A Week in Writing #222

Well, I hope everyone had a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving. Sort of good to be back to reality after a long road trip, which seems to take longer every year. Nothing like spending the better part of four days driving to make you miss your routine. Nice to have seen family, and overeat, etc.

And like I wrote last week, the one thing that has to give way is the writing. Still, was able to get things done though sometimes sitting twisted on the edge of the bed in a hotel room, which is a way of writing that I would not suggest. Thankfully, that was mostly social media stuff that has to continue no matter the day.

Good progress this week with Powers Squared. Our artist sent us eight pages of pencils for Issue #9, including four she had previously sent up with updates. I guess I got the versions confused since we sent back a critique asking her to fix something she already had. I even sent photographic references to her, at her request, before I found my error. Apologies all around.

The banner Rachel is working on for us for our YouTube channel also seems to be coming together as well and hopefully, we'll have it up soon. You can watch our latest weekly vlog here.

In addition, we received four pages from our colorist from the same issue, which look good.

Also a shout out to Nina for updates to our banner image, which you should see on our website, as well as our twitter account for the holidays:

From this.

To this.

This was one of the updates I made sitting on that hotel bed. I had the added joy of not finding Nina's revision where I thought I had saved it, though I was still able to hunt it down in my emails. Whew!

Continued my rewrites on Broken People both the pencil/paper and computer varieties. Had an interesting situation come up while I was reading pages in the hotel room. Seems the version I had planned to use had a very different ending than the one I thought I'd brought. However, it did get me to thinking about the ending so I may go with a version of what I brought. For those of you who don't frequently read this blog, and that's most of mankind, I'm attempting to update a story I had written and queried based on a recent news event which I think could help shape the story. I'm also trying to combine the better aspects of two versions of the story, fka A Killer Blog. What I'm finding out, is that's not always so cut and dry as I had thought/hoped it would be. However, it is helping, I hope, to make this a better story.

So, for those keeping track, I'm up to 477 pages and 86,636 words so far with the rewrite so far and about 60 pages of edits to go. I hope in the end that it's a better story, and, of course, that it will sell. I hate to bring up the crass side of the business but isn't that the ultimate goal of writing?

Thanksgiving didn't change the radio silence I'm receiving from the editor on Familiar Stranger. I don't want to think he's dead but he's done nothing in the last several months to prove the contrary to be true.

Reviews are starting to stack up on Trophy Unlocked as #900 looms in the very near future. I have one for A Star is Born (2018) that is still pending and may come out soon. We recently published a review of Ralph Breaks the Internet, which we managed to see on opening day and get a review up on the blog before heading out for a long road trip early the next morning, thanks to Paul's hard work.

For our Saturday Morning Review, we continued our salute to Noirvember with While the City Sleeps (1956), thus bringing an end to that salute before launching into our Christmas movie review month in December, for which, I believe, all but one review has been written.

So, that was the abbreviated week that was. Hope you had a Happy and Safe holiday and am looking forward to seeing what can get done the next week, the last of November.