A Week in Writing - So, I Lied

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

I know I said last week that I would be working on Blackmail this week, but I didn't. Instead, I continued to work on the new story, untitled at this juncture. It's been a combination of editing what I had previously written as well as some new bits to tie it together. I do plan to get back to Blackmail, but this one sort of drew me in. In this one, he's hired to find a girl that supposedly ran away from home the summer before her senior year at high school. The twist is that it was 15 years ago. Also, at this point, J.D., my main character, is now a father by his wife, so I get to mix that into the story as well. At this stage, I'm 17,771 words in, compared to the 20,546 words I had on the first draft and there is only one more chapter from the previous version, then I will get back to Blackmail and finish that up.

Our podcast this week was our 24th Comic Book Club. This time it was my choice, usually I let my turn pass but I had become aware of what was supposed to be one of the first graphic novels, It Rhymes with Lust written by Arnold Drake and Leslie Waller (under the pseudonym "Drake Waller"), with art by Matt Baker and inks by Ray Osrin. Besides the three of us, Rachel Wells and Julia Canon were also there to give their opinions. The book dates from 1950, and is influenced by film noir. You can watch it on our twitch channel for the next few days but there may be audio issues. You're better off listening to it here or waiting until Wednesday at 2:30 pm PDT to watch it on our YouTube channel.

I'm sort of working for a review of The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929), though sometimes watching a movie on Saturday night can be a dicey endeavor. And, yes, I dozed during the watching, so I'm rewatching those parts I missed. Being more awake has made me enjoy it more, but I won't be starting a review until I've seen it all. Trophy Unlocked isn't dependent on me for reviews and there were three this past week, starting with Tuesday's review of The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act, written by Paul. The Wednesday Game Day review was Paul's review of River City Girls 2; and the Saturday Morning Review was Paul's of Toy Story 3: it is his blog after all.

Waiting for a second proof of the third Trade for Powers Squared and a first for Trevor's for The Blade of Miracles. Trying to get ready in case we're called off the bench for San Diego Comic-Con. We were last year, so you never know. I just don't want to be caught flat-footed again. We managed to scramble to get everything ready with three weeks notice but the stars sort of aligned for some of that to happen, and I don't want to count on that coming together again.

Work continues on issue #30 of Powers Squared. Our artist is currently working on page 14 and our colorist is working on the first 8 pages. The next issue to come out would #28, "Agnes, Wreckage", Part 1 and I think we're probably looking at August for that to come out. It's going to be an interesting story arc, as two different artists will have drawn the two issues.

So next week, I should get back to Blackmail and finish my review of The Last of Mrs. Cheyney. Next weekend, we're attending DesignerCon in Pasadena. I've never attended it before, so it will be new, and hopefully exciting. I'll be writing about it after.

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

A Week in Writing #616 - Going Back to LA Comic Con

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

The big news for me this week, is that SRCC Press, the publisher behind Powers Squared and The Blade of Miracles, will be returning to LA Comic Con in October, as a "guest" of the convention. It seems like every other year, we get involved with this Con. In 2022, we had a panel at the show and in 2024, we tabled and had a panel. Now, we're going back two years later. This is one of those things about Cons that I wouldn't have known if someone hadn't brought it to my attention. Steven Prince, the creator of Monster Matador, brought it to my attention, so I applied. We get a table and two chairs and I'm sure we'll be in the garage somewhere as the halls are being rennovated for the 2028 Olympics, but a free table is a free table. I'll give you more as I learn more, and, of course, will write about the experience here.

This week, the newsletter was the prime activity. Happy to say it was finished and sent out this morning, which is always a good feeling. If you haven't signed up for it, you have until August 1st to do so, if you'd like to receive it. Enroll here. It comes out once a month and it is FREE.

Our podcast this week featured another comic book writer, David Lucarelli, one of the only people we actually talked to at the Fanbase 10th Anniversary Potluck, a couple of weeks ago. He's the writer behind Tinsletown, The Children's Vampire Hunting Brigade, and Dr. Zomba's Ghostly Tales. Cool guy and I think it's a good interview. We prepped questions and he kept answering them before we asked, which is always nice. You can catch it on our Twitch channel for the next few days, listen here, and/or wait to watch it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday at 2:30 pm.

Next week, our podcast will be the Comic Book Club, and we'll be discussing It Rhymes With Lust, hailed as the first graphic novel. If you've read it or are curious, check us out at 6 pm PDT at twitch.tv/powerssquared.

I'm finishing up a review of Scarlet Street, which I believe was a recording leftover from TCM's last Summer of Darkness. As always, not sure when it will go up. But there are plenty of other reviews on Trophy Unlocked  for you to read, including Wednesday's Game Day review of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Paul; Trevor's Second Opinion - Toy Story 2 was the Saturday Morning Review; and there was a surprise review this morning on Mortal Kombat 2, also by Paul. If you haven't caught on, this is Toy Story month on the blog.

I haven't yet picked up with Blackmail. Instead, I read through my sketchy start on another story in the franchise. I've started rewriting it, but I will spend sometime working on Blackmail, since that needs to get done.

Well, that's about it from me. Keep writing and I'll see back here next week.

A Week in Writing #615 - Blackmail (Second Draft) Done

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

Well, the headline is that I've finished a second draft of Blackmail. It's the latest in a series of unpublished novels I've written with main character J.D. Barrister, a Los Angeles based private detective. In this book, J.D. is recently married to Dr. Leanne Wilson, who is also two months pregnant. They attend a fundraiser for victims of the L.A. fires at the home of her ex-husband, actor Terry Wilson. Their marriage ended due to his infidelity. It is at the event that J.D. finds out that Terry, preying on her desire to make him happy, took a series of nude in public photographs of her before and during their marriage. He claims there are two volumes of photos and he offers to give one back each time J.D. does a job for him, rather than publish them, which would be embarrassing and bad publicity for her practice.

