By Paige Daniels

Be gentle, dear reader, for it’s been quite some time since I’ve blogged. With a full time job and kids who need shuttling to and fro, I had to make the decision between writing actual stories or blogging … spoiler alert writing stories won. This brings me to the inspiration for my story “Super Mom’s Cookie Caper”, set to appear in the new Crazy 8 Press scifi anthology Love, Murder & Mayhem. I love superhero comics, movies, t-shirts, toothpaste, whatever it is I love ‘em, can’t get enough.

But sometimes I wonder: what happens when the earth or universe has a day or weeks off from being nearly destroyed by the latest super villain with a chip on their shoulder? There’s no way one guy, like Superman, could carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, thus the forming of the Justice League. So what happens when Superman has a day off? Does he have to clean up the cat poop out of litter? Do you think Lois gets mad when he forgets to put the cap on the toothpaste, yet again? Does Wonder Woman have to clean her own toilets? Does Black Widow worry about having to fight with the cable company for raising her rates again?

Yes, these are the things that go through my mind late at night and oh, crap, I forgot to put the pot roast in for tomorrow. I thought it would be interesting to explore the more human side of superheroes. Besides the Incredibles, the only superhero I can really think of having just a normal boring family life is Hawkeye aka Clint Barton. Some may argue he’s not a “real” superhero. But who’s the MVP here? The guy who got brainwashed by Loki then had to go home to his family without skipping a beat and take out the trash and coach his kids’ little league team or Tony Stark who has paid help to everything under the sun for him?

I think about this because as an engineer (that’s what pays the bills), and a female engineer in particular, your teachers, parents, mentors tell you how you get to build cool stuff, work in cool labs with cool technology, and see cool things. No one tells you in between all the cool stuff you still need to make dinners the kids will eat, make sure you don’t run out of toilet paper, and find a matching lid for your Tupperware containers … you know, basic adulting stuff.

This story was just my idea of how a superhero, who happens to be a mom, would handle life. She she’d have to have a lot of support from her partner, work, and co-workers to make it work. Sometimes the mom work would be a lot harder than the superhero work. And at the end of the day, many times she’d wonder if all the effort was worth it all, but when she saw that her work led to a bad guy being put away and ended the day with a hug from her kids she’d know that it was worth it.

Love, Murder & Mayhem from Crazy 8 Press will be on sale both in print and digital formats in July. Stay tuned for updates!

Writing under the pen name Paige Daniels, Tina Closser is the author of Non-Compliance: The Sector and their sequels, Non-Compliance: The Transition and Non Compliance: Equilibrium, all through Krisell Ink. They are face paced science fiction, cyber punk tales with elements of humor and romance with a strong heroine. They explore different themes such as family, government control, and how one seemingly insignificant person can make a difference.

Feel free to contact her at: http://www.goodreads.com/PaigeDaniels,  www.facebook/paigedanielsauthor.com, and www.twitter.com/TClosser.