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 #582 - Not As Bad As Advertised

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

I sort of lost part of a day this week. It was colonoscopy time again, which I had scheduled for Wednesday. I feared I would be more out of it that day/night, but it wasn't that bad. I'm not going to make this blog about getting screened, but it's better to know either way than not know. I'll leave it to you to decide what you want to do.

I did do some writing on Blackmail, which was supposed to be the week's main event. I ended up adding a new chapter and making some other revisions. Now, I'm up to 61,000+ words, but still about 19,000 to go with more story to tell.

Our podcast this week was our 21st Comic Book Club, Grommets by Rick Remender and Brian Posehn. Julia Canon and Rachel Wells joined us for the discussion. You can see it for the next few days on our twitch channel, listen to it here or wait and watch it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday at 2:30 pm PT. Our next book will be Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue, if you want to virtually participate. Not sure when that podcast will be made.

We had a bit of a discussion, offline, about the sitch with Powers Squared and I will be letting our current artist go come Monday. By then it will have been two weeks of radio silence, which for me is a no-go. We've been stuck about five pages in on an issue for over two months, so I don't see it getting done this year. Time to make a change.

The Saturday Morning Review this week on Trophy Unlocked was my review of The Sound of Music. Next week will be Paul's for Tron: Ares, which we watched yesterday in IMAX 3D, the way it was intended. We're still slogging our way through The Batman 1943 serial, so that review is still several weeks away.

I need to get back into the query game soon. Hopefully next week or the week after, depending on how things go.

This week, I also need to prep for the next issue of The Blade of Miracles #8, "Mordred, Part 1", which is coming out at the end of the month, October 29. Several things need to happen before then, so it's not a mad rush like last month.

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

A Week in Writing #581 - Newsletter Week, Again!

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

My whole family had our COVID vaccinations yesterday. It seems vaccines effect people differently. Besides the sore shoulder, I know that at about 10 last night my mind went to mush. Now, it seems to do that more and more to me anyway. I try to write until about 11 pm and some nights by 10:30 I'm really done. If I'm not falling asleep at the keyboard, then I'm in a half-sleep haze, wanting to do something but not quite making it happen. Time for bed at that point.

For our podcast on Friday, we interviewed Lewis Fenton of Mythos Comics. They were one of the booths next to us in Small Press at San Diego Comic-Con. It was a pretty good interview, and I ended up buying some books off their website as a result. One that Lewis had worked on, The Brave, is the story of Squanto, the indian who came forward to help the Pilgrims and also spoke perfect English. I also bought the two issues of Samaritan, a comic book that started out as a screenplay but became a comic book when the script didn't sell, but when it did, they lost rights to the story, so the book only had two issues. You can hear more by listening to the podcast here, watching it on twitch.tv/powerssquared for the next few days, or catching it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday after 2:30 pm PDT.

Following our interview, we watched Samaritan, which lives on Amazon Prime, and I wrote a review of it over the weekend. As always, not sure when it will go up. However, my review of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale did go up as Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review. Earlier in the week, on Game Day Wednesday, Paul's review of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach went up as well.

This week was sort of dominated by The Hound Dogs' Howl, our monthly newsletter. This month, the featured twins are Bridgette and Paula Powers, no relation to Marty and Eli Powers, from Australia. There is also a round up of stories about Powers Squared, The Blade of Miracles and our videos and podcasts on YouTube. It's FREE if you want to subscribe. In keeping with the collegiate theme, you "enroll" at San Romero Community College to get on the list, plus you get a free digital copy of Issue #1. You can sign up here. End of plug.

I am about finished with our current artist on Powers Squared. I believe I mentioned last week that we got pages a week and a day late, but there has been no communication back since we sent her comments, which we sent on the 29th and we're coming up on a week of radio silence. I don't like firing people, but it seems to be headed in that direction.

On the subject of Powers Squared, we sent in the physical issues required as part of the application for Small Press. They had to be postmarked by the 11th, but I wanted to get them sent and not have to worry.

Some work this week as well on Blackmail; remember, this was supposed to be a newsletter week. I'm writing a couple of chapters that are out of my wheelhouse totally, so I'm making up procedures that a law enforcement organization would follow. It makes me feel rather tentative while writing it. My best hope is to get through it, which I've done. I'm at 58,526 words, which is about 22,00 short, with more to come.

I've got to get back to Blackmail this week, though I will warn you I'm going to miss a day, but that can wait until next week.

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

A Week in Writing #580 - Birthday, Birthday, Birthday

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

There is a three week period, starting in late September, when we celebrate four birthdays in my family of four. This is that week, starting with mine on Thursday and my sons' today. That doesn't mean I took the week off, but the output might not be as great as it could be.

Paul and I took a nostalgic look back at the videos on our YouTube channel that had garnered the most views on this week's On the Air with Powers Squared podcast. The videos cover a variety of the topics our videos cover, from interviews with other creators but also comic book clubs, Who is...? videos for our characters, taste tests, vlogs about SDCC, etc. I'll grant you it's a little meta, but it is what it is. You can listen to it here or watch it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday after 2:30 pm PDT here.

