Sunday, March 25, 2018

A Week in Writing #187 - Report From the Front - WonderCon 2018


Busy week this week. To begin with, spent a good portion of the week working on edits for Familiar Stranger, the oft-written about but never seen novel I've been working on for longer than I care to admit. This is the point in my process where I print out the pages and re-read them and make edits in pencil as I do. It's a chance to really read it, which is something I realize I don't do when it's only on the computer screen.

Sitting down with thirty to forty pages at a time is a real visceral experience that I do enjoy. While no one really loves rewriting, I like the editing process. I'm up to page 208 and feel like I'm making it a stronger book and rethinking certain aspects as I go. As an example, I've vacillated in different rewrites between someone driving a pickup truck or a van and rethinking it, since I have them working as a baker when they're not in this story, a van seems to be truer to the character. I know it may seem simple (and possibly stupid) but it is part of making the overall story better. Details help.

No new reviews written this week; I'm starting to miss writing them actually, but this past Friday night was not movie night, rather Cowboy Bebop night as we finished watching the series for a panel we attended, that we'll get to later when we get to WonderCon. Did publish a new Saturday Morning Review, however, Lady Bird. I know you're saying, hey that was out last year why the delay? Well, to be honest, when the film first came out, it wasn't really on our radar. When it was nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture, we finally watched it. Then there is slating it in for publication, as we want to have new content every week. Sorry for the delay in getting to it.

There was some work on Powers Squared this week, as the artist finished her work on Issue #6, including a cover. Most of the time, however, was spent on social media as we've finally gotten serious about getting the word out. Last week, we relaunched our Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/powerssquaredcomicbook/ and our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/PowersSquaredComicBook/ Like our website:
https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/ they're easy to spot as they contain some version of this image (accept no substitute):


Coming soon, a twitter account and on the horizon videos about the creation and future of the book. So much to look forward to as we try to spread our social media wings. Issues 3 - 5 have been accepted at comiXology and you'll find out here when a release date is sent.

Part of that included attending the recent WonderCon in Anaheim this past Saturday. We all attended a panel first thing in the day called How To Get Press Coverage, which was very informative. The panel included many in the media who cover comics or who have comics they're promoting or are in promotion. Learned that Press Releases are still a real thing and that there are other places to ply your promotion efforts besides the obvious. Here's a tip, the military press, since servicemen have a lot of time to spend reading and read comic books.

Manged to make contact with the moderator of the panel and will be following up with him this week. I wasn't planning on hitting him up about Powers Squared, but when he asked what I had I fumbled into my elevator talk, which was a bit rusty. Still, he seemed interested and gave me his card.

Also, Paul and I attended another panel later in the day called Writing Great Dialogue. While all of the panelists were informative, Mairghread Scott really stood out. She's written for both comic books and animation. A lot of what you hear in these panels is somewhat common sense, but it's obvious that she's studied the craft and is applying what she knows.

We did spend time on the floor and ran into some very helpful people in Artist Alley, including the artist Sean Galloway, currently our only Instagram follower, and some members of the Koffee and Komics group that we've belonged to but haven't attended any of their monthly get-togethers. Very cool people.

We also managed to slap a howdy on a couple of friends we've met through our con attending, including Doug Neff, who runs the Comic Creator Connection at WonderCon and SDCC amongst other endeavors, and an editor at IDW who we've been running into for years at conventions, Wonder, Comic and Bot. We gave them each our latest issues of Powers Squared and asked for comment.

Attending conventions has turned into a little more work than play sometimes, as we try to maintain our tenuous network of friends in the industry and make a point to attend panels that are informative. However, it is not all work and no play.

One of the nice things about WonderCon, as opposed to its big brother Comic-Con, is that you have a real chance to get into popular panels. The Anaheim Convention Center recently added a couple of really big rooms, so we were able to get seats together in popular panels like Cartoon Voices and a screening of an episode of the Netflix series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, hosted by Nathan Fillion. We attended the latter so that we could get into the panel that followed, Celebrating 20 Years of Cowboy Bebop (see how it circles back to Friday night). The latter was surprisingly sparsely attended but was still a fun way to end our WonderCon.

For the next week, the goals are to keep up the editing on Familiar Stranger, make more progress on the content of Powers Squared and also to work on those press releases and to update our social media presence. Whew, a busy week ahead for sure.

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