The Scarlet Ranger
The hero of my story “Shades of Red” (which should be available in the next month or so over at A Thousand Faces, stay tuned for more details!) was the Scarlet Ranger. She’s super strong, nigh invulnerable, kicks ass with the best of them (what am I saying, she is the best of them), and is the most beloved superhero of her city. She’s flirty, can cuss any damn boy under the table, and looks really hot wearing your sports jersey the morning after. She’s pretty much become my Buffy. In “Shades” she’s the veteran superhero who has to bail everyone else out of trouble when the fit hits the shan.
Originally, she was pretty much just a cardboard cutout, however. She was there to get killed in the first five pages. The rest of the story would be about the two-bit loser villain who inadvertently managed to kill her and how he deals with it. There was a whole thing. That story, however, morphed into what became “Shades of Red,” in which the Ranger takes the central role. Even while I was writing “Shades,” I had a lot of trouble getting a handle on her personality, up until the very end, when certain events I won’t give away happen and her reaction is just priceless. After writing that moment in the story, I had to go back and rewrite much of the earlier dialogue and interactions, because I finally had a handle on her.
Well, it’s been far too long since I’ve dipped into the Scarlet Ranger well, so I thought I’d take a little gander into her secret origin… (almost 1500 words!) Bloody hell, I’m enjoying this. Maybe I’ll make this my supernatural story.
(It’s Nee-kay, by the way, not like the shoe.)
Edit: I just realized the small television in the story is probably anachronistic. I don’t know. Were there TVs small enough for that in the ’70s?