I did write two reviews this week, one for Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, which we watched on my birthday, and The Invisible Man Returns for October, which we watched on Friday night. We're still watching The Batman serial, as well. I would imagine The Grand Finale will be up soon. Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review this week was Paul's review of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle and this week a surprise Sunday morning review by Paul of Elio.

We published two books this week, "The Great Escape", #26 from Powers Squared, and "Vivienne", #7 of Trevor's book, The Blade of Miracles. Both are available in print and digital through The Campus Store on our website. Shout out to Ka-Blam and their platform Indy Planet. We were having issues with the .pdf for "The Great Escape", but they managed to get it up on Indy Planet the same day they got the revised .pdf. I really appreciate their extra effort to make it work. I also want to add that the black border around the cover, rather than white, was their idea.

And, as if that wasn't enough, we submitted our third trade to ComicsPlus by Library Pass. This one includes issues 10-14, The "What's in a Name" through "The Imposter" storylines. Not sure when that will be available.

Spoke to our local comic book store about doing a signing and selling our trades there. Went well, but more to come on that.

I'm honestly to beyond the point of no return with our current artist, who is about two months overdue. I did receive pages, but a week and a day after they were supposed to be turned in. It's really adversely affecting Powers Squared and a change is in the offing.

We applied today to table at the Golden State Fur Con in 2026, as we think there is furry appeal in both The Blade of Miracles and to an extent, Powers Squared. More to come on that as well.

I managed to do some work on Blackmail. Almost to 58,000 words. I completed one chapter and started on the next one. I believe I'm entering what would be called the third act. I think I need to do some research before I get too much futher.

Next week, it's newsletter time again, so that will definitely play into whatever else I do.

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

A Week in Writing #557 - Only So Many Hours in the Day

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

There are so many hours in the week for me. And while I try to stay active, sometimes, like this week, time runs out. Case in point, on Thursday night, my query night, I spent about an hour and a half working on a query letter and including the number of pages the agent states they want. But when I checked to make sure I had covered everything, I discovered they were closed to queries. How long, I don't know. Now, is is my fault that I didn't look before spending that time, but by the time I found this out, I was too tired to look for another agent to send it to. I'm hoping that the time I spent on the query email will pay dividends down the road, but I'm sure there will be an agent that wants only one paragraph to sum up the story or will want something else not in the query so I'm sure not all of it will be used.

And then, there is time shifting. We did a live podcast on Friday night with Scott Lost, a comic book artist and former pro wrestler that we met at this past WonderCon. As always, you can listen to it here or wait until Wednesday at 2:30 pm to watch it on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared). I think it was a good interview, so I encourage you to check it out. Then on Saturday morning, we recorded two more podcasts for use later, including a Comic Book Club with Julia Canon and Rachel Wells, to discuss The Sculptor by Scott McCloud, and then a team meeing with Julia. These will appear at later dates. Even though we had scheduled these for a Saturday so everyone could participate, our artist had more pressing things to attend to and could not be a part of them. As they say, the show must go on.

No new review from me this week, because I realized that I hadn't actually finished my review of Lili, from the week before. And, for the first time in a few weeks, the Saturday Morning Review wasn't one I had written. Instead, it was Paul's review of Gnomeo & Juliet. The Wednesday Game Day review was Trevor's about Project Shoreline.

To round up the week, I did more work on Blackmail. Mostly filling in some gaps and, hopefully, adding atmosphere. But the count is now up to 24,670, so it's more like a 1000 words a week, rather than a 1000 words a day.

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

A Week in Writing #555 - The Letdown Afters

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

Nothing makes you feel less important than having a big event in your life and then no one asking how it went. After tabling at the biggest convention we ever had, no one ever asked how it went. I take that back, one person, not knowing why I was out asked and I told her about it, but it felt like no one cared. I know, "Boo hoo hoo," but it does show me that even though something might be important to you doesn't mean anyone else will give a damn.

Speaking of WonderCon, I've tried to reup for next year but their signup doesn't seem to recognize me and keeps sending me around in circles. Very frustrating. I wrote to someone there, hoping they can help me.

On the subject of Powers Squared, we did recount our experience with Lucas Scheffel asking us questions about it on our latest podcast. OAPS #291 - WonderCon 2025 Recap with Lucas Scheffel is available to listen to here and will be available on our YouTube channel on Wednesday after 2:30 pm here. Lucas is always a lot of fun to talk to, so it's worth a watch or listen.

This was also newsletter week. Again, we recapped the highlights from WonderCon, list out the videos from the month, highlighted twin brother comic book creators, and had our monthly recommendation to name the highlights. If you'd like to receive the newsletter, enroll at SRCC here. As a reminder, SRCC is a made-up school where much of Powers Squared takes place and enrollment is free.

My review for The Cat in the Hat (1971), a TV Special, was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlcoked. To show you how long some of these have been sitting around, that review dates back to 2020. I think we finally posted to get rid of it, but that's how it goes sometimes.

I'm currently working on a review of Rancho Notorious (1952), what I've heard described as a cult Western. You'll have to wait if you want to know what I thought about it. We watched it last night from a DVR recording that was 8 years old.

Wrote some on Blackmail this week, though I'm not proud of how much. 20,513 words so far.

I need to start the query process this week; I need more rejection in my life. I haven't really thought much about it the last few weeks, but it's time to get my feet wet.

