Sunday, March 24, 2024

A Week in Writing #501 - There's Always a First Time for Everything

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

My writing this week took a twist I hadn't expected. Since our artist on Powers Squared, Julia Canon, was finishing up her work on issue #26, The Great Escape, I sent her the script for the next issue. As a change of pace, this one is more Powers Squared related than about the actual story. In issue #1, we introduced Billy O'Shea, a young boy whom like Marty and Eli, had super powers granted to him by a yokai. Billy came back in issues 16-18, Mocha and Raven, Parts 1-3, accompanied by Raven, the Yatagarasu who granted him the powers for his good deeds and turned protector when Dr. Atlas threatened him. We established in that story that Billy and Raven make a living as a long haul trucker utilizing Billy's powers of super strength and punctuality.

Well, there were things in the script that Julia questioned and after conversing with Paul and myself during the week, it was decided a rewrite was in order, so there goes Thursday night. With the rewrites and editing complete, a new version is ready. If this new storyline turns out to be a go, and we make more, Trevor has also come up with some story ideas that we might use in future.

A comic book is a collaborative process, at least for us who do not draw. We've gotten used to changes being made when the words on the page get turned into images. Rachel Wells, our previous artist, would occasionally move and/or combine panels when she thought it was necessary for the story. Usually, we went along with her suggestions. However, this is the first time we've rewritten a script, like this, for the artist.

Speaking of comic books, we had our 13th Comic Book Club session on Friday's On the Air with Powers Squared. Along with Rachel, Julia, Trevor and Jen Moreno, we discussed The Apothecary Diaries manga written by Itsuki Nanao and illustrated by Nekokurage. Afterward, a tribute to Akira Toriyama, the creator behind Dragon Ball. You can listen here or watch it here on Wednesday afternoon after 2:30 pm PT. Our next book will be Pompo the Cinephile, a Japanese manga by Shogo Sugitani. Read along and join us when we discuss. That session hasn't yet been scheduled, but I'll let you know when here. If you do plan to be a part of it, please have your three favorite films ready as well.

On the subject of the movies, on Saturday afternoon, we watched Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and I wrote the review, which will appear next Saturday morning on Trophy Unlocked. It's been a busy week on the blog. God of War month continued with Trevor's Second Look - God of War: Ghost of Sparta on Tuesday, and his Second Look - God of War (WildStorm/DC Comic) on Thursday, with more to come next week. The Saturday Morning Review this week was Paul's take on Kung Fu Panda 4.

A lot of my writing this week has been Powers Squared related. In addition to the rewrites, there was  work on the newsletter, which will go out the first Sunday in April. I think, with the exception of some last minute updates, it should be ready to go.

I did manage to do some work on Skylar, but most of it has been rewrites rather than new pages. 

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

A Week in Writing #500 - Nice Way to End the Week

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

A nice way to end the week is to meet up with someone and have a good talk and catch up. And that's what happened this week on the podcast On the Air with Powers Squared. Lucas Scheffel, a comic book creator from Australia, was our guest for the sixth time, and for the first time in well over a year. We talked about his new comic book Kickstarter, comic book convenstions, Cricket and, of course, Bluey. You can listen to it on our website or wait until Wednesday to watch it here.

Seeing as it's a live podcast, we had a driver issue that delayed us and which Paul managed to work through, but it does speak to the challenges of doing one regularly, so there is some editing involved but nothing of substance edited out, just the rough start.

On the topic of the podcasts, I'm revamping that part of the website. I've been trying to keep a "Best of" section of videos, but that can get to be unweildy. So, I'm thinking of keeping a Best of but also adding separate sections for The Comic Book Club videos, the Taste Testing videos, and one of the conversations we've had with other creators. The videos about particular issues I've been adding to the pages about those issues, which is another way to keep the links on the website. So far, I've only done the section for The Comic Book Club. If you're interested, you can take a look at https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/videos.

Working on the next issue of Powers Squared, which is sometimes a slower go than I appreciate. I really want 8 pages a month from the creatives involved: arist, colorist, letterer, but that is easier said than done. We're getting close to the end with the artwork for #26, tentatively titled, The Great Escape, as the artist is finishing the final pages and the cover.