The first job is to find a woman that it turns out Terry had underage sex with a few years prior following a convention in Anaheim. J.D. manages to track her down to a small town in Michigan, where she's attending college. They meet and he finds out Terry has been paying for $20,000 a month to keep quiet about the incident. Making contact with her gives J.D. the first volume of photos, but to get the second one, Terry wants J.D. to kill her and record the killing.

I don't know how that sounds to anyone, but if you have comments, please feel free to leave them. It's currently, 88,451 words long and I'm going to give it another go through, as I've changed some actions and want to be sure they all line up.

But rather than start in on that right away, I picked up another story I had started. J.D. is hired to find a runaway who has been missing for 15 years. I was about 20,000 words into it before I decided to work on Blackmail. It doesn't have a title yet. I've started reading through it, finding a half started chapter in the middle of what I've written. I think I know what I was intending to do, but it's been several months.

We ended up having to watch our scheduled Friday night movie on Saturday night, Mortal Kombat, prior to seeing Mortal Kombat II, today. Not a good movie for me to review, so nothing new from me this week. I did finish my review of The Wind, if you're curious, but no date for release. The Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked this week is Paul's Second Opinion Toy Story. Hint: there's going to be more Toy Story content in the weeks to come on that blog.

Spent an evening resizing pages for the next two issues of Powers Squared. It's not work I like to have to do, but someone does. We still need to file for copyrights, perhaps next week, and then decide on a release date. We did hear back from the Copyright office about their turning down our months-old application, can we can simply register them separately. It made sense to us, but we had to ask.

Work continues on the next issue of the book, "Aroma Therapy, Part 1". Our artist is working on page 11, so I'm hoping her work wraps up in a couple of months and the issue will hopefully be finished two months after that. Our colorist is about a month behind the artist and the letterer a month after that.

Our podcast this week, was "(The Rest of) The Fourth Doctor". We had very recently finished watching Season 2 of the Tom Baker series, which was the only one we hadn't seen. This gave us a chance to finish off our discussion from before. You can listen to it on our website, watch it on our twitch.tv channel for the next few days, or wait and watch it on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared) at 2:30 pm PDT on Wednesday. Our guest next week is comic book writer David Blake Lucarelli (Tinseltown, The Children's Vampire Hunting Brigade). We'll go live at 6 pm PDT next Friday at twitch.tv/powerssquared. Be there and Be Squared.

This is newsletter week, so a lot of my attention will be putting together The Hound Dogs' Howl. You can always subscribe, for FREE, at https://mailchi.mp/9b9f918f79af/m1hbvbxiyn. It comes out on the first Sunday of every month, and is different from this blog, if you've ever wondered.

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

A Week in Writing #614 - It's My Fault

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

Well, I won't keep you in suspense any longer. I finally did hear back from PaddyPost about the issues I ranted about last week. Apparently, with my issue with Linkedin, their instructions were to remove the links and try again. I did that and sent a sample text and it made it to Linkedin. Why it took weeks to get that advice, I don't know.

As far as my problem with losing the connection to BlueSky, they put that on BlueSky, which I guess is sort of finicky, so until BlueSky gets right, the losing connection is going to continue. Actually, I don't know if it's BlueSky or PaddyPost to blame, but it's a continuing problem. I reconnected today as a matter of fact, and it disconnected again while I was writing this.

My week sort of got waylaid by a trade I was prepping for the printers. When I got the proof back, all the pages seemed too close to the edge. This printer has a template that I violated, so I was going to redo all the pages and spent a couple of nights working on that before I realized that most of the pages could more easily redone to conform, so that went faster than I feared.

Attended a potluck over the weekend that included other comic book creators. And I discovered that I'm rather horrible at starting conversations. I had never met the host before and I managed to introduce myself, and my family, but until someone showed up that I knew, we huddled together. We did end up having a rather lengthy discussion with another writer at the party but only after he started the conversation. After that we made a hasty retreat.

My review of A Farewell to Arms (1932) went up as the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. Paul's review of Super Mario Galaxy 2 was the Wednesday Game Day review. I'm currently working on a review of The Wind (1928). I seem to be stuck in the silent era lately. Not that I mind that really, as these are films I wanted to see.

Work on Powers Squared continues at a good pace. I did get some rather unexpected news from the U.S. Copyright Office. I had submitted registrations back in August of last year, for two publications that were being released, but because two different people were the writers, we couldn't submit them together. This, of course, dates back to August of last year and I just got that notification this past Thursday. What's 9+ months? I'm going to try to register them individually then, but I think that's a long time to take.

Our podcast this week was about Summer Movies. Paul and I went through the release schedule through the end of August and discussed films we were wanting to see. You can listen here, watch it for a few more days on our Twitch channel, or wait and watch in on YouTube after 2:30 pm on Wednesday.

My goal had been to work more, almost exclusively on Blackmail, however, things didn't go as planned. I'm still working through the changes but I'm behind where I wanted to be. So far, the book is a little shorter than it had been, 87,921 words, which is almost entirely due to the edits I'm working on.

Next week, I'm hoping to work more on Blackmail, but we'll see what the week has in store for me.

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

A Week in Writing #613 - Social Media Meltdown

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

I don't know if you're like me, but there is a certain amount of pressure to post regularly on social media platforms. For me, the main ones I use are Facebook (both David Hankins and Powers Squared), Instagram, LinkedIn (both David Hankins and Powers Squared), Threads, amd Bluesky. [This is not a call to follow me on any of them, but I'm just trying to give you an idea of what I'm on. I used to use GoDaddy for this, but they have very limited reach, like Facebook and Instagram. I decided to try another service, PaddyPost, which are usually Powers Squared related.

With PaddyPost, there were always issues with Bluesky, since they have limited space and for PaddyPost to interface, it has to be shorter than their limit, so I try to keep that in mind. But there are problems with PaddyPost, such as my social media connections keep getting lost, pretty much exclusively Bluesky, but it gets worse. My two LinkedIn accounts stopped working several weeks ago and my emails to PaddyPost Support went unanswered for several weeks. They finally acknowledged me but claimed never to have receive my emails, which I attached on my response. But still no response to my issue.