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

A Week in Writing #544 - The Excitement of an Excel Spreadsheet

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

Now that I've finished the rewrites on Skylar, and I'm putting together a list of agents to query for Past Present, I still find myself tweaking. Has this ever happened to you: You're alone and you start to think about something you've written and suddenly an answer comes to you or a better way of saying something. Well that happened to me with Past Present. It was a bit of dialogue that I thought should be proached between characters. So, went back into the book and added it. It doesn't change anything as far as the story goes, but I think it fills a hole, so to speak. Something, as a reader, I'd want a character to ask another.

I'm also working on my new story idea, which so far doesn't have a name. I've been trying to be good and work on the query list, but there is only so much excitement you can have with an Excel spreadsheet, so I'm drawn to working on the story. I had one of those moments with this book that I wanted to capture and once I'm in it, I keep wanting to work on it. I know the premise and how I want the book to end, so it's just filling in all the rest.

This week's podcast was our January 2025 Team Meeting, minus one. Our current artist, Jen Moreno, couldn't make it for reasons I was never told, so we carried on as a quartet with Julia Canon, Trevor, Paul and myself. However, some months there isn't much going on, so this is a rather short podcast. You can listen to it here or wait and watch it on Wednesday after 2:30 here. The apt subtitle is "A Quick Update."

I'm trying to get serious about WonderCon, as it is screaming up in a little more than two months. The banner and table runner we ordered came in ahead of schedule and they look pretty good. Now, I need to worry about the number of books and order some of Trevor's book, The Blade of Miracles, so we have some for the Con. More on that as I know them.

My review of The Red Badge of Courage went up on Trophy Unlocked as the Saturday Morning Review. I also wrote a new review of Blackmail (1929), at least the sound version. This was on TCM recently, along with a special about the importance of the movie in shaping director Alfred Hitchcock's legacy. That special was sandwiched between the silent and sound versions of the film. I recorded both, but only had time for one, and chose the sound. I'd like to watch the silent version and update the review accordingly. But that's for another time.

I know it doesn't sound like much, but that is about all for me. Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week.

A Week in Writing #536 - Under the Weather

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

This was a slower than expected week for me. Wednesday night into Thursday I came down with a cold or something similar. I'm guessing I caught it from one of the half-dozen workmen we had in the house. While I won't go into details, part of our house is 75 years-old and with it comes 75 year-old-wiring, which turns out to be woefully dangerous. It really wasn't until today before I felt whole again, as they say.

I did manage to work on both The Hound Dogs' Howl newsletter, as well as finish the reviews as I was working on: A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1974), which came out as this past Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked, and Three Godfathers (1936), which will be coming out in December as part of our salute to Christmas. If you've been reading Trophy Unlocked, and you should be, you might remember a few years ago, we did a salute to A Christmas Carol, reviewing several different versions from a silent retelling A Christmas Carol (1910), starring Marc McDermott, to a more modern one, A Christmas Carol (1984), starring George C. Scott with several stops inbetween.

This Christmas we're doing the same with movies made based on the novel The Three Godfathers by Peter B. Kyne (New York, 1913) but you'll have to stay tuned to see which films I mean and in which order they will appear.

And mine wasn't the only review on Trophy Unlocked this week. Trevor's review of the video game Please, Touch The Artwork 2 on what I like to call Game Day on the blog.

I had hoped to do some more on Skylar this week, but I really didn't have the energy.

Even though I was not feeling great, I still managed to do the Powers Squared podcast on Friday night. It was our November 2024 team meeting and while we talked about the comic book, we also talked about moving to Bluesky, which prompted a discussion about AI. It was a good conversation and you can listen to it now here, or watch it when it comes out on YouTube on Wednesday at 2:30 pm PST, here.

As far as Bluesky goes, you can follow me @lionsroar91406.bsky.social or you can follow Powers Sqaured @powerssquaredcomic.bsky.social. lt would help as we're starting over, so to speak.

Next week starts the holiday season, so you'll have to forgive me if my input drops after Wednesday. Lots of driving, food and shopping to be done. Hope everyone has a Happy (and safe) Thanksgiving.

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

A Week in Writing #531 - Lots and Lots (Reviews and Videos)

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

I'm still very much in the editing mode on Skylar and at the rate I'm going, I think I will be for the next couple of weeks. In addition to various other things, I'm getting through a chapter or two a night on the nights I'm writing. Some nights, like Fridays and Saturdays, I'm writing, but not at night and not always on this book.

I was thinking earlier in the week about my promise to start querying for an agent again, now that LA Comic Con has passed. Not sure which book to query yet and I still have to write a good paragraph summation. But thinking about it doesn't get it done. I'll have to do better on that one.

Currently, I'm working on a review for Island of Lost Souls. This will be the final Halloween review of the month for Trophy Unlocked; so I have a deadline to complete, hopefully tonight or Monday. My review of Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) was the Saturday Morning Review on the blog but far from the only review this week. It's Resident Evil Month, so two reviews went up during the week, both written by Paul. On Tuesday it as Resident Evil 6 and on Thursday it was Resident Evil: Revelations 2. And you might be saying, wow that's a lot of reviews for one week, they couldn't do another one, but you'd be wrong. Today, Paul's review of My Hero Academia: You're Next went up as well.

