20 Years of Cat-Tales kicks off today on the anniversary of A Girl’s Gotta Protect Her Reputation #CatTalesIs20

20 years ago I posted A Girl’s Gotta Protect Her Reputation on a nascent fan fiction site, never dreaming it would become the first installment of a metafiction series that would still be finding enthusiastic new readers 20 years later. Last year, of course, I did know, and just after the 19th anniversary passed, I was thinking about ways to make this year an event. After all, I had 12 months to plan, a family of websites and domains to act as staging areas, a virtual Gotham. This would be epic!

Yeah. Then the world went sideways. Since the first weeks of lockdown, family and other responsibilities made it all but impossible to continue writing let alone planning extras. Pretty soon March was in sight and all I had been able to produce was one chapter for Mrs. Wayne and a stand-alone set in Bruce’s years of travel, Motor Valley (which, by the way, if you’re enjoying Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy, you may enjoy reading anew.) There wasn’t the time to plan an epic multi-platform event like our viral alternate reality game that played into The Dark Knight, no reopening the virtual visitor center, no fan contests like those that marked our 5th, Cat-Tales cocktails dreamed up by a rock star mixologist, or new audiobooks read by a magnificently talented actress. (Boy, it has been an eventful 20 years!)

But what could I do? I considered releasing a few pages from the next chapter of Mrs. Wayne, but this chapter is very special as is the character through whose eyes it will unfold. That person and the events of the chapter deserve my best, not something rushed for the sake of a treat. Instead, I am going to declare today the kick off only, the 20th of Cat-Tales 1: Reputation rather than the series as a whole. We will celebrate Reputation today with something special, but have a number of events celebrating other Book 1 stories and spinoffs over the next 12 months.
As the first tale, A Girl’s Gotta Protect Her Reputation has enjoyed more reinterpretations than most of the stories. Its first chapter was turned into a graphic novel-style prologue by Dorothy Rose, it was read as an audio book by Caroline Sharp, and it was given the “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” treatment by most of the spinoffs, revisiting the story from the POVs of peripheral characters in the Justice League and Gotham rogues.
To that end, here is the beginning retold in a style that was popular around our 10th anniversary: aka What if Cat-Tales was on Facebook…

Cute, right?

But a little lacking as a treat. One lucky reader from each of our social media platforms will therefore get a unique virtual experience unlike any of the zoom meet-ups that have been offered over the last year. Your virtual self* will sit down with me on the Cat-Tales set for a private AMA about the series past, present and future.

Follow Cat-Tales Twitter or Facebook and watch for the announcement to participate. One experience will be offered on each platform. Future events may also offer an experience for members of the Cat-Tales forum.

*free Second Life account required, tutorial provided.

How the Batmobile Begins… A Tease

I have a pre-Batman Day treat for those of you looking forward to tomorrow’s Batmobile origin story, Motor Valley.  Before it took shape as a character piece, I was concerned about a lack of conflict and so went with a well-worn shtick opening in the present day and telling the story in flashback, with regular cutaways back to the present and a racing-the-clock Batmobile pursuit.

I came to my senses, but rather than killing the darlings, I offer them up as an automotive aperitif. 

Batmobile: Pursuit

The Batmobile sped wildly down Broadway, swerving perfectly to avoid a taxi but coming perilously close to—DAMNIT! Forced to swerve again AND a third time before the second was completed, the jammer pointed at his criminal prey was out of range. A shrill beep sounded and 0.8 seconds later a pair of digital displays began counting up in thousandths of a second. That 0.8 was all the crooks’ Luthor-tech would need to find its signal again, and every nano-second the jammer was out of range after that, they were transmitting data. The top display read 2.140 by the time the Batmobile closed the distance. That brought the total below to 34.493. 34 seconds. They needed 1 minute 20 to transmit the data stolen from Wayne Tech, 1 minute and 20 seconds and they could—or rather their employer could—Lex Luthor could unlock the unimaginable.

***

The Batmobile’s tires howled through their turn without reducing speed as the crooks’ SUV completed its turn and stretched its lead. The digital counter was again climbing 56 seconds, 58, 59.031 before Batman closed the distance so the jammer could finally reengage.

New Songdo, Korea; Coast City, Star City, Atlantis’s capital Poseidonis, and even Gorilla City employed software supporting the technical fabric of their city centers: communications between the buildings, urban infrastructure and portable devices. Though the software varied, all were backed up by a Wayne Tech process onto a simple USB that was legally required to be held in a safe-deposit box or the Atlantis or Gorilla City equivalent.  With it, a city could be rebooted. The digital engine behind every electronic—or in Atlantis’s case magnetic—door lock, any elevator, street light, fire alarm, or subway tunnel, any bank vault or any surveillance camera would be under the user’s control. Under Luthor’s control, if the crooks completed their transmission.

59.031

In each case, the backup was locked with that same Wayne Tech process, so a crew of enterprising thieves breaking into a single safe deposit box could not come away with the backup of an entire city’s digital innards. And in each case, the lock could be bypassed by Wayne Tech’s back door. It only made sense: an act of God capable of wiping out the city’s technical fabric might very well kill the mayor, governor or other biometric key-holders. It only made sense to leave the back door intact as a skeleton key of last resort.

59.031

The thieves needed 1 minute and 20 seconds to transmit the entire code. This was going to be close.

***

… Yikes! Hope that Superman and Flash find and dismantle whatever they’re going after on Luthor’s end of that signal. We’ll never know, of course, because the real story, set entirely in the past during Bruce’s years of travel, will drop tomorrow at catwoman-cattales.com.

___

UPDATE: Motor Valley by Chris Dee, Part 1 is now live on the Cat-Tales website and mobile-friendly Cat-Tales.mobi