I also post to Threads directly, because when I try through PaddyPost, I get the largest QR Code I've ever seen and this is only the top part, which fills the screen:

Thanks for nothing.

This led me to reconsider GoDaddy, but you don't create your social media posts, their AI slop does it for you and there's no way to opt out. After spending thirty or more minutes with their help chat, the answer was to let AI write them and then edit it to what you want. What a load of BS. So they're out.

As I'm writing this, I've gotten two emails from PaddyPost about losing connection to BlueSky (both accounts), again, again today! WTF?

My postings are pretty simple. I post every morning about anniversaries of titles reviewed in Trophy Unlocked on BlueSky. I do these directly under my name, and I'm editing as I go to ensure they will work again next year. On Saturdays I post on Facebook and BlueSky about the Saturday Morning Review; I also do it on Wednesday if there is a game review and I know about it ahead of time. Again, these are done directly on the plaforms, little to no issues. I also post on Sunday nights regarding this post on both platforms, again with minimal issues.

What I want help with are the two to three Powers Squared posts, which I try to get to as many platforms as possible. Our Wedneday video goes up at 2:30 pm, which happens to be when I supposed to be doing my day job. So I had been trying to use PaddyPost for those, as well as the Tuesday Peek-of-the-Week post about that feature on our Powers Squared website. We also post a video to Instagram and that works. Even afterwards, there are more groups to post it to on Facebook, which again, I do directly. But it's also supposed to go to BlueSky, Instagram, LinkedIn, but it's not going to LinkedIn and BlueSky's connection, as noted above, is lost at the drop of a hat.

So, I feel like I'm spending too much time trying to get PaddyPost to work properly and if they don't respond in short order, I'm apt to give up on them all together. I had high hopes that they would be a reliable partner and they're proving not to be. 

End of Rant.

In other news, I finsished a review of Moana (1926), the Robert Flaherty documentary. My goal is to save it until the new live-action Disney Moana comes out. You're now officially in on the joke. My review of The Sheep Detectives went up as the Saturday Morning review on Trophy Unlocked. Our artist on Powers Squared has been very busy and I'm already behind as I write this with a new page from her. It's great but every night, I have to review what she's sent and give comments. It's more time consuming that you think, though necessary.

Our Friday night On the Air with Powers Squared podcast, which I had tried to use PaddyPost to "advertise", this week was a look at the Steven Universe universe, the original series, the movie and the Steven Universe Future series. You can listen to it now here, watch it on our Twitch channel for the next few days, or watch it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday at 2:30 pm. It will go up even if the social posts don't.

I'm still working on Blackmail, but I've come to a part I plan to rewrite, as the timeline in the story allows me to do that. I'm about 84% through the book at this point and standing at 89,538 words. I'm guessing the latter number will go down with the rewrites, which should tighten the story somewhat. 

So, my next week will be reviewing and rewriting.

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

A Week in Writing #612 - Blackmail Gets Short Shrift

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing. And Happy Mother's Day to any mothers out there.

My hope this week was to work more on Blackmail, however, I'm far from done. I don't know if this has happened to you, and it's happened to me several times, but I was trying to work on a section of the book that didn't quite feel right. I wanted to have a conversation my protagonist has on his cell phone to be recorded by someone else in the room. I sort of made up something to make it work, but I kept seeing an ad on Instagram for something that could record your telephone conversations and save them to a phone app. Actually, it used some sort of AI feature to make notes of your conversation, but I decided to hijack the technology, minus the AI feature, and have it simply record the conversation. Problem sort of solved. All that said, I'm only at approximately 3/4 of the way through the book.

Part of the reason I didn't get more done has to do with everything else. There were multiple pages of Powers Squared to review and then write up comments. It's coming along nicely by the way.

And then there were reviews. I was asked to write one for The Devil Wears Prada, which turned out to Trophy Unlocked's SaturdayMorning Review. It was proceeded by Paul's Wednesday Game Day second look review of Devil May Cry 2, and followed today by Paul's review of The Devil Wears Prada 2. I'm currently working on one for Dr. Who and The Daleks and I'm going to be writing one for The Sheep Detectives, which we saw this afternoon.

One bad thing that happened at the screening was that the people next to us were involved in some dispute about their seating. The people whose seats they were showed up as the movie was starting, literally as the lights were going down. I don't know why you would sit in someone else's reserved seats, but they had to work this out as the movie was playing.

To accomodate our guest, we pre-recorded our podcast on Thursday night. Our guest was Bin Lee, who had previously been on the podcast promoting his comic book Delegates, but was now back promoting a Kickstarter for his card game, Pack of Penguins. It was great to catch up and we've already backed the game. If you're curious, you can watch it on our twitch channel for the next few days, listen to it now here, or watch the video when it goes up on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared), on Wednesday at 2:30 pm PDT. And you can back the Kickstarter by clicking on Pack of Penguins above. He's over 500% funded, so it's going to happen.

And if that wasn't enough, we also did a What's in My Bag? 2026 Edition, Part 2: Discussion, which is a follow up to last week's video about Free Comic Book Day/Comics Giveaway Day. Last time, we told you what we picked; this time we tell you what we thought about what we read. It's also available for the next few day on our twitch channel, as well as on our YouTube channel now.

So, I have a couple of reviews to write and finish, and then I hope to get back to Blackmail.

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

A Week in Writing #611 - Still Churning

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

I'm still working on Blackmail. After the print out edits, I'm going through it again on the computer, making more edits as I go. I'm not quite to 3/4 of the way through. Currently, the word count is 89,238, though that is subject to change, either up or down. Doing it this way is sort of slow going but I hope to be done soon. I'm also making changes that I may have to also make in previous books, trying to stay consistent with the characters.

