New Release Sample: SEMI-PSEUDO-SUPERHEROES

Being Charlie and Rainbow Zephyr's kids got Harry and me into places that ordinary tourists couldn't go. Armed with cameras and digital recorders, we were official assistants. When that didn't smooth the way, the incredible luck or unbelievable coincidences that usually surrounded our folks came to our rescue. Once people got over a graying Hippie, an Asian woman with emerald or amethyst hair, a brunette teen with hazel eyes, and a husky little Latino boy being a family, they ignored the background weirdness.

Being the Zephyrs' kids got us some frustrating and slightly embarrassing moments, too. We were nearly trampled five times by fans in search of autographs. You'd think we would have learned the warning signs after the second near-death experience.

Or the time Mum and Pop had a booksigning in this cool little bookstore north of London. This huge woman at the front of the line nearly shattered glass, yelling at us, when Harry and I showed up and tried to get into the bookstore before it officially opened. The bookstore owner, Mr. Cloverdale, was a little man who Harry and I both swore had slightly pointy ears. Like some of Angela’s friends who dropped by Divine’s Emporium. He was watching for us, since we'd left the inn a good half hour after Mum and Pop that morning. He didn't see us trying to sidle through the crowd to get up to the door at first, because the crowd had grown to about forty people by then. Plus, that huge woman was right in front of the door. While the bookstore had enormous picture windows, we were hard to see because the windows were full of books on display or posters of Mum and Pop and information on the booksigning.

The big woman's voice, raised in a shout that would have stunned a dinosaur, alerted him that we had arrived. The British are supposed to be so reserved and dignified, but this woman…? Maybe she was also a soccer fanatic when she wasn't going into ecstasies about Mum and Pop's latest investigation. As soon as Mr. Cloverdale realized Harry and I were there, jammed between the locked door and the woman, he came running. The old-fashioned roll-up blind covering the door zipped up with a rattle-clatter-hum-bang and the keys chimed as he unlocked the door. I could hardly hear all that through the woman's furious lecture on the rudeness of the two of us trying to get to the head of line and sneak in ahead of people who had done the sensible thing and gotten there two hours ahead of opening time. Seriously? She was waiting there two hours?