nineties, I took a trial attorney job with the federal government with the intention of temporarily moving to Washington, DC. I loved the area and the job so much, I never left. Now I live in Virginia outside of Washington, DC with my wife and daughter.

What was the first thing you did as far as promoting your book? 

As this is the second book in a trilogy, the first thing I did was come up with a title to adequately express what the book (and the series) is about. I wanted to come up with names that reflected that the books were related. The original titles for the books were Sky Girl: Rebirth, The Adventures of Sky Girl, and Sky Girl: the Return. Then, one day I mentioned my book to a friend, who thought it was odd that I was writing a series of novels about a stewardess. Apparently, sky girl was slang for a female flight attendant. At the same time, I was re-watching the Indiana Jones trilogy for the umpteenth time and noticed that my DVDs had been re-named “Indiana Jones and the” before the original movie names Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom. (It was always Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.) At this time, J.K. Rowling was also doing the same thing with her Harry Potter books. So, in order to communicate the comic book aspect of the character and book across to the reader, I started each book with “Sky Girl and the Superheroic.” After realizing that Sky Girl and the Superheroic Rebirth sounded unpleasant and messy, I changed it to Sky Girl and the Superheroic Legacy, which fit more with the theme of the book. The second book became Sky Girl and the Superheroic Adventures, and the third became Sky Girl and the Superheroic Return. The title ties all three books together and also clues the reader in to the comic book aspects of the character and story as being in the superhero genre.

What is the most frustrating part of being an author? 

This is easy. I would have to say that, hands down, to me the worst part is the editing. I write because I have stories to tell. Far too frequently, I get the story on paper and that satisfies the need to get it out. So, I have to force myself to edit and then edit and then edit. If this occurs, I have to put it aside until the muse calls me back to it. Of course, that’s easier to do when you aren’t on deadline. However, if something is due, I just struggle through it and hope for the best. The other thing that occurs when you put your work aside for months is that you may lose the connection to the characters. This happened in a recent story I did called “The Tube” (in Indie Comics Horror #2 available in comic shops now) by the time I got back to the story, I had to rework the main character (from a school girl to a secretary) because I didn’t feel her anymore. I liked the way it turned out, but the original version was very different.

I should also admit that I’m also notoriously bad at proofreading my own work (although surprisingly good at copyediting other people’s work). So if I ever become a world famous author, the second thing I am going to do is hire three separate full time copyeditors to read everything I write. The first thing I will do if I ever become a world famous author will be to buy a Disney Haunted Mansion Doom Buggy… in case you were curious. 

What is the most rewarding part of being an author?

Again, this is easy. It would have to be the readers. I mean sure, authors are a pretty dedicated lot, who provide entertainment. But at the end of the day, I write for me—because I have a story to tell. I would write if no one ever read it. (For evidence of this, you should look at the sales figures for some of my earlier work). Readers on the other hand, have no such compulsion. They spend their valuable time and money on someone else’s work. There are a lot of great books out there by some amazing authors (living and dead). As a result, these people don’t need to take a chance on me (or any other unknown), but they do. I really appreciate that. And nothing is more rewarding than someone coming up to me at a show and telling me that they really loved my book, or that it is their daughter’s favorite book, or that they made (or had someone make them) a Sky Girl costume for Halloween or a ComicCon. If you want to know a secret, book festivals and comic conventions aren’t that lucrative for me (I rarely ever make my table cost). But, writing is pretty solitary, so the chance to meet people is priceless.

 

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