The newsletter, The Hound Dogs' Howl, came out this morning. Click the link if you want to read it. It includes links to our YouTube videos, Heard Around Campus section, and a feature on twins in the arts,  as well as a recommendation, and more. It's Free, so take a look.

This past Friday we had the pleasure to interview Megatron, actually Daniel Riordan, who voiced the character during the Robots in Disguise (2001) run. As always, that interview is available on our Twitch channel for the next few days, available as an audio podcast, and will be up on our YouTube channel this coming Wednesday at 2:30 pm.

And because Saturday was Free Comic Book Day/Comics Giveaway Day, we did our annual "What's in My Bag?" stream, in which Paul, Trevor and I discuss the books we picked up and then next week we'll discuss/review them in another stream. Usually, our former artist Rachel Wells will join us, but she couldn't this year.

No new review for me this week. Saturday was a long day, and we decided to watch one of the MST3K films that our recent podcast guest, Joshua Pruett had worked on instead. My recent review of Le Ballet Mécanique went up as Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review.

Progress continues on the next issue of Powers Squared. Our artist has completed work on five pages for the next issue, "Aroma Therapy, Part 1", and it is looking good.

My goal this week is to try to get through Blackmail. I'm also going to finally submit the 3rd trade for printing. I'm hoping to have some on hand should we get chosen again from San Diego Comic-Con, Last year, there was so much to get done in a little over two weeks, so I'm trying to be better prepared this time through.

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

A Week in Writing #610 - All That's Left is the Shredding

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

On Monday, I finally finished going through my notes on the draft for Blackmail. One of the results is that I've got 409 pages to shred, a task I have not yet faced. The word count ended up being 88,940 when I was done with that. I've since started to going through it on the computer, as a second run through. And I'm finding missed words or awkward phrasing this time around. This is somewhat slower, as I don't really like reading on the computer. I'm a little over a quarter of the way through it again, and the current word count is up to 89,018.

Also, on Monday, I finished some edits on a script for a future Powers Squared story arc. I haven't sent it yet for more revisions, but it's always good to have someone read it and make comments. In this case, the reader is my co-writer Paul.

And on Monday, we gave final approval for the lineart for page 3 for the next issue of Powers Squared, "Aroma Therapy," which is currently set as issues 30 and 31. Our artist is doing two pages a week, which is a good pace and we're now working on page 5. 

Trevor, this week, also finished lettering 8 more pages of what should be Issue #29. Currently, our colorist is caught up, but that should change next month.

Our podcast this week was "Record Store Day Memories," a look back on this past year's RSD, including items exclusive to RSD and items we found on sale- at the time. The three of us, Trevor, Paul and I also divulged our greated RSD Exclusive find. If you'd like to watch it on our Twitch channel for the next few days, you can watch it here. It's available in audio now and you can listen here. And if you want to wait for YouTube, it goes up on our channel (@powerssquared) on Wednesday at 2:30 pm PDT.

This coming week is Free Comic Book Day, and we'll be doing a special, "What's In My Bag?" sometime on Saturday. TBD, but it will be on our YouTube channel. This is traditionally a two-parter; we do a follow up the next week, talking about what we've read.

I finished a review for Blondie of the Follies, a Marion Davies film that I happened across. As always, not sure when it will come out. The Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked, was Trevor's review of Mercy, a sci-fi thriller, that came out earlier this year. We watched it on Prime Video, rather than in the theater.

I looked at the calendar and next weekend will be time for The Hounds' Howl newsletter, so I have a feeling that will be a priority for me, as well as trying to get more done on Blackmail. If you're curious about the newsletter, you can always sign up here. It's FREE and you get a digital copy of Issue #1.

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

A Week in Writing #609 - It's Never Easy

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

I seem to be having troubles with alarms lately. First, it was one of our smoke detectors that was going off with an "error" every 24 hours or so, until I finally had to disconnect it. Now it's our home alarm. I received an email that I hadn't tested it in awhile, so I decided to do that one night. But testing revealed a bunch of issues I wasn't aware of before, and now the alarm is sort of on the fritz, and goes off once a day as well. I tried to work with their AI assistant but sometimes you want to talk to a real person, like all the time, and I finally was able to after about an hour of trying to make it work. The fix will apparently take time, not the alarm company's fault, but it's just another hinderance into getting things done.

Our podcast this week was a conversation with Joshua Pruett, a TV and book writer, who got his start as a storyboard artist. Really engaging conversation, he was funny, witty and appreciative. Great time talking with him, but then the issues started. We've been having some issues with volume, which you might have noticed if you've listen regularly, like you should. Well, in order to fix that Paul had to render the video separately and make the audio version later. But somewhere along the way, 10 minutes got cut off, which no one noticed until I was putting the video up on YouTube. I knew the run time but every version I put up on YouTube was 10 minutes short. I thought I had done something wrong. Paul had to re-render the video and make a new audio file, but then the video was too big to pass using a thumbdrive. Anyway, we were able to replace the audio file, which I didn't know was possible, and load the complete video. For this effort, you can listen to it, in its completeness here, watch in on our twitch channel for the next few days, or watch in on our YouTube channel starting on Wednesday at 2:30 PDT.

Work continues on the next issue of Powers Squared, as our aritst has been working on one page at a time, two a week. The results are pretty good, so I'm feeling good about the upcoming story arc, though it will probably be 2027 before they come out, as we try to release 3 to 4 a year.

Despite all the alarm fun, I'm onto the last chapter of Blackmail. I had to make some changes and I'm hopeful I'll get done early next week. I'll probably do another read through, digitally, and check for commas, and spelling issues before putting it to bed.

As far as reviews, I'm currently working on one for Le Ballet Mécanique, a surrealist short from 1924. I think I watched it in film school at some point but I wanted to share it with the family and it was short. This is like the third or fourth silent movie I've reviewed in a row, so maybe next time it'll be a talkie. But the reviews keep coming on Trophy Unlocked. The Game Day Wednesday review as Trevor's for God of War: Sons of Sparta, and he followed that up with the Saturday Morning Review of Exit 8 (8番出口), a Japenese film he and his brother saw this week.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week. And if you ever have any questions or comments, let me know.

