by Craig Brownlie ($12 paperback, $3.99 eBook)

B.W. is a 13-year-old comic book fan. When his neighbor, Stan Scheiner, becomes the new writer on his favorite comic book, the unbelievable happens. Mr. Scheiner offers B.W. a summer job as a gofer. As the afternoons pass, B.W. learns more about the comic book business than about actual writing. Deadlines loom and Scheiner’s household life falls apart. Coping with his own family, his view of himself, and a pesky fantasy life which intrudes on reality, B.W. offers his own ideas for the story, but is anyone going to listen?

Enjoy an excerpt:

Chapter 1

B.W. stares out the bus window. Part of his brain acknowledges the turn onto Main Street leading to his stop. Another part seeks release from the long school day and the tedium of the ride. A scream from the front of the bus jerks B.W. from his reverie.

“Shut up!” declares the evil Arachnid, standing in the center aisle in clear defiance of bus rules. He waves his hairy limbs at two students making moves to escape. “Ah, ah, ah, you’re all coming with me!” He picks up a girl by her hair. “At last, a few hostages worth paying for.” He speaks directly into her face. “Not like the squirrelly little rich kid in the most recent issue of The Fox. Her daddy didn’t care if she lived or died, so neither did I.” The girl faints in the Arachnid’s hands. His breath is visibly rancid.

B.W. steps into the aisle, bewildered by the courage his legs are showing. Beyond the Arachnid, he can see the bus driver slumped over the steering wheel. “You’d better go,” he says, almost audibly.

The Arachnid rounds on the seventh grader in sweat pants and t-shirt. Flexing his numerous limbs, he stretches one long arm toward the boy, poking slower passengers in the face. “Hunh?”

Carly reaches out and grabs B.W. She tugs him toward her seat.

The brave young man shrugs her off and squares his shoulders. “I said you’d better go.”

The reeking, shrieking man-beast called the Arachnid poses grandly. “Do you realize to whom you’re talking? I have held the still-beating heart of Mighty Macadamia Man (the Nut Who Walks) in my hands and laughed madly. Prepare to be my next meal, you little fool.”

“Not today.” B.W. points out the window.

“You have to be kidding me,” whines the Arachnid. “Why do my plans never go well?”

The Fox bursts through the side window where the mean kid from gym class sits.

***

Brakes squealing, the bus lurched to a stop and dragged B.W. from his reverie. Noise flooded him awake. Grabbing his backpack, he looked around quickly and headed for the front.