Staying with the Resident Evil theme but unrelated to Trophy Unlocked, our Friday night podcast was Resident Evil Retrospective (RE4R-RE8), part 2 of a videogame retrospective Paul started last year. You can listen to it here (Play Loud) or watch it on Wednesday afternoon at 2:30 PDT on our YouTube channel.

On the subject of podcasts, next week, we're having Ramon Gil on the show. Ramon is a comic book creator, but also one of the principals behind Neurodiversity Comic Con next month in New York (November 9). Information about the event can be found on our website at Events. We were invited to table, but it was a little far for us, but Powers Squared is an additional sponsor of the Con. We go live at 6 pm PDT on twitch.tv/powerssquared.

Since my last post, we've also put up two new videos on our channel both from Paul, Oreo Coke Collab | Taste Test Special, which explores the flavor combination with cookies, soft drinks and Slurpees with Paul as your Tasting guide; and A Tale of Two DeLoreans | LACC 2024 BTS, some behind the scenes footage we shot, which also happens to feature the Back to the Future DeLoreans that were at the show. One was promoting the musical and the other was a reconditioned car from the films.

On the comic book front, we're in a waiting game for pages, but that too should change next week as we're expecting pages from both Julia Canon and from Jen Moreno, both currently artists on different books.

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

A Week in Writing #530 - Back to Reality

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

This is my first real post-Con week and sadly, the glow wears out quickly. It's a different feeling that I usually get when we go to say San Diego Comic-Con. Not totally unrelated, but different. And strangely, when I attend a Con I get more questions at work about it. This time, no one in my department even asked about it. Someone at work, in another department, did ask a couple of days later, but you kind of hope that it's a conversation for at least the first day. But alas...

We have been very busy with the videos about the Con on our YouTube channel. First up was Paul's LA Comic Con Haul video, wherein he talks about his experience and what exclusives he bought and who he got autographs from/spoke to. That went up on Tuesday. On Wednesday was our podcast from the floor, OAPS #264 LIVE From LA Comic Con 2024, that was followed on Friday with the Under The Radar | LACC 2024 Panel video. Paul edited two recordings, one by Erik Arreaga and one by my wife Nancy, together. We ended the week with the podcast, OAPS #265 LA Comic Con Wrap Up (feat. Lucas Scheffel). The audio can be heard here and the video will be available on Wednesday at 2:30 pm PDT here.

Interesting story, we were planning to talk about the experience on our podcast, who wouldn't, before Lucas offered to ask us questions about it. Our videos with Lucas are always fun, so we thought that would be an interesting twist. So, when that goes up on YouTube, I think we'll be pretty much done with L.A. Comic-Con.

Did we get the fever to do more Cons? I would say yes. We've reached out to a couple and we'll see what comes of it. I know we're on the waiting list for Artists' Alley at Ontario, and we've applied to both WonderCon and SDCC. In fact, I wrote to SDCC on Monday and got an almost immediate reply, telling me that submissions would have to be postmarked by October 11th. Since I had the day off, it was relatively easy to comply, but I'm glad I asked when I did.

I got back to my rewrites on Skylar and I believe I only got through five chapters, so less than expected.

For Trophy Unlocked, I'm working on a review of Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), which I need to complete because that's going to go up on Saturday, as part of our horror in October salute. My review of The Vampire Bat was the Saturday Morning Review and Paul's review of Resident Evil: Revelations was the Wednesday Game Day review. More horror and Resident Evil to come.

This week, I have that review to finish and more work on Skylar and I should probably start work on the newsletter.

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

A Week in Writing #514 - Starting to Take Shape

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

Spent some time this week trying to put the booth for LA Comic-Con into shape. Got out the box of things we used at our last convention appearance, which was over 5 years ago, and started to put together what we're going to need now. This includes a skirt for the table and a new banner for the booth. It was decided by a group vote to have the new banner and the table cloth match colors and then there was agreeing on the placement of the items on the banner.

We already have one for Powers Squared, though it has the old logo on it, but we wanted to have one for SRCC, which is how people join our mailing list. Getting people to sign up is really the goal of the con as far as I'm concerned. I want to sell books, but I want us to expand our reach, too.

While we're not selling t-shirts at the show, they will be on sale on the website. To that end, we ordered some t-shirts to wear at the show. I will, of course, post photos on our website after the event, but until then, you'll just have to imagine what I'm going to look like wearing Julia's chibi Dr. Atlas designed t-shirt.

We were able to ask another creative about their con experience when Lucas Scheffel made his 7th appearance on our podcast, OAPS. Lucas, dressed as his character Gary Gorilla throughout, related his experience with conventions in Australia, which is where he lives. We also discussed his latest Kickstarter for Gary Gorilla, as well as his thoughts on the last two issues of Powers Squared. You can listen to it on or find other platform links on our website: https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/oaps. You can also opt to watch it, and it's worth watching, when it goes up on our YouTube channel on Wedenesday afternoon at 2:30 PDT. While you're there, subscribe and ring the bell, as they say.

Next week, will be the 250th OAPS podcast, but we will be out of town (more on this later), so the artists past, present and possibly future will be taking over the show for us, the first of at least two times this summer.