A Week in Writing #608 - Always Looking Forward

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

I'd like to think that I'm always looking forward and trying to make this better. Some of that comes with my own writing, and the future of Powers Squared. The latter was the point of our most recent podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared. In our latest episode, Paul and I discussed possible future storylines for the comic book, including the current issue we're working on. If you're curious, you can watch it now on twitch.tv, or listen to it here, or wait and watch it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday, April 15 after 2:30 pm PDT.

Speaking of the current issue we're working on, our artist had some trouble getting started, equipment malfunctioning, but has pretty much completed the first two pages and it's good to see pages coming forward.

I'm still working on the edits of Black Mail. I don't know if you've ever had this happen to you. I'm working on the book and the days of the week don't work out as well as I had hoped. I'm going to have to make some adjustments. I thought about moving the start of the book back a day, but I decided that wouldn't work out any better, so I'm going to have to make changes at the end to match. So more rewrites than I expected. Based on edits, the word count has actually dropped slightly to 87,543.

I finished a new review for Tol'able David (1921) for Trophy Unlocked. While I usually don't know when a review will go up, I'm lobbying for November 21, which would be 105 years since it's original release. This week, the Saturday Morning Review was Paul's for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

Next week, I'm going to continue working on edits for Black Mail and hopefully reviewing more pages for Powers Squared.

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

A Week in Writing #607 - Newsletter and Blackmail

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

As I wrote last week, this was newsletter week, so I spent a good part of the time working on that. In addition to the usual, the feature on twins was about the Starn Twins, and some unauthorised usage of our images on X. Here comes the pitch, if you'd like to receive that, it's FREE and you get a digital copy of the first issue of Powers Squared, that comic book I keep mentioning over and over. To be added to the email list, you "enroll" at the fictious college where much of the action takes place, San Romero Commnunity College. There is no further obligation and we send one, maybe two emails a month, and that's only when we release issues. End of pitch.

Besides that work, I did make progress on the edits and rewrites on Blackmail. It's never as much as you want, but I'm up to page 222 of 406, and the word count is now at 88,143. Slow work but it's coming along.

I'm finishing a review of His New Job (1915), Charlie Chaplin's first short at Essasnay. I had recently purchased a remastered set of his work at the studio and time was short last night. Information on it is scarce and I had to rewatch/skip through the short to make sure I captured everything. Most synopses I found are basically extended log lines. As always, not sure when that will come out.

There were two reviews on Trophy Unlocked this week. The first was a Wednesday/Game Day review by Paul of Super Mario Galaxy for the Switch. The Saturday Morning review was Paul's of George of the Jungle, the live-action remake of the animated cartoon.

Our podcast this week, was our 23rd Comic Book Club. Due to mis-scheduling, Julia wasn't able to attend but our former artist, Rachel Wells, joined in on Volume One of Void Rivals, written by Robert Kirkman, and illustrated by Lorenzo De Felici, & Matheus Lopes. You can watch it on our Twitch channel for the next few days, listen to it here now or wait to watch it on our You Tube channel on Wednesday after 2:30 pm PDT. You might want to play it loud, as our microphone isn't doing well and we need to replace it.

Powers Squared is going through a bit of a lull as our artist had to replace the pen she uses, so not much to report there on the new issue, Aroma Therapy.

We've applied for Artist Alley at the next WonderCon in 2027. Our past experience with Small Press left a bad taste in our mouths that still hasn't gone away. We think we'd do better where there are people around. We'll see how it goes, though I'm not crossing my fingers.

Next week, I'm hoping to work more on Blackmail and a script idea I have for Powers Squred. We'll see how it goes.

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

A Week in Writing #606 - One Day WonderCon

 

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

Since we weren't tabling at WonderCon, not that we didn't try, we attended the Con on Sunday. And even though we weren't selected, there were plenty of empty tables abound. Sort of makes you think they don't want you.

From an attendee point of view, there seemed to be fewer people. I'm used to the chaingang two-step of Comic-Con, so being able to take full strides at the Con was nice, but it told me that attendance appeared to be down. However, fot those we talked to in Small Press, the Con seemed to be good for them. I think I mentioned this before, but we'd like to attend in Artist Alley, rather than Small Press, since that seems to be more our speed. Not that we'd make any more money, but maybe not lose it as fast.

Did attend one panel about pitching board games.The takeaways: Structure the Pitch from the top down. Pitch - What it's about, then the unique selling points and then key information: audience, age range, components, player count, how long to play a game and MSRP. Basically, provide as much info in as short a time as possible. Fun fact, if your manufacturing costs are say $10, the MSRP will be $90 to $100. Generally, you're looking for a MSRP of $20 to $25 for a mass retail game.

What you should bring with you is a prototype of your game, a sales sheet and a 3-6 page pitch deck, though the latter wasn't required by everyone. There was even the suggestion of a 30 second sizzle reel, but again not universally required. Also, don't worry about the art because it will be changed. Games are also broken down by time spent playing, from 15 minutes (lightwieght) to 1 hour (middlewieght) to several hours (heavyweight).

On the subject of cons and comic books we did release the 27th issue of Powers Squared this past week. "Billy and Raven: Life on the Road." In this issue, we spun off two characters from pervious story arcs, Billy O'Shea and Raven, the Yatagarasu who granted him powers. They're trying to stay off the grid, and away from villain Dr. Atlas, as long haul truckers. In this issue, they find that life on the road isn't without troubles. Hope you take a shot on it. You can find out where to buy it (print and digital) here, or take a preview of the issue here.

I spent most of the week working on Blackmail. I'm trying to review the pages before going through the notes at the keyboard. It's interesting to me that sometimes I'll still make more changes. I did have a moment yesterday that I think improved the book, but only took a few keystrokes to do it. This is a detective story and one of the people he interviews was interesting but the reason for interviewing them was sort of week. But I realized I could move a couple of sentences around, add a few and then they were more of a possible witness. I don't know about you, but I love moments like that.

