HEROES: Who Is Dawn Byrnes?

Dawn Byrnes: Dawn Byrnes is a twenty-two-year-old (soon to be twenty-three) Bachelor of Arts student in her last year of university. She has a form of autism known as Aspergers’ Syndrome (think Rainman, or better yet, Einstein) and is a self-confessed bibliophile, neo-pagan and amateur historian/theologian/mythologist.

H: What’s Your Background?

DB: Born in Sydney in 1981, I lived there for twelve years, then moved north to sunny Queensland. As a kid, I didn’t start talking until I was three, and have been making up ever since! I always had my nose in a book, and between that, my academic talents and my disability (which I didn’t find out about until I was twelve), I was pretty much the favoured prey of school bullies wherever I went. But I survived, and am the first person in my family to go to university and complete high school.

H: Where do you live?

DB: Gold Coast, Australia.

H: How long have you been writing?

DB: Seriously? Since twelve or thirteen. I’ve only done fan-fiction since mid last year.

H: What excites you the most about writing?

DB: The ability to shape worlds with words.

H: How did you get involved with fan fiction?

DB: Came across Michael Sacal’s site and decided to have a shot at it.

H: What are your influences?

DB: Hmm… Prose-wise, Mercedes Lackey, David Eddings, Tolkien, Robert Jordan and Sara Douglass, all very cool fantasy authors. (Did I mention that I love sword-and-sorcery as much as I do comics?) Comics-wise, Warren Ellis, Jim Lee and the odd bit by Garth Ennis. Micah Wright is also very good.

H: For those who may not be familiar with OMNIVERSE, can you explain the concept behind the site?

DB: It’s a big mix of many comic book universes that was brought about by something called the Merge. Great thought has gone into its past, present and future (so Mike’s told me. I just try to fit my stories throughout the whole melange.)

H: How did you end up writing for OMNIVERSE?

DB: Emailed Mike with the idea for a new StormWatch series and he said, “Go for it!” And there I was, an ‘official’ fan-fiction author at last.

H: There’s not too many female writers of superhero fan fiction. What’s the attraction for you?

DB: I like to write wrongs done to perfectly good characters by idiot (in my not-so-humble opinion) comic book authors. Yes, I know, I couldn’t help punning. Also, it gets me used to finishing stories, and I can put out my work online.

H: Tell us about StormWatch. What future plans for the series can we expect?

DB: StormWatch is a bit of a change from its canon inspiration and the average superhero team I like to think. If you’ve been following the storyline, you’ll notice they tend to lurch from disaster to disaster with little in the way of resources, team cohesion and occasionally tactics. I’ve selected and created some of the most abrasive individuals around, tossed in a good dose of mysticism and dropped StormWatch into at least one horrendous situation, humorous encounters with immortal drunks and plenty of character development. After the ‘Finders, Keepers’ arc is completed in a couple of months after a bit of a hiatus (I’ve gone back to uni recently), I will be focusing a lot more on the love triangle of Majestic, Nakee/Regan Maclachlan (who’s in for a codename change soon – Hypatia was selected before the character had fully developed, and had been an early-AD Greek philosopher and mathematician killed by Christians as they torched the Great Library of Alexandria) and the Eternal Warrior in a mini-series sometime after The Catchers comes out. In the main team, Winter will have to deal with leading the most dysfunctional superhero team in the Omniverse (in my biased opinion), other characters will have romantic entanglements and they’ll continue to try and protect a world that is becoming darker every day.

H: Give us a preview of The Catchers. What characters are going to be in it? What kind of stories can we expect?

DB: Remember Team 7? The Catchers are a United Nations sponsored team of superhumans in the Sixties and Seventies along the same lines, down to the exposure to a mutagenic drug (the Awakening Formula) and involvement in black ops work. Their membership comprises of America’s Nick Fury, the only member not exposed to Awakening and the team’s leader; a little known Wildstorm bit character named Efraim Solomon, codenamed Maccabee One (I added his first name) from Israel; Russia’s Ivan Vladimovitch, codenamed Quickwit; the Japanese Akira Marukasawa, codenamed Mikado; and last but definitely not least Scotland’s Regina Glenrowan, codenamed Witch. (For those familiar with StormWatch, she is the Kherubim half-blood Nakee/Regan Maclachlan.) Nick Fury has his standard abilities, Maccabee One has enhanced physical and tactical abilities, Quickwit is a living computer, Mikado can alter people’s DNA and Witch is possessed of low-level psychic and magical powers. The mini-series will focus on a single mission in Crete involving Team 7, HYDRA and Daemonites, where everything goes horribly wrong.

H: What do you consider to be your best work to date?

DB: StormWatch.

H: What’s a typical Day In The Life Of Dawn Byrnes like?

DB: What can I say? Computers, chores and writing, plus tutes and lectures now I’m back at uni.

H: Anything else we should know about you?

DB: I’m sure there’s plenty, but I shouldn’t go and scare the readers.