A Week in Writing #397 - Kickstarter Delayed But Live Soon

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

I know I did a lot of plugging last week for our Kickstarter and you can imagine my disappointment when it got delayed. There are a couple of reasons for that happening. The official reason is that my co-collaborator on the campaign was sick with COVID. He's supposed to be back in the office tomorrow so that's when we rescheduled it to. The other reason was that Monday is a better day to launch according to our consultant. I wasn't sure we were delaying it until the morning it was supposed to go live. So, I had to quickly cancel a post and a version of our newsletter, The Bark, and write a new one.

I feel kind of bad, having pushed the Kickstarter start date and then have to rescind it but I guess that's what happens sometimes. Again, I'll ask you to support it https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/artithmeric/powers-squared-a-twin-superhero-drama. I'd appreciate your support.

I don't often mention our weekly podcast. Of course, I would want you to listen or watch. This week, we had Steve Bee on the show. It was actually an interview we pre-taped since he's in England. Steve is an interesting guy; a pension expert, he is also a published cartoonist, a comic book creator and co-founder of Artithmeric. Currently, you can listen to it on our website at https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/oaps and watch it at twitch.tv/powerssquared.

I end up doing a lot of social posts, not all of them successful, trying to publicize the comic book and Trophy Unlocked. One of the platforms I use is Pinterest. For some reason, this week, I lost the ability to save Pins. Sort of frustrating to hit save and wait thirty minutes and it's still saving, which means it's not.

I ended up writing two reviews this week, the first for Jingle All the Way (1996) and the other for Nanook of the North (1922). Very different films to say the least. The first was the film we watched on Friday night via Hulu. My sons had been wanting to watch it because it had been mentioned in some videos they had watched. Nanook was something I DVRed a few years ago when it was on TCM. I thought it might be interesting for my sons to see it. As it turns out, it will be celebrating its 100th anniversary this June, and I think that we can publish it on the anniversary of its release.

In other Trophy Unlocked news, the Saturday morning review was Trevor's of The Cat Returns (2002). The Wednesday Game Day review was Paul's review of Spyro Reignited Trilogy (2018), a platformer collection from Activision.

I failed this week to send a new query. I had the time but just couldn't find the right agent to send it to. I'm looking for ones who only want a query letter and pages. I'm, for now, trying to avoid online forms and those agents looking for one to two-page synopsis. It really comes down to more things to be worried about. Did I use the right example of a book like mine? Did I summarize the 92,000+ words correctly? They just seem like one more easy way to get thrown into the reject pile as opposed to being judged on the merits of the writing itself. I'll try to get back to it next week.

To wrap it up, I did make progress again on fka Skylar. I'm still getting to the part of the story I've been thinking about for some time now. I'm hoping that I get to it this week so I can move on to other things.

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

A Week in Writing #396 - The Kickstarter is Upon Us

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

Our Kickstarter is just about to start. We're working with Artithmeric.com, a British on-demand publisher, to raise money to have our Graphic Novel translated into French so that it can be sold in Europe as a bande dessinée, or BD. We go live on the 24th, and I hope you, dear reader, will help to support the cause. You can sign up in advance and/or pledge at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/artithmeric/powers-squared-a-twin-superhero-drama. It would really mean a lot to me.

Paul and I did a walkthrough of our Kickstarter on our live twitch.tv video. You can watch it there or wait for it to show up on Wednesday on YouTube.

Needless to say, a lot of my time has been spent on the Kickstarter campaign and trying to get all the social media posts and our newsletter ready to go. I like the idea that you can schedule things to post, which means I don't have to be sitting at this computer when I'm supposed to be sitting at my work computer and still get the message out.

On that topic, tell me if this has ever happened to you. I have a series of social media posts I make every week, which I now schedule through our Go Daddy website powerssquaredcomicbook.com only two of them didn't go, for some reason that was never explained. I hate when that happens, even though that was the first time because time is always tight for me. I don't want to have to redo anything like that if I don't have to.

The Kickstarter has been the only thing I've been working on. I manage to spend a couple of nights with my long-neglected thriller, fka Skylar. I'm happy with actually working on it and making some progress.

And I've sent a new query this week, which sort of negates the rejection I received on Thursday. This was from the agency I queried on March 3rd:

Hi David,

Thank you for querying XXXXXXXXXp. We have read your query and regrettably, your project does not seem like a right fit for our agency.

Thank you again for thinking of us. Please be well.

Sincerely,

XXXXXXXXXX

Surprised to get a response so quickly, and frankly at all these days.

My review of Wife vs. Secretary was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked this week. I started a new one for The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) but I'm not terribly far along. The Wednesday Game Day Review was Paul's review of Spyro: Year of the Dragon.

Well, that about does it for me. Please consider supporting our Kickstarter and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #395 - Your Audience is Growing

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

I chose the headline not to be egotistical but because I received an email today from Medium informing me that my audience is growing. Since I haven't posted on the site for several years, I was naturally curious. I used to post this blog on there as well, in hopes of growing my audience but when that wasn't happening and it was extra work, I decided to stop. Well, as it turns out the number of followers I had on Medium peaked at 2 and my audience hadn't grown in two years. I'm surprised it hasn't dropped to zero. Not sure why they sent me that email but I thought it might be appropriate nonetheless.