Speaking of future artists, we took some steps this week on replacing our artist, who is leaving the role at her own choice. Our current colorist has expressed an interest in assuming the artist role and we asked her to draw the four main characters to get the testing underway. Still waiting to see what she comes up with.

I wrote a review this weekend for The Big Trail (1930), John Wayne's first starring role in a film directed by Raoul Walsh. My review of Blondie (1938) was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked.

And there was more work on Skylar this week, though not as much as I would have wanted. I seem to be getting a late start and getting sleepy earlier, which is a bad combination.

Next week, we'll be visiting my wife's family over the weekend, so this missive will be a day late.

That does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you next week, just a day late.

A Week in Writing #513 - The Show Must Go On

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing and a Happy Father's Day to all of the dads out there.

More cancellations on this week's OAPS podcast. We were doing our 14th Comic Book Club podcast, to discuss Pompo: The Cinéphile Vol. 1, story and art by Shogo Sugitani. This time, Jen and Rachel had to pull out at the last minute due to reasons. But, as the old saying goes, the show must go on, so just Julia joined Paul, Trevor and myself on the show. Interestingly, earlier in the week, I had the notion that one or more wouldn't make the show. It was a good show, as we also discussed our three favorite films, since that is also something in the manga. If your curious, you can listen to it on our website. If you want to watch it, it's on our twitch channel now (twitch.tv/powerssquared) but only for  a week. If you're reading this later or want to watch it on our YouTube channel it will be available there on Wednesday afternoon.

Next week, fingers crossed, Lucas Scheffel's rescheduled appearance. We're closing in on #250, but unfortunately, we won't be a part of it, as we're having to go out of town. The good news is that Julia will be hosting another artists' takeover.

My plan this week was to work more on Skylar and it did start out well, with my writing more than 1200 words on Monday, but the progress did slow as the week went on and there was more editing than writing.

I'm currently working on a review of Dark Phoenix (2019) for later in the summer. We've been on a mission to watch all the X-Men films prior to the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, so all will be revealed in good time. Trevor had the last two reviews on Trophy Unlocked with a review of Robot Dreams as the Saturday Morning review and Inside Out 2 up today; we watched it on Friday afternoon in 3D before the podcast.

New issue was released this past Wednesday, Powers Squared Issue #21, "Mission: Istanistan, Part 2". Every release is not without a hiccup or two along the way. One of the platforms we're available on, even with a month's notice, missed the date of release, but did make good the next day. If you're curious, check it out here.

They're far alone from problems. As has been noted here, we did a Graphic Novel version of the first five issues some time back and then did a revised version for a Kickstarter with another platform we're on. Not too long ago, we did another trade for the next four issues, which is currently only available on LibraryPass. However, I wanted to have print versions available for the future. When I submitted the pages, I included the cover and the backcover in the .pdf and they ended up in the book. (My mistake, though it wasn't one I rushed to fix.) This past week, I got around to dealing with it; I wanted to make sure I was following how the previous trade looked. When I downloaded the .pdf being used, it wasn't the right one. Rather that using the .pdf we used for the Kickstarter, the old version was being used (that is, if anyone ordered the book.) I'm still in the process of getting that fixed. This is how I spend my nights sometimes, working through fun stuff like this.

Issue 21 was featured in the Indy Spotlight on First Comics News on Saturday. Always nice to get a little unsolicited push. Much appreciated. I won't go through all the gymnastics I had to do to get this link on our website, but it's there as well, along with the other stories which have featured Powers Squared.

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

A Week in Writing #507 - Newsletter Time

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

This was not a week I'll look back on recalling the great writing I did. To be honest, I didn't get to Skylar at all this week, and frankly, I'm not happy about that.

I'd like to blame a lot of things but, in reality, it's the not enough hours in the day. The biggest thing I managed to get through this week was the newsletter, which apparently required a lot of editing, so I'm not really happy about that. I'm not saying it wasn't needed.

Being the end/begining of the month, I'm trying to collect pages from the artist and colorist for Powers Squared. I want 8 pages a month from both, but that doesn't always happen. I know I'm not dealing with full-time artists, but I still want to keep this book moving as fast as possible. You never know the future and there might come a time when this extra money will dry up.

We kicked off Transformers  month on our podcast on Friday with an interview with artist Livio Ramondelli, who has done artwork for the IDW run, as well as a cover for the Skybound run of the series. It was a nice conversation. We were thinking we had enough questions for about an hour, but it was over in about half that time. If you didn't catch it live on twitch.tv/powerssquared, you can listen to it here or wait until Wednesday when it goes up on YouTube. Next week, our guest is supposed to be Bob Budiansky, who wrote the first Transformers comic for Marvel. We go LIVE every Friday at 6 pm PDT.

And, as if that wasn't enough, yesterday was Free Comic Book Day and we recorded a show with Rachel Wells, talking about the books we found at our local comic book store. She ended up with about 12 books, but we could only get three each from ours. Let the Philadelphia v. Los Angeles trash talk start now. Again, it was live on twitch and can now be viewed on our YouTube channel. We're going to meet next Saturday, time TBD, to discuss what we've read.

