Superhumanity
Andrew Gladman
Author Bio
Andrew Gladman is a proud geek, lover of superheroes, and has spent a long time aspiring to be a writer. His first book, Superhumanity: Superhero Short Stories, channels his love of comic book characters into the prose form. He had originally been set on a future in comic book writing, but instead, now intends to bring the drama, complexity and conflict of comic book superheroes into his prose.
The shift in interest from comic books to prose came during secondary school, from the influence of visiting authors and several English teachers. Andrew started many an unfinished novel in his youth and, at the age of twenty, finally committed to completing one project for release via self publishing. He wanted to create an anthology of superhero fiction that would see the rich character driven form of modern mainstream comics and superhero cinema transferred into the prose world.
Andrew is currently in his final year studying English Literature with Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, honing his craft as an up and coming young writer. He hopes to stay in Norwich and continue working in the creative industry after his graduation.
As well as prose, Andrew is a writer of several amateur short films and intends to pursue a career in screenwriting as well as prose fiction.
Description
Superheroes! Individuals with incredible powers and incredible lives, dedicated to protecting the world, no matter what the cost. Superhumanity offers seven tales that delve into the conflict-ridden lives of humanity’s defenders, taking an intense look into the soul of the superhero. It will peer behind the masks of urban legends and travel to the heart of the superhuman, revealing the very human nature that lies within.
The collection includes:
Boom – He had been a slave in a dystopian society, made to work in an underground drug lab for a cruel tyrant. On the day of the accident, an accident that granted him power unlike anything he had ever felt, that was all about to change.
How to Save the Day and Screw up Everything Else – So, trying to balance a social life, university, some sort of love life and family is impossible enough, right? Try throwing a secret identity, a whole bunch of superpowers and a city that needs saving into the mix. Oh, and spandex is a nightmare.
He Saved, She Saved – Two former lovers, both superheroes, are brought face-to-face when Strike is brutally injured in a battle. Spartan is his only hope, but can the two exist in harmony?
The Light in the Shadows – Another world exists in the shadows. A dark and twisted dimension that surrounds and claws at our own. Phantom is the gateway between our dimension and the other. He is the bridge between dark and light. He is the justice that lurks in the shadows, that sees and surrounds all, and no evil will escape him.
Old Fashioned Values – Timothy Smithers is eighty-two years old, recently retired and has just settled into a small house in the seaside town of Hewe. Timothy Smithers used to save the world. Can a superhero ever truly retire when the world still needs saving?
Sunset – Aurora is battered, beaten, barely standing. She is staring death in the face as her ultimate foe stands before her. She has reached the end of the line, but she’s not going down without a fight.
Giants Walk Among Us – The world is burning, under attack from an inhuman foe, and superheroes are out en masse to combat the aggressor. But one vigilante hero, an ordinary man inspired to put on the mask by superpowered heroes, lies trapped in the rubble of a burning building. He must push his humanity to the limit and learn what it means to be superhuman.
Book excerpt
I still taste her on my lips as I pull the mask over my face. The fabric traps spattered raindrops on my skin. A shiver tries and fails to run down my spine as I step onto the roof’s edge. The cape whips at my legs and I draw breath through the mask. Air that’s too thick, too wet, fills my lungs. The night’s damp scent mingles with lingering hints of her perfume. I jump from the rooftop.
Then I’m gone.
Wind and darkness rush past me. They consume me and rip me from the human world. Another world forms around me. A world of howling shadows and perpetual night, a world that exists without form or structure or tangibility. It is a world that is as much a part of me as I am of it. It tears through my very being as I plunge through its skin, intertwined with the shadows of an unreality. Direction, momentum and speed are all lost, everything frozen in a single, impossible, endless motion.
My fall is stilled. Up becomes down. Dark becomes light.
The shadows bleed me back into a world of concrete, my nerves alight with an agony I no longer feel. My silhouette is the single spot of light against the shadow of the city’s neon glow. It is the darkest world I have ever known.
As I walk, every beat of my heart tells me I am mortal. A mortal who has had only a taste of the immortality that lies beyond the physical world. I can hurt. I can bleed. I can die. Every one of these thoughts should hold me back, should stop me doing what I’m about to do. But that heartbeat reminds me of something else too. I am human. I can love. I can hate. And tonight, I have had my fill of love.
Euphoria. The word is a burning white stain on the night. It lies ahead of me, above doors that young and desperate kids are being ushered through. Kids. It’s all they are. Kids who think they’re adults, who think that the cards they carry in their wallets or the jobs they slave over all week or the years of alcohol and tobacco that are poisoning their bodies make them adults. Not a single one of them has faced the real world. They all believe they have tasted life’s harshest realities. They have no idea.
I step into the shadows and then, once again, there is nothing but shadows, surrounding me, pulling me apart and hurling me back into existence at the edge of the light.
The club is right in front of me. I could find another way in, through the alleys either side, through the shadows. I could seep through the cracks or step through the darkness in the walls. But I can’t stay in the dark forever. I want them to know I’m here. I need them to fear me. I step into the glow cast by the sign over the door. My mortality hammers at my chest, making the same threat it always makes when I put on the mask, threatening to abandon me. I ignore it.
Book Cover https://everywritersresource.com/selfpublished/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Superhumanity-Cover2.jpg
Genre Fiction
Author Website http://andrewgladman.blogspot.com/
Best place to buy your book http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01A0FSZHO?*Version*=1&*entries*=0