No new movie review from me this week, as we were sort of getting ready for WonderCon and I wouldn't have time to watch a feature. I did finish mine for The Lady Refuses. But there were two reviews this week on Trophy Unlocked. Wednesday was game day with Trevor's Second Look - Starlink: Battle for Atlas (+ DLC), The Saturday Morning Review was also Trevor's TMNT (2007).

The podcast this week was a look at the films that have been nominated for Best Animated Feature through the years. Paul and I don't always agree with the Oscars choice. You can listen to it here, watch it here for the next few days (though it's in three parts) and watch the complete version on our YouTube channel starting on Wednesday at 2:30 pm. The reason it's in three parts on Twitch, is that a malfunctioning Smoke detector went off twice during the podcast. I had to get on a stepladder and disconnect it.

Next week, more work on Blackmail, and it's newsletter week as well, so I've got my work cut out.

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

A Week in Writing #605 - New Powers Squared Release

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

This week, the next issue of Powers Squared comes out. It's been six months since we've put out an issue. It's not that the issue wasn't ready, it was that the follow up story arc wasn't. The original plan was to put the issue out last year, but when work on Issue #28 ground to a halt, we decided to move the issue to this spring. We have since replaced that artist and are moving forward to Issue #30, as production seems to be back on track.

Last seen in Powers Squared issue #18, "Mocha and Raven, Part 3," Billy O'Shea and Raven get their own issue with "Billy and Raven, A Powers Squared Story: Life on the Road." Billy uses his powers of strength and punctuality to good use as a truck driver. Raven, the Yatagarasu who granted him those powers, is by his side, as the two try to lay low and out of reach of Dr. Atlas. But life on the road can be dangerous. The issue drops on Wednesday the 25th and can be found in both print and digital through The Campua Store.

Because of the pending release, our podcast on Friday was OAPS #343 - Powers Squared Issue #27 Preview. Artist Julia Canon joined Trevor, Paul and myself to discuss the issue. You can still catch it on Twitch for the next few days, listen to it here, or wait until Wednesday at 2:30 pm PDT to watch it on our YouTube channel. If you do check it out, please subscribe and ring the bell to be notified when new podcasts go up.

Well, I finally finished my first pencil edits on Blackmail. Still work to be done but it was good to go through it once. I'll have to start implementing my edits and rewrites starting next week.

Working on a new review, this one for The Lady Refuses (1931), a pre-code melodrama starring Betty Compson. As always, not sure when it will appear on Trophy Unlocked. In the meantime, there were three reviews up this week, two game reviews by Trevor, Star Fox Command on Tuesday, and Star Fox Zero + Star Fox Guard on Thursday. The Saturday Morning Review was Paul's for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III.

This next week, we're attending WonderCon as professionals. Never heard back from them. I assume we're still on the wait list and that there will also be empty tables when we get there on Sunday. I'll include a report about that next week as well.

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

A Week in Writing #604 - Blackmail and Reviews

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

Like everyone, I've been adjusting to Daylight Savings Time, but I think the transition is almost over.

I've been spending my evenings, which is when I write, or try to, editing Blackmail. This is my favorite part of the writing experience, printing the book fifty pages or so at a time and sitting down with a pencil, reading the book aloud and making changes and notes. I still have several pages to go and after that more work to do.

But that's not all I've been doing this week.

On Friday, our podcast was about TFCon, the Transformers convention my sons were planning on attending. The podcast is still available to watch here for the next few days, available to listen to here and will be up on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared) on Wednesday at 2:30 pm. The boys also approached a couple of voice actors connected with Robots in Disguise who might be upcoming guests, so stay tuned. 

I finished reviews for both Blithe Spirit and Hypocrites (1915), a silent film by pioneering filmmaker Lois Weber. As always, not sure when it will go up. But there were plenty of reviews this past week on Trophy Unlocked. On Monday, was Paul's review of Hoppers. On Tuesday was Trevor's review of Star Fox 64 3D, followed on Thursday by his review of Star Fox: Assault. Saturday saw his review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.

There was a lot going on with Powers Squared this week. We're wrapping up Issue #29, getting ready to release issue #27 and about to start work on issue #30. We'll be talking about Issue 27, "Life on the Road, A Powers Squared Story."

My plan for next week is to work more on Blackmail and see where that leads me.

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

A Week in Writing #603 - Botching My Way Through

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

I'm embarassed to admit it but I botched the release of the previous OAPS video. We had, I would think, a good intereview with Jamal Anansi, a comic book writer we tabled next to at Pasadena Comic Con. The problem, for me, was getting it up on our YouTube channel. We normally post the previous Friday night podcast on the following Wednesday on YouTube, and I thought I had scheduled it. However, when I took a look after work, I noticed it wasn't there. Panicking, I tried to release it but it wouldn't let me, for some reason. Paul suggested I refresh the page, which I did and then I could schedule it. Today, when I was scheduling the next video and adding it to our web page, I noticed that for that video, it was pointing to the one before it and probably had for a week. I feel bad. I wrote an email to our guest but I never heard back. And, like many, I don't think he mentioned his appearance on any social media, either. I'm not sure if that's an issue with other podcasters out there, but a mention would help with views.

This past podcast, which I can assure you has been scheduled, was an update about Powers Squared. We haven't released a book in six months. That was a conscious decision, as we had a bit of an issue with our artist at the time and fell way behind schedule. I held back the last issue planned for last year until now, especially since we were releasing an issue a month of Trevor's The Blade of Miracles. The upcoming issue will be our 27th. It's a departure for us, as this is a potential spin off of two characters from previous issues. This time, for sure, you can watch it here for the next few days, listen to it here, or wait and watch it on our YouTube channel at 2:30pm on Wednesday.