For Trophy Unlocked, I wrote a review of Main Street After Dark (1945), a definite B-movie that was also the film debut of Audrey Totter. Not sure when it will appear. The blog is still in the middle of God of War month with two new reviews. On Tuesday, Trevor's Second Look - God of War: Chains of Olympus and on Thursday it was his Second Look - God of War III Remastered. The Saturday Morning Review was Paul's for Pompo the Cinephile, a 2021 anime look at making movies.

On the Skylar front, I did make some progress. I'm changing the story a bit, so some of what I've written will be changing, but I'm liking it better.

No querying this month. I think it may be April before I get to that.

During the year, there are several times when real life and family collide with my writing. I'm coming up on one of those in a few weeks. My mother is having a milestone birthday and we're all flying to see her in Houston. We're flying on a Friday, so we're relying on our arist, Julia, to take over the show. But there's also things like the Saturday Morning Review, the uploads and the newsletter that have to be done ahead of time. And, of course, this blog will be late by a day because of it, too. But that's a couple of weeks away.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

A Week in Writing in #499 - More Issues with GoDaddy

 

I hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

Another banner week when it came to my on-going issues with GoDaddy. Last week, it was an issue with inserting an image. This week, I was trying to create a social post for our upcoming podcast on Friday. However, at least through Google, I was unable to even open the website. I tried to get help, but texting with someone took about three hours. I'm not sure who they think has that much time to wait for help, especially for small businesses. I ended up making the posts myself directly on the social media platforms and when I did get back to the website, this morning, all seemed to be fixed.

At times, on Friday afternoon, I'm ready to find a new host platform. My biggest concern is having to rebuild the site from scratch and losing the email we have set up. But it doesn't seem like a week goes by that I don't get frustrated with GoDaddy.

We have a new issue of Powers Squared, coming out this coming week, on Wednesday March 13. It's called "Mission: Istanistan, Part 1" and was written by myself and Paul, with art by Rachel Wells, colors by Julia Canon and lettering by Trevor. In this issue, the U.S. Army enlists Marty and Eli Powers to work on a classified secret mission to stop a rogue nation, Istanistan, from completing work on a WMD. The mission seems simple, one will teleport in and do the work and the other will use telepathy to guide them. It's a dangerous mission, but what could go wrong?

We talked about it on this week's podcast, with Rachel, Julia and Trevor all participating. You can listen here, or watch the video on YouTube on Wednesday. There is a preview available to look at and you can order it in print or digital through The Campus Store, where and when available. Oh, by the way, links to all of the issues are available there as well.

It's been a busy week on Trophy Unlocked with the kick off of God of War Month on the blog. Things started off with Trevor's Second Look at God of War (2005). On Wednesday was Trevor's Second Look - God of War II; and on Friday was his Second Look - God of War: Betrayal. I got the Saturday Morning Review with The Last Command (1928). No new review this week from me. We spent Saturday night away from home this week, so that took care of that.

Did some writing this week on Skylar; finally getting to the part I've been wanting to rewrite for the longest time.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you again next week.

Sunday, March 3, 2024

A Week in Writing #498 - Newsletter and Podcasts


Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

Sort of a busy week, though mostly behind the scenes sorts of stuff.

Every month, like it or not, we publish The Hound Dogs' Howl, our monthly newsletter on all things Powers Squared. Now, a lot of this is rather routine stuff, however, the lead, a feature about twins, A Heard Around Campus bit, as well as a recommendation have to be written. And wait for it, here comes my monthly pitch to have you, dear reader, consider signing up for it by enrolling in San Romero Community College. It's FREE!

This week's podcast features Moni Barrette, the Director, Collection Development & Publisher Relations at LibraryPass Comics Plus was our guest. While we try to have this be a conversation, questions still have to be drafted and reviewed. Moni talked about her career as well as getting comic books in libraries, one of which ways is through Comics Plus, which is what we're doing with Powers Squared. You can listen to the podcast now here or wait until Wednesday and watch it here.

I'm growing more and more frustrated with GoDaddy, which our website uses. Every Sunday morning, I upload the previous Friday night's podcast to the YouTube and the new peek-of-the-week to the website. I then update the website with links to the new video, update other pages related to the peek-of-the-week, especially when it involves the cover and then write and schedule two social media posts to coincide with the new data.