Big week for me and reviews, I wrote two this week, one which went up today for Turning Red, the Pixar animated coming-of-age fantasy. We watched it on Friday night and I was chosen to review it, which I didn't mind. We finally got back to drain the DVR Saturdays, and we watched and I reviewed A Family Affair (1937), which was the forerunner to the Andy Hardy series of films, starring Mickey Rooney. Not sure when it will post but it was fun to get back to that part of my writing.

On the subject of Trophy Unlocked, in addition to my review today, the Saturday Morning Review was Paul's review of The Mitchells vs. The Machines, which happened to just win the Annie Award. On Wednesday, Game Day, we posted Paul's review of Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage, a PS1 platform videogame.

Turning away from reviews, I think we finally ended up in a good place with our Kickstarter. I know I was very down on things last week but for some reason, I think I got practically everything I wanted. Now, it all depends on the execution. I hope you will consider backing it when it comes up later this month. As soon as I have a link, I will, of course, share it here.

Had a nice team meeting on Friday night with Rachel Wells, Julia Canon, Trevor, and Paul. We try to have these once a month as they are a pretty interesting and fun group, and we need content. It goes up later in the week on our YouTube channel or you can listen to it now through our website.

I don't know if I mention this enough here or not but we also do a peek-of-the-week of images from upcoming issues. For the last few weeks and for the next several, we're looking at the evolution of our front and back graphic novel covers. End plug.

This had turned into a busy week, with new pages from Rachel to review and the Kickstarter to look over, but I did manage to do two things, send a new query for Broken People, and work more on fka Skylar, which under the right context might make a good title.

This week, no new rejections but we know that doesn't mean they haven't already passed on it. I keep tweaking things ever so slightly with the query letter, even after my major rewrite of it. I'm still avoiding agents who want an online form and who want a 1-2 page synopsis. The former because they always ask you to compare your work to other works, etc., and the latter because I should probably rewrite mine. I'm also thinking crazy here that I might try to query another book. It's not that I really love punishment and disappointment but I feel a sense of urgency with things these days. Let's get on with it, good or bad.

With fka Skylar, I managed to move to a new chapter and I'm on the cusp of getting to one that I've been thinking about for a long time. I won't get into counts and amounts as they are definitely not impressive.

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

A Week in Writing #394 - Feeling Like I Belong

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

Every so often, I really enjoy having a comic book more than usual. And it's not the sales, but because I get to meet different people than I normally would, people that are also in the same position as we are with Powers Squared. On Saturday afternoon, Paul and I spent a little more than an hour on a live podcast with host Greg Moquin, the SeerNova Podcast or SNP with other creators, Tim Waits, Peter Welmerink, JT Molloy, and Christian Douglas, who like us have indie comic books and have Kickstarters either in progress or pending.

This came the day after hosting Paige Redbird on On the Air with Powers Squared. Even though Paige had colored three issues for us about five years ago, we had never met her until Friday's podcast. She turned out to be an amazing person who had done and is still doing some really interesting things. I was really glad that we were able to reconnect with her, as well as the other creators the next day.

Friday didn't start off so well from a comic book perspective. As I've written here before, we're a few weeks away now from launching a Kickstarter with Artithmeric for Powers Squared. Even though we had, along with our consultant, been making suggestions and asking questions, they seem to have gone down their own path, made their own decisions, and to add insult to injury, sent us a giant long .jpg to review the proposed page. I don't know if you've ever been presented with something like that, but they don't print out. And yes, I probably could have or had someone with better photoshop skills chop it up into bite-sized, printable pieces, but I don't think I should have to do that.

I've since calmed down but my first reaction is that I didn't want to do business with them. I felt ignored and insulted and that's not a great motivator for me. I am waiting for the proper scans to be sent on Monday before I write back but I am not a happy camper. I want this to be a success but I truly was rethinking my involvement with them in the future. There's still time to make things better so I'm still hopeful that the Kickstarter will be a success despite them.

This week, we sent our weekly newsletter to people on our mailing list (which you could join by signing up here). I try to write about twins in media, either creatives or characters. This week, I did Julius and Vincent Benedict. I mention that for two reasons, trying to get people to sign up for our mailing list and as a transition to posts on Trophy Unlocked.

No new review for me this week. We watched The Mitchells vs. The Machines on Saturday night, rather than draining the DVR. Saturday morning's review was Paul's for Free Guy, and Wednesday's Game Day review was another from Paul, Spyro the Dragon.

Did some work earlier in the week on fka Skylar but that lost out to other work later in the week.

And, of course, since everyone wants to know, I did send a new query letter this week. I've continued my research on possible agents and have found several who are no longer agents but were still on various lists I used to put together my list. I guess there will be new ones to replace them.

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