Speaking of YouTube, I found a mistake I had made with uploading a video a couple of weeks ago; OAPS #240 - Kaiji (the Anime) is Great. In my defense, I upload on Sunday mornings, so I might have been groggy at the time, but I uploaded the same video as the week before. I'm not sure how YouTube counts things, but I think 10 people watched it without commenting it was the wrong video. On the plus side, more people have apparently watched it this time around, so that's something. But chasing my tail on that one took up most of an evening of writing.

On the Trophy Unlocked front, no new review from me this week. I've been given the rather undesirable job of reviewing X-Men: Apocalypse, which we watched on Friday night. We're planning on a rather lengthy salute to X-Men prior to the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, which comes out in July (and during San Diego Comic-Con).

It started out as Game Day week on the blog with Paul's reviews of two JoJo games, a Second Look - JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle on Monday and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R on Wednesday. However, it ended the week as a salute to Weird Al. On Friday, there was Trevor's review of The Compleat Al followed on Saturday Morning with his review of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.

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

A Week in Writing #499 - More Issues with GoDaddy

 

I hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

Another banner week when it came to my on-going issues with GoDaddy. Last week, it was an issue with inserting an image. This week, I was trying to create a social post for our upcoming podcast on Friday. However, at least through Google, I was unable to even open the website. I tried to get help, but texting with someone took about three hours. I'm not sure who they think has that much time to wait for help, especially for small businesses. I ended up making the posts myself directly on the social media platforms and when I did get back to the website, this morning, all seemed to be fixed.

At times, on Friday afternoon, I'm ready to find a new host platform. My biggest concern is having to rebuild the site from scratch and losing the email we have set up. But it doesn't seem like a week goes by that I don't get frustrated with GoDaddy.

We have a new issue of Powers Squared, coming out this coming week, on Wednesday March 13. It's called "Mission: Istanistan, Part 1" and was written by myself and Paul, with art by Rachel Wells, colors by Julia Canon and lettering by Trevor. In this issue, the U.S. Army enlists Marty and Eli Powers to work on a classified secret mission to stop a rogue nation, Istanistan, from completing work on a WMD. The mission seems simple, one will teleport in and do the work and the other will use telepathy to guide them. It's a dangerous mission, but what could go wrong?

We talked about it on this week's podcast, with Rachel, Julia and Trevor all participating. You can listen here, or watch the video on YouTube on Wednesday. There is a preview available to look at and you can order it in print or digital through The Campus Store, where and when available. Oh, by the way, links to all of the issues are available there as well.

It's been a busy week on Trophy Unlocked with the kick off of God of War Month on the blog. Things started off with Trevor's Second Look at God of War (2005). On Wednesday was Trevor's Second Look - God of War II; and on Friday was his Second Look - God of War: Betrayal. I got the Saturday Morning Review with The Last Command (1928). No new review this week from me. We spent Saturday night away from home this week, so that took care of that.

Did some writing this week on Skylar; finally getting to the part I've been wanting to rewrite for the longest time.

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

A Week in Writing #496 - Attempting to Impart Wisdom

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

I'm stealing the title for this post from the latest On the Air with Powers Squared podcast. On Friday, Paul, our artist Julia Canon, and I spent about an hour talking with a future comic book creator, Kevin Krust, answering questions he had about doing a book. That reminded me that every so often, I hope that I am doing that here. Sometimes, this is a rant session for me, sometimes just a place to enumerate whatever it was I did or didn't do the previous week, but every so often, I hope some wisdom is imparted, however little that may be.

If you're interested in what we imparted to Kevin, you can listen here now or wait until Wednesday and watch us on our YouTube channel. I don't know what you may think, but I believe Kevin thought we were helpful.

Speaking of Powers Squared, I believe we've set a release date for Issue #20, Mission: Istanistan. The release date will be March 13th. We'll be talking about that release on our March 8th podcast, which will feature everyone connected with its production, including artist Rachel Wells, colorist Julia Canon and letterer Trevor Hankins. Be There and Be Squared. We go live at 6 pm on twitch.tv/powerssquared.

We'll also, hopefully, be talking with Moni Barrette from LibraryPass/ComicsPlus on the March 1st podcast, so you might want to tune in for that as well and find out how we pulled that off.

On the subject of Powers Squared, work continues on Issue #26, "The Great Escape", with Julia sort of outlining pages 15 through 17, the next three pages she'll be working on.

After that, I'm thinking at this point of maybe doing our fourth one-shot in a row, Billy and Raven, which would be the first Powers Squared story not to feature Marty and/or Eli. Billy was first introduced in Issue #1 and Raven in Issue #16 "Mocha and Raven". It would be a big departure for us, but not all of the Archie comics featured Archie. I'll be revisiting that script in prep for that, even if we decide not to do it.

I've also been working with Rachel on some Powers Squared paraphenalia that might come up when we do our next Kickstarter.

On the Trophy Unlocked front, I finished my review of Chang (1927), which was one of the three films nominated at the first Academy Awards for Best Unique and Artistic Picture, losing to Sunrise. I had got to thinking it would be cool to watch and review all six films nominated for the Best Picture categories and Chang seemed the hardest to find. I had to buy a used Image DVD in order to watch it. You'll have to wait for publication to know if I thought it was worth it or not.

I'm still working on my review of X-Men: The Last Stand. I believe there will be a flurry of X-Men reviews on the blog coming out ahead of Deadpool and Wolverine.

