Damon Starts the Eighth Grade in THE SECRET CLUB, and Then Things Get Worse

When I was a kid, the coolest thing I could imagine would be to possess a super-power. I wasn't picky. Any power would do: super-strength, super-speed, flight, hurling energy bolts from my hands... heck, even the ability to bounce like a rubber ball would have its uses (well, it did for Bouncing Boy of the Legion of Super-Heroes).

In my first novel, THE POWER CLUB, I tried to tap into that feeling of being a kid and what it would be like to have have a power. Of course, powers come at a cost--in this case, freedom. Society simply can't have kids who teleport or grow to 30 feet tall or create rifts to other dimensions running around without keeping an eye on them. Thus, the kids have to live in the District, where mysterious leaders monitor what they can do.

Another cost? The power you have may not be the coolest or the most useful--at least at first.

Those were the themes I explored in THE POWER CLUB and take a step further in its just-published sequel, THE SECRET CLUB.

Set almost a year after the events of The Power Club, THE SECRET CLUB finds Damon entering the eighth grade--but things are nothing like he expected. Due to the influx of more kids with powers, the District has grown and the eighth grade has been moved to the high school. Instead of being in the top grade at the old school, Damon finds himself in the lowest grade at the new school.

He has to start over with new friends, new teachers, and new dangers lurking around every corner.

On his first day at the new school, he runs afoul of one such danger simply by walking down a hall:

Watch it!”

            Damon heard the warning a split second before he rounded a corner and collided with a wall. But this wall looked like a torso. He bounced back as if he’d landed face first on a trampoline and fell back on his butt. His books, class schedule, map scattered across the floor.

            A chorus of kids burst into laughter. Terrific. First day of school, and I’ve already made a fool of myself. He looked up to see what he had hit.

            The wall was in fact a torso. A towheaded youth towered over him like a mountain. Damon had never seen so many muscles, which rippled through the boy’s arms as if he were a cartoon character. A thin, long face perched atop a massive torso. The boy wore a plain t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up so there was no mistaking that the muscles were his.

            “That’s what you get for not paying attention!” the youth said.

            “I would,” Damon fired back, “but I didn’t expect to run into Mount Kilimanjaro!” He remembered Mount Kilimanjaro from geography class. Using humor might help him recover face.

            The youth’s smug expression turned into a hateful scowl. “I don’t like smart-asses!” he said, as he stomped toward Damon. The floor shook. The boy grabbed Damon and lifted him up over his head. Damon felt a rush of blood as he stared down at other kids, who paused in the hallway to laugh at him.

            He breathed in sharply. He could exhale—but what good would the darkspace do him in this situation? (THE SECRET CLUB, p. 13)

And that would be bad enough if his darkspace--his ability to create a cloud of darkness--didn't keep turning itself off and on at will.

And then things get worse.

What do you do when an old enemy shows up and wants to start a war with ords? Why, you form a Secret Club, of course!

Find out what happens in THE SECRET CLUB, now available on Amazon!