My main goal this week was to work on editing Blackmail, which I had decided was done. So, on Monday night, I printed out the first 50 or so pages, or so I thought. My wonderful, and I'm saying that sarcastically, HP printer needed black ink, which I had. Oh, but then it needed yellow ink (or whatever color they call it), which I had. But no we're not done. It also needed red ink. I was out of red ink and since the local office places were closing in fifteen minutes, I was done, with only pages 38-52 or some such. I had to order ink for overnight delivery, which I did. But why does a printer need red ink to print black?

I'm only about 138 pages into the editing. Some because of the delay but also because I'm getting tired and brain dead early some nights. By about 10, I'm practically useless. Not all nights, but just enough to be a problem.

I did finish my review of That'll Be the Day and am currently working one for Blithe Spirits. As always don't know when either is going up. But Trophy Unlocked waits for no one and there have been several reviews this past week, staring with Trevor's review of Star Fox on Wednesday, his review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) on Friday, and then Paul's review of Mission: Impossible III as the Saturday Morning Review. Paul's review of Hoppers will go up tomorrow.

I believe my rewrites for the next Powers Squared story arc are complete and we'll be getting to work on that very, very soon.

My goals for this week, and I'm taking into account the time change which sort of f-s me up for a few days, is to work more on Blackmail and finish my review of Blithe Spirits. I hope the time change doesn't impact you negatively this week.

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

A Week in Writing #602 - But Who's Counting?

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

If you're a regular reader or only occassionally look at my posts, you might be wondering why the number is so much higher than say two weeks ago. Well, that's because, much to my chagrin, I noticed last Sunday, as I was posting, that I had made a mistake in numbering, having gone from 570-something to 550-something many weeks back. Looking back I see that I had skipped numbers twice before as well as misnumbered the last half year or so of posts. I decided not to go back to the 100s where the first skip happened and just renumbered the last 21 to bring in closer to the right number. My apologies, but no one else had caught it either (that's what comments are for).

Something that we haven't misnumbered is our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared. For our 340th podcast, our guest this week was Jamal Anansi, a comic book writer who tabled next to us at Pasadena. He's the writer on a couple of books, both out soon through Studio Skye-Tiger Comics, Ebony and the Hall of Dragons, and Sincere American Nightmare. You can still watch this for a few more days on our twitch channel, listen to it here or wait until Wednesday at 2:30 pm to watch it on our YouTube channel. And while you're there, please subscribe and follow. To accomodate Jamal's schedule, we recorded on Tuesday night.

This week also saw the release of the final issue of  Trevor's The Blade of Miracles, issue #12 "Farewell Britton". This release did not go smoothly. We had a bit of an issue with the primary printer, which wasn't their fault, but it's still not available on their website just yet. Also, The Bark, which goes out to subscribers, got botched and went out way later than I would have wanted. Mailchimp apparently added another step in the sending process, which I must have overlooked.

Work continues on the next issue of Powers Squared with our artist turning in pages multiple times during the week. That in and of itself is great, but each page has to be reviewed and comments written up and sent, which is time-consuming but necessary.

I've also been working this week on rewrites on the next story arc, "Aroma Therapy". I actually went through a few rewrites this week, tweaking and editing. I'm sure there will be more editing before it's ready.

This was also newsletter week. I'm happy to report the latest Hound Dogs' Howl went out this morning. Again, it's not a hard project, just time consuming. You're invited to join the mailing list, which is "enrolling" at San Romero Community College. It's FREE and there are no further obligations. It's different content than these posts. The school is "celebrating" it's 70th anniversary this year, having been founded in 1956. (It's a make believe school, but it's where some of the action takes place in the Powers Squared books.)

The Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked was Paul's review of Mission: Impossible 2. I'm working on a review of That'll Be the Day (1973). Rather than cleansing the DVR, this was from a blu-ray. As always, not sure when this review will appear on the site.

All this mentioning of time-consuming projects is my way of telling you I didn't work on Blackmail at all this week. Not for a lack of desire, but rather the lack of hours in the day. I'm close to finishing and then, of course, there are rewrites and editing to follow. Finishing it will be my project for the week.

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

A Week in Writing #601 - Happy the Week is Over

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

You ever have what seems like a busy week but when it's over, you're not sure if you accomplished much?

Case in point for me. I believe I mentioned in a past post that I was having communication problems with our printer. I could go on their message board and leave a message but then never see it. Well, they cleared that up but never told me, so it was by chance that I looked this weekend. I found out the details why the last iteration of The Blade of Miracles #12 had been off, and I made the corrections. However, when I went to order the reprint, I somehow got Issue #3 with changes and then Issue #12 without changes. I don't need a new #3 and it was #12 I needed to change. I wrote them and sent a link to the revised one in a dropbox. Fingers crossed it will work out.

That said, Issue #12 is coming out on Wednesday through The Campus Store. We prerecorded a preview of the issue, as well as a tier list for Daft Punk, a band Trevor like very much, who retired five years ago this month. Paul did some pretty good editing and it's available here for the next few days, can be listened to here and will be on our YouTube channel on Wedneday at 2:30 pm PST.

We're getting close to completing the artwork for Issue #29 of Powers Squared, though it's going a little slower than I would have expected. We're about three pages and a cover away.

Sort of unexpectantly, my review of the first Mission:Impossible movie went up as the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. It's not like I didn't know it was going up, but we've decided to publish reviews for the first three films in that series and now was as good a time as any. I'm currently working on a review for Brief Encounter (1945).

I did get some work done on Blackmail. We're now up to 86,409 words and I think I'm in the landing zone for finishing the first draft. It's going to need work, but I'd be happy to get to the editing stage.

That may take a backseat to some rewrites I need to do to a Powers Squared script and this is going to be newsletter week and we're pre-recording a podcast on Tuesday night for Friday. Hopefully, I'll get through that week, too.