The Saturday Morning Review this week was Paul's review of Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief  the 2010 feature and not the Disney+ series. The Wednesday GameDay review was Trevor's for Transformers: EarthSpark - Expedition.

I'm afraid not much other writing happened this week. As usual, Skylar got short shrift again and no queries were sent. This is the part of post where I mention what I didn't do this week and these two items seem to be permanent residents.

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

A Week in Writing #495 - 1,000,000 and Counting

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

Let's start this week with a nod to Trophy Unlocked, the blog my son Paul started and that Trevor and I also write reviews for. This month, the blog passed 1,000,000 views, which is a significant milestone. I wish I knew when it hit that number, it was sometime during the week, but the fact is that it did. Congrats to Paul for sticking with it all these years.

While we're on the subject, my review of The Holdovers, was this Saturday Morning's Review. I have two that I have to work on, X-Men: The Last Stand and Should Ladies Behave, the latter beiing a 1933 pre-code comedy-drama. I don't think the former needs an introduction.

Another happy surprise I received this week was a message from a teacher in Australia that I am linked in with on, well, LinkedIn. He wrote that in one of his classes, he was talking about creativity and character development and mentioned Powers Squared to his students and that they loved the concept. Of course, I was happy to hear that someone likes it, so I spent a couple of hours cleaning up the pages and sent him a reduced .pdf of the first trade to share with anyone in the class that might be interested. I'll be curious if any of them sign up for the newsletter, which was my only request if they liked it.

Besides resizing more pages, I also worked with our artist on a couple of new pages. I'm trying to keep her on two pages a week. She had some ideas that made sense and I had to do a little rewrite to make it work, but I think makes the story better.

Our scheduled guest on our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared, had internet issues so we had to reschedule for March. So, we pivoted to The Lightning Thief, the first book of the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. Paul had read the book and we had all watched the Disney+ series and the feature film made before that. You can listen to it here, or watch it next Wednesday on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared).

And if that wasn't enough, we posted a new video this morning, the sixth in our taste test series, this one being 5 of Mr. Beast's Feastables chocolate bars. These sort of videos have been pretty successful for us. Hope you watch.

All of this left me a little time to work on Skylar and my new story. And I haven't yet managed to flex my query muscles, which is something I wanted to do this month.

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

A Week in Writing #491 - Resizing

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

I don't normally lead with the podcast but I think the one we did on Friday might be of interest. Our guest was Doug Neff, the co-author of Epic Win! The Geek's Guide to the Journey From Fan to Creator; the book that is sort of responsible for this weekly blog. We had him on the show a couple of years ago and had him come back to talk about obstacles for creatives and solutions to work around them. If you're writing a comic book or making a video, you might find it interesting. You can listen to it now on our website:  https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/oaps, or watch it when it drops on our YouTube channel @powerssquared on Wednesday. The link will be https://youtu.be/cR20Ghxstho. While you're there, if you like the content, you can always subscribe and ring the bell so you'll never miss a video. And a comment wouldn't be bad either.

Most of the week, or at least several hours Monday through Thursday, was spent resizing about 92 pages of future Powers Squared pages for the next four issues. We haven't set on dates yet, but the first will probably come out in March. More to come on that.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that Powers Squared was going to be available on LibraryPass in January. Well, that day has come and our first trade, Volume 1, The Adventure Begins is now available at https://lpfullcontent.librarypass.com/publishers/product_lines/277.

LibraryPass is a service provided to high schools and colleges that allows readers to digitally check out books, include comic books. So, if you know someone at those levels, tell them to ask their librarian to choose Powers Squared.

On to other writing, my review of Illicit from about three years ago went up as the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. I also wrote new one for a film called Leap Year (1921). I picked the film for the obvious, 2024 is a leap year, but this was one of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's Paramount films that was shelved after he was charged with manslaughter in connection with the death of Virginia Rappe. Charges he was acquitted on in 1922, by the way. You should be able to read it on the 29th of February.

I was able to spend sometime this week with Skylar. I'm trying to get through a chapter a day with editing. So, I can say I'm actually working on it for a change.

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

A Week in Writing #489 - Taking a Week Off?

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing. Hope you have a Happy New Year!

I can honestly say that I did less writing this week than I had the week before. While I didn't take the week off, per se, I might as well have. Christmas was Monday and that's followed in my house by Movie Day, in which we watch movies all day. Followed by spending one afternoon putting together a 1000 piece puzzle with my family, some yard work, visiting the zoo today, etc. This week, I pretty much broke up the routine that my life is normally. So, the word count may not be great, it's good to take some time away.

My review of Wonka was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. No new review, but I did write a highlights of 2023 post for the end of the year; all of the reviewers did. Mine is here, Paul's is here and Trevor's is here. They're somewhat similar but still different and their posts deal with video games, while mine is strictly films.

Our podcast this week was about plans for 2024. Our arists Julia Canon joined Paul and me on the show. There are four new issues coming this year, two story arcs: Mission: Istanistan and what's currently called The Parents Come for a Visit (working title). You can listen to it here or watch it on Wednesday on our YouTube Channel.

Work on Issue #26 continues, as our artists has at least sketched out the first 8 pages, with some already approved and inked.