The last thing I need at 7 o'clock on a Sunday morning is for GoDaddy to f### up, which it did today. For some reason, the new color cover wasn't inserting like it should. There had been a black and white ink cover that was being replaced with the colored version. But, oh no, GoDaddy wouldn't do it. I manged, after several attempts to get the colored version to show up on the pages I wanted to put it on, including in addition to the peek-of-the-week page but also The Campus Store and the page about the issue. I try to keep them in sync, as it doesn't make sense to have a peek-of-the-week that is already available elsewhere on the website.

The biggest problem I had was in trying to do the social media posts. The colored version wouldn't insert, but rather the previous black and white one would insert in its place. I tried to remember what GoDaddy had advised I do when things didn't seem to work, which was to clear the cache. This is something I hate to do, since I have relog into every app and, surprise, surprise, that doesn't always go well, as the saved password for whatever reason doesn't match the password it's supposed to be per the site. I'm still not completely logged into X as a result. The better solution, since that didn't fix the problem, was to reload the image; that worked. If anyone has a good suggestion to replace GoDaddy, I'm all ears. Leave it in the comments.

Well, I finished my review of X-Men: First Class and started a new one for Naked Alibi (1954). On Trophy Unlocked, the Saturday Morning Review was Paul's for Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. And ICYMI, Leap Year (1924) made it to the blog. Just as a warning, we're coming up on March and it will be mostly devoted to the God of War franchise, so buckle up.

I did manage some fictional writing this week, but it probably doesn't add up to 1000 words, but there I did do something.

I still have more of that to do, a review to finish, press releases to write and, hopefully, more pages to review from our artist and colorist.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

A Week in Writing #497 - Monday Was a Great Day


Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

I had one of my best days as a writer on Monday. Not only did I finish the review, X-Men: The Last Stand, but I also rewrote the script for "Billy and Raven", a one-shot related to Powers Squared, wrote about 1500 words on my new story and read one of my son's short stories; something I was very overdue at doing. And if that wasn't enough, my entire family built the Megablocks set "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Beatles", which was 681 pieces and took three hours to build.(Note: I'd still be building it if I was doing it if my sons hadn't done the heavy lifting.) Not bad for a free day from the office.



I tried to duplicate the 1000 words again on Tuesday, and sort of barely made it, on Wednesday, I just fell short of 600. None of this, mind you, had anything to do with Skylar, but I have been thinking about making some changes in her backstory, so it's not like I've forgotten that book, it's just that I've had ideas for this newer story.

I still have to write a review this week for X-Men: First Class. Trophy Unlocked will be doing a series of X-Men movie reviews leading up to the release of Deadpool and Wolverine later this year. Only one review this week: Trevor's review of PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie was the Saturday Morning review.

Started working, over the weekend, on the next Hound Dogs' Howl, the Powers Squared newsletter. Still time to sign up for it at https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/srcc. I also need to write a press release or two for upcoming releases. If you're at all curious about the issues, below is a graphic showing when they'll be released through the rest of the year. They'll all be available through The Campus Store as they come out.


Speaking of releases, made the mobi files for the issues this year. I'm not sure why, but it always takes more than one try to make an issue using the software. Sort of frustrating, but the last three went pretty quickly. Paul and I posted the first issue this afternoon, so it will be available for pre-order in a day or so. We also posted the next issue on GlobalComix, so everything seems to be moving forward.

We had our monthly team meeting on Friday for On the Air with Powers Squared, and we all agreed to give Billy and Raven a one-shot. You never know, it might catch on. You can listen here now, or watch the video on our YouTube channel on Wednesday at 2:30 pm PT.

I had to resend the second trade to Library Pass this week. Apparently, the first one failed (?). Next week, we'll get more into the Library Pass when our guest will be Moni Barrette, the librarian we've been working with there. We go Live at 6 pm PT on Friday at twitch.tv/powerssquared.

Just so it's no surprise, no queries yet. Still have some thinking and homework to do on that before I launch into a new soul-sucking round of that.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.

Sunday, February 18, 2024

A Week in Writing #496 - Attempting to Impart Wisdom


Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

I'm stealing the title for this post from the latest On the Air with Powers Squared podcast. On Friday, Paul, our artist Julia Canon, and I spent about an hour talking with a future comic book creator, Kevin Krust, answering questions he had about doing a book. That reminded me that every so often, I hope that I am doing that here. Sometimes, this is a rant session for me, sometimes just a place to enumerate whatever it was I did or didn't do the previous week, but every so often, I hope some wisdom is imparted, however little that may be.