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

A Week in Writing #600 - Not My Best Week

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

Not a banner week for me to say the least. And there are a number of factors involved, but I was never able this week to really sit down and write, like I wanted to. I won't go into specifics, but everything aligned this week to keep me from doing too much. My main goal was to work on Blackmail, but the word count changed miniscully to 82,690, which is less than a 100 words up from last week. I've done a lot of thinking about it but that doesn't get words on the page or in the computer.

We had better success with our guest on our podcast On the Air with Powers Squared. Heidi Neunhoffer, a Lorcana artist that the boys liked, was at Pasadena Comic Con, at the table across from us. She agreed to do the show and I think it went very well. Turns out we both went to the same college, though I imagine it was close to 40 years apart. Besides that, she was very open about her craft. I think it could have gone on much longer, but I think we got in a lot at over 81 minutes. You can still watch it for the next few days here (our twitch channel) or listen to it ,or find other platforms to listen to it, here. There is always the option to watch in our YouTube channel at 2:30 pm PST on Wednesday.

Two new pages of Powers Squared were worked on and I really like the artwork. Not sure how the coloring or the lettering is going, but we should have a new issue done in a couple of months. Not quite the assembly line, but pretty good.

No word yet on either WonderCon or ComicCon where we are currently on the waitlist.

Had some printing issues this week, trying to communicate. The printer used a sort of message board where you ask about a particular order or issues in general. However, for whatever reason, if I post a message, I can't see it and when they post a message, I can't see it either. That's not good to say the least.

My review of Little Amélie or the Character of Rain went up on Saturday. It's one of the films nominated for Best Animated Feature. While I fear what the Academy will do, this one should win, but I'm set for disappointment. I'm currently working on a review for Till The End of Time (1946), which will go up sometime in the future.

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

A Week in Writing #599 - Blame it on the Bunny!

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

I know it looks like I'm looking for excuses, but hear me out. I'm going to blame my lack of production on Bugs Bunny. I know it sounds far-fetched, but he was the Star of the Month on TCM and my wife wanted to watch them in real time. This delayed dinner, but my window to work didn't get later. And, hey, I enjoyed them, too.

I'm most disappointed by my work on Blackmail, which was practically nil. I did finish the chapter, but it's going to need a lot of rewrites when the time comes. I'm up to 82,586, which is a little over 1,100 words from last week, which is about average. I'm really surprised to see that total.

It wasn't that I didn't do anything. I did review work from our artist and colorist for Powers Squared, and, of course, pay them for their work from last month.

As "publisher" of The Blade of Miracles, I had a week-long running issue with our printer. While it dates back to a mistake I made in the order, it took a week to work out the upload, but they got it done and the proof is on its way.

I also did some work on future issues of Powers Squared.

Related, the school where it takes place, San Romero Community College, is celebrating it's 70th anniversary and we were working with a former artist on the book to come up with a variant seal to celebrate. You can find here, if you're interested.

There was also the podcast. This week it was one Paul wanted to do, a Megadeth Tier List, celebrating the 17 albums the band has issued. You can watch it here for the next few days, listen to it now here or wait and watch it on Wednesday at 2:30 pm when it premieres on our YouTube channel.

My review of They Call it Sin was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. I also wrote a future review of Little Amélie or the Character of Rain which I assume will go up soon.

So, not the worst week I've had writing but not the best one either.

As always, I hope to work more on Blackmail but I don't always control what is going on.

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

A Week in Writing #598 - Didn't Get it All Done

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

My goals for this week were simple enough: do the newsletter, The Hound Dog's Howl, and work more on Blackmail. Well, I got about half of that done, it was the newsletter. Even though much of it is formulaic, it still takes time. And by formulaic, I don't mean that I'm in possession of some magic formula about how to put together a newsletter, but more that there is a layout to ours that I follow month in and month out. There is some writing involved, things do happen during the month. This past month, as an example, we had a new issue of The Blade of Miracles released, we tabled at a convention and our latest trade went up on ComicsPlus through LibraryPass. If you would like to read it, please subscribe here. It's FREE.

The work on Blackmail never really got off the ground. I'm up to 80,472 words, which isn't much of an improvement from last week. Things happen that get in the way. Some of it is the book itself. I knoew what I want to have happen in the next chapter but sometimes it's a little difficult to get into it.

Our podcast this week, was our 22nd Comic Book Club. It seems like it had been months since I had read Vagabond, a manga by Takehiko Inoue, which wasn't the plan. When you're trying to schedule five people in two cities, and people have their own lives, it can be hard, especially when you're working around the holidays. Our former artist Rachel Wells, and our current colorist, Julia Canon, joined Trevor, Paul and myself. You can listen to it here, watch it for the next few days on our twitch channel, or wait until Wedmesday at 2:30 pm PST and watch it on our YouTube channel. While you're there, please feel free to subscribe and sign up for notifications.

Quite an active week on Trophy Unlocked. On Wednesday, Paul's review of Iron Lung went up. He and Trevor had attended what was supposed to be the first screening of the film on Tuesday night. The Saturday Morning Review was my review of Samaritan, a digital release based on the comic book by a friend of a friend. We had watched it after Lewis Felton had appeared on our podcast and talked about how his business partner had written a spec script that didn't sell, but when he made it into a comic book, that sold. If you want to hear more, you can check out the interview with Lewis Fenton here.

I've also written a review of The Beast of the City, a 1932 MGM film starring Walter Huston and Jean Harlow. As always, no idea when it will appear.

This past Wednesday saw the release of issue 11 of Trevor's The Blade of Miracles. You can find it in both physical and digital at The Campus Store on our website. I'm still working on getting #12 ready for release later this month.

On the Powers Squared front, I feel like I'm in a waiting pattern. Our new artist should be delivering a new page soon, our colorist should be sending new colored pages soon and I'm working with our old artist about a new seal to celebrate SRCC's 70th anniversary. San Romero Community College is the ficticious school where a lot of the comic book takes place in and around. Amd according to the story, it was founded in 1956. I'll be sharing the new seal when done.

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