As I alluded to, Skylar didn't get much work this week; nothing did.

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

A Week in Writing #476 - Eyesight needed

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

Woke up on my birthday and started to put on my glasses when they fell apart in my hands. They were the frameless type and there was already a crack in the lens. My current frames are being reset with new lenses, but they've been delayed two weeks, so this was the prescription before the last one. But that meant I had to go back to a pair of glasses even older. Long story short, I don't remember what glasses I was wearing three years ago, so I'm stumbling to find a pair I can see through. Now, that's a bit of a lowbar; I'm not blind, but it's the small stuff, like everything written on the back of everything or on the internet that I'm having trouble with. Great way to start out the year.

I was able to adjust throughout the week and was able to get my new glasses on Saturday, so it did resolve itself but it does show how important seeing is to writing.

On that subject, I have been reworking Paperback Detective and updating it so that it fits in better with the other stories; lining up events, etc. In this one, J.D. is hired by a client to follow his wife, whom he thinks is having an affair. Before he can determine if she is or not, the woman ends up murdered and J.D.'s client is the prime suspect. Even his defense attorney thinks he's guilty. J.D. is the only one trying to prove him innocent. In that effort, he's working against his ex-, Debbie Estevez, who is the lead on the murder investigation on the case, despite being four months pregnant. It is while discussing the case that J.D. discovers that he might be the father of the baby despite the fact Debbie is married to someone else.

Turning to Powers Squared, we completed The Hound Dogs Howl and sent it out on Sunday morning. The piece on twins ended up being about Tegan and Sara, and the recommnedation was Resident Evil 4 (2023) in case you're interested. You can receive your own copy by signing up here.

This past Friday, we had our September team meeting with Julia Canon, Jen Moreno and Trevor joining Paul and I to discuss what's new with the book. Listen here if you're interested or watch it on Wednesday when it goes up on YouTube.

On the subject of Trophy Unlocked, we completed Batman Month on the blog with Saturday Morning's review of Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham written by Paul. October is horror month but also Resident Evil Month (Part 1).

Totally unrelated to either, I completed a review of Reckless (1935), the Jean Harlow-William Powell starrer. Rather than draining the DVR, this was one of the films in a 7-film set of Harlow films I receieved for my birthday. As is the usual, I have no idea when it will be up on the blog, but I wouldn't imagine it would be in October. December is pretty packed as well.

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

A Week in Writing #475 - Never Too Late for a Rejection

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

A few weeks back, due to the lack of reception, I decided to stop querying Broken People. The fact that I stopped doesn't mean the rejections would stop. I received this on Wednesday morning:

Thanks so much for letting me review your query. Unfortunately, your project isn’t the right fit for me. Since it's crucial that you find an agent who will represent you to the best of his or her ability, I'm going to step aside rather than ask to read more.
  

Each query I read, I do so with my own list, preferences, and skills in mind. I encourage you to continue writing, editing, and looking for an agent whose tastes and interests align with yours.
  

I’m happy to look at any future projects, so please query me again if you have new projects.

When I submitted my query on June 6, the agent's lead time was 6 to 8 weeks. I guess this points out that those timeframes are more guides than rule. And, you never know, I might even hear later from one of the agents I've given up on. Hopefully, if I do, it will be better news than this. So never give up hope.

Turning to more positive things, my rewriting of Getting Even continues and I'll think I'll be done this week with it. It still feels like the weakest of the books, a lot of moving parts but at this point, still necessry for the overall story. Next up will be Paperback Detective, a book I haven't looked at for five years, but I think still needs one more go through.

That will, of course, take second place this week to needing to get the next issue of The Hound Dogs' Howl ready for next Sunday. These weeks fly by and a pretty brisk pace. Time will be a little tighter this week with a couple of birthdays this week, mine on Monday and Paul's and Trevor's on Thursday. As much as I enjoy writing, there are some things that take precedent.

We had our 10th Comic Book Club podcast on Friday with Rachel Wells returning and joining in with Julia Canon, Jen Moreno and the Hankins to discuss Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, written by Kanehito Yamada and illustrated by Tsukasa Abe. As always you can listen to it now or watch it on Wednesday when it drops on our YouTube channel; 2:30 PT.

Making some progress on Issue #25, "Yuki-Onna". The hope is to be through page 16 by the end of the month. When we're done with that issue, I'm thinking of us doing The Great Escape, another one-off, which is sort of a continuation of Mocha and Raven. But that's getting too far ahead.

Trophy Unlocked is celebrating Batman Month, so my review of Batman: Gotham by Gaslight

was the Saturday morning review. On Sunday, Trevor's review of Elemental went up since it's a somewhat current title. Trevor's review of Stay Tuned went up on Thursday, which sort of took me by surprise. Apparently it was to celebrate Chuck Jones' birthday, who did some animation work on the film.

We're also working towards October and our annual salute to horror. Since I had the idea of watching it, I wrote a review of Drácula, aka the Spanish-language Dracula, that was made at the same time as the more famous Tod Browning film, starring Bela Lugosi. I'm pretty sure that will go up next month, I just don't know which date.

I'm also working on a review of I Cover the Waterfront for sometime later. I would say "stay tuned", but that's already been used.

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