If you're interested in what we imparted to Kevin, you can listen here now or wait until Wednesday and watch us on our YouTube channel. I don't know what you may think, but I believe Kevin thought we were helpful.

Speaking of Powers Squared, I believe we've set a release date for Issue #20, Mission: Istanistan. The release date will be March 13th. We'll be talking about that release on our March 8th podcast, which will feature everyone connected with its production, including artist Rachel Wells, colorist Julia Canon and letterer Trevor Hankins. Be There and Be Squared. We go live at 6 pm on twitch.tv/powerssquared.

We'll also, hopefully, be talking with Moni Barrette from LibraryPass/ComicsPlus on the March 1st podcast, so you might want to tune in for that as well and find out how we pulled that off.

On the subject of Powers Squared, work continues on Issue #26, "The Great Escape", with Julia sort of outlining pages 15 through 17, the next three pages she'll be working on.

After that, I'm thinking at this point of maybe doing our fourth one-shot in a row, Billy and Raven, which would be the first Powers Squared story not to feature Marty and/or Eli. Billy was first introduced in Issue #1 and Raven in Issue #16 "Mocha and Raven". It would be a big departure for us, but not all of the Archie comics featured Archie. I'll be revisiting that script in prep for that, even if we decide not to do it.

I've also been working with Rachel on some Powers Squared paraphenalia that might come up when we do our next Kickstarter.

On the Trophy Unlocked front, I finished my review of Chang (1927), which was one of the three films nominated at the first Academy Awards for Best Unique and Artistic Picture, losing to Sunrise. I had got to thinking it would be cool to watch and review all six films nominated for the Best Picture categories and Chang seemed the hardest to find. I had to buy a used Image DVD in order to watch it. You'll have to wait for publication to know if I thought it was worth it or not.

I'm still working on my review of X-Men: The Last Stand. I believe there will be a flurry of X-Men reviews on the blog coming out ahead of Deadpool and Wolverine.

The Saturday Morning Review this week was Paul's review of Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief  the 2010 feature and not the Disney+ series. The Wednesday GameDay review was Trevor's for Transformers: EarthSpark - Expedition.

I'm afraid not much other writing happened this week. As usual, Skylar got short shrift again and no queries were sent. This is the part of post where I mention what I didn't do this week and these two items seem to be permanent residents.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.

Sunday, February 11, 2024

A Week in Writing #495 - 1,000,000 and Counting


Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

Let's start this week with a nod to Trophy Unlocked, the blog my son Paul started and that Trevor and I also write reviews for. This month, the blog passed 1,000,000 views, which is a significant milestone. I wish I knew when it hit that number, it was sometime during the week, but the fact is that it did. Congrats to Paul for sticking with it all these years.

While we're on the subject, my review of The Holdovers, was this Saturday Morning's Review. I have two that I have to work on, X-Men: The Last Stand and Should Ladies Behave, the latter beiing a 1933 pre-code comedy-drama. I don't think the former needs an introduction.

Another happy surprise I received this week was a message from a teacher in Australia that I am linked in with on, well, LinkedIn. He wrote that in one of his classes, he was talking about creativity and character development and mentioned Powers Squared to his students and that they loved the concept. Of course, I was happy to hear that someone likes it, so I spent a couple of hours cleaning up the pages and sent him a reduced .pdf of the first trade to share with anyone in the class that might be interested. I'll be curious if any of them sign up for the newsletter, which was my only request if they liked it.

Besides resizing more pages, I also worked with our artist on a couple of new pages. I'm trying to keep her on two pages a week. She had some ideas that made sense and I had to do a little rewrite to make it work, but I think makes the story better.

Our scheduled guest on our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squaredhad internet issues so we had to reschedule for March. So, we pivoted to The Lightning Thief, the first book of the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. Paul had read the book and we had all watched the Disney+ series and the feature film made before that. You can listen to it here, or watch it next Wednesday on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared).

And if that wasn't enough, we posted a new video this morning, the sixth in our taste test series, this one being 5 of Mr. Beast's Feastables chocolate bars. These sort of videos have been pretty successful for us. Hope you watch.

All of this left me a little time to work on Skylar and my new story. And I haven't yet managed to flex my query muscles, which is something I wanted to do this month.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.