Sunday, October 14, 2018

A Week in Writing #216


A lot of radio silence this week. Still no word from my editor on Familiar Stranger. My fault for not contacting him but it wasn't a good week for making phone calls. Not wanting to let moss grow under me, I've been working on the novel fka A Killer Blog, though it doesn't have a new name as of yet.

I've been making pretty good progress though I decided I needed to take into consideration another version of the book I had written. Like the other novels, the protagonist is a private detective, J.D. Barrister. In the original story, he meets a former news anchor, who was disgraced when she appeared in a sex video. She sees a case J.D. is working on as a way to redemption. The case is the murder of a blogger, hence the fka, who was murdered when he discovered that the mayor of Los Angeles was being funded by the leader of a Mexican drug cartel.

The woman's past was not agreeable to agents, so I ended up changing her, making her simply a waitress who is more of a bystander to the case; even changed her name to Abigail Dietrich. Her past was shady but not as overt as Stacy's had been.

In light of the #metoo movement and the recent arrest of a couple that would drug women and then videotapes them having sex, I got the idea to make Stacy's video one in which she was a victim. She still loses her job because no one believes her at the time but she is now a victim of circumstance. I hope the change will make her more acceptable.

What I'm finding is that some of the work from the second version helps the overall story. Most of it is the sequencing of the story which I think the newer version helps. The issue is gelling the two together. The final version will be a bit of cut and pasting between the stories as well as some new bits to connect the two. It can be a little overwhelming but hopefully rewarding.

On the review side, I completed the review of The Mummy (1959), meaning we have the necessary ones for Trophy Unlocked's annual celebration of horror films. This week, we published a review of Doctor X, an early Technicolor horror film directed by Michael Curtiz starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, and Lee Tracy.

Now we're starting on film noir of Noirvember, which is just an excuse to celebrate the genre prior to Christmas films in December. We watched While The City Sleeps on Friday so I will be working on that review next week.

Something I had thought I would have been working on more this past week was Powers Squared. Except for checking on them after the destructive Hurricane Michael passed through Georgia, where both are based, really haven't heard anything from either the artist or colorist this week, though we did appear in an Instagram story Nina put up earlier in the week, so I know she is working on it.

Trevor, who is working after Nina completes the coloring, has just completed the first six pages of Issue #8, so progress is being made.

We added a new poll question on the Powers Squared website. Again, its a question related to the comic book. This time we're asking for people to choose one of two superpowers Marty and Eli share: telepathy and teleportation. Interested in what you might think so please vote. We change the poll every Friday afternoon, so hurry.

I did learn, vicariously, through Nina's Instagram about something called Linktree. One of the downsides of Instagram is that it allows you only one link in your profile. Linktree allows you to create one link that contains several other links, sort of like the branches of a tree coming off the trunk. I set one up on Instagram for Powers Squared. Fairly easy to do and something I would recommend to others who are trying to use Instagram for promoting their IP.

Paul and I also made our weekly Vlog about Powers Squared, available on our YouTube channel.

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