Happy Mother's Day to all the writing mothers out there! Hope everyone is staying safe and, of course, writing.
Doesn't it feel like it should be summer already? I know it does for me. But there is still so much to be done before those days get here. Not sure, really, what difference there is going to be between this summer and last but I'm hopeful it will be better.
It seems like more and more time I spend on the business of writing. Not that I'm making any money at it, at least not yet, but it seems there are still things that have to be done. One of those is querying to get an agent. When last I wrote about this, I had five and no rejections. However, I think the time ran out on two of them, so I CNR'ed them. I saw this abbreviation in the comments on QueryTracker so I'm using them here. It means Closed No Response. Not even a doesn't fit my list email, just the gut feeling that the vague deadline they set on their websites has come and gone.
I did send out a new one on Thursday for Broken People, again using an online form. This form was just a space for me to enter the letter, a synopsis, and the first three chapters, as requested by the agency. Formatting be damned! It seems like the agency wants to get away from emails but hasn't quite made the leap to hire a third-party site like most of them seem to use. I do like the fact that I don't have to go into great details about marketing for the book or comparing mine to other books on the market. So, I guess there was a plus-side to it. I'll go through the same exercise on Thursday; my least favorite thing to do.
On to Powers Squared where it was a jumble of a week. ComiXology sent us a rejection (tentatively accepted) email on Tuesday, not so much for the content of the book but the formatting. They require a .pdf and said it had Aliasing issues. No, I had never heard of it before either. Their solution was for us to recreate the .pdfs and click on the "anti-alias" checkbox we had apparently "overlooked". I don't know about you but my version of Acrobat does not have an "anti-alias" checkbox and searching through the help only proved that my version, which is a standalone version, was no longer supported. Since we had never had the issue before and our process hadn't changed, I decided that perhaps we had submitted a reduced .pdf, so I sent them a full-bore version instead. Waiting to hear back on that one.
Paul and I had a meeting this week with the powers that be at Artithmeric, the British publish-on-demand/publisher for Powers Squared. We wanted to see what they had in mind for us in the future, as they have started doing Artithmeric Editions, and I mean they're still Kickstarting the first one for Dirk Brodey and we wanted to know if we were going to be a part of it.
Turns out we are, maybe sooner than later. Paul and I decided that, while we can't afford to go back through the first five issues and re-do the artwork, we might be able to take a second pass at the dialogue and maybe tone down some of the wordiness and perhaps sneak in some details that might be handy later on, meaning issues we've done since. Turns out that's about 108 pages of script, which I started going through this weekend. More to do. Not sure what copyright issues there will be but at least I know enough to ask about that.
Anyway, the idea would be to do a new Artithmeric Edition of the trade hardback using money raised on Kickstarter. What they really want to do is move into the European market with translated versions in Spanish, Italian, and French. Apparently, BDs, as they're called, are big sellers and who doesn't want to make money off their work? So with the English version they would use a French equivalent of Kickstarter to raise money for a French version, then use that money to crowdfund an Italian version and then Spanish, or some combination of those. Of course, we want in.
Paul and I discussed all of this on our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared, which you can listen to by clicking the link. It's all of 10 minutes this week.
Speaking of week's it was May the Fourth Be with You all week on Trophy Unlocked, starting with Paul's review of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace; Trevor's review of Star Wars Episode I: Racer (PS4) on Tuesday; Trevor's review of Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones on Wednesday. Thursday it was Trevor's Second Look - Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003); and on Friday, it was Paul's review of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith.
To really change things up, on Saturday, we posted my review of Straight Shooting, a silent Western. Made in 1917, it was John Ford's first film to direct. I also started, and nearly finished, one for Two Seconds (1932). No date set for that one.
That gets us back to Skylar and, yes, there was some progress made on that and more to come I assure you. I am to a part that I will actually be doing more re-write/writing as opposed to editing so I am excited about that.
Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you again next week.
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