A Week in Writing #619 - Feeling Good for a Change

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

I had a very nice surprise on Saturday, which I'd like to share. A little over a year ago, we left six copies of our then two trades with Golden Apple Comics in Hollywood. We were supposed to go back in six months to see how things went. As they say, life is what happens while you're busy making other plans, going back seemed to be put off and off and off. When I ran into Ryan, the owner, at WonderCon this spring, I apologized but he seemed to take it in stride. But we finally planned on going and that became one of the things we did on Saturday; wrote it on the calendar and everything.

To be honest, I expected to come away with 12 copies of the books, but to my surprise, they had sold 4 of each and kept the other four to sell them as well. I know there are books out there by indie publishers that sell that many in an afternoon at a con, but for me and Powers Squared, this was a big deal. So, I left the shop feeling good with more money in my pocket than I had going in.

While we're on the subject of Powers Squared, our artist is now working on page 15 of the next issue and the colorist has finished the first 8 pages, so things are coming togther.

Still waiting to hear if we're going to be called off the bench again for San Diego Comic Con. I'm not getting a good feeling about that, so we might not be tabling there this year. We are, and pardon me if I've mentioned this before, going to be Guests at L.A. Comic Con in October, so things aren't so bad, I guess.

I did work some on Blackmail this past week, but it's been a little slower than I expected. I've rewritten bits and pieces of the story leading up to the third act, so to speak, of the story. The word count is now at 88,460, as I've been taking away as much as I've been adding. I'm not going to promise a date when I'll be done, as there will be other things, no doubt that will come up, or have to be done this next week.

Our podcast this week, "OAPS #357 - DesignerCon 2026 (Pasadena)", was recapping our recent experience at DesignerCon last weekend. You never waste an experience when you do a podcast. You can watch now on our twitch channel 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.

Next Friday will be somewhat momentous, as it will be the eve of the United States' 250th anniversary. We're not a political podcast, but wanted to not let such a memorable anniversary go by without comment, so we've invited Lucas Scheffel (Angry Fred, Gary the Gorilla, Ned Kelly: First Blood) to be our guest, as he was an American History major in college.

I did write a review today for Supergirl, which we watched in a theater this morning. I think you'll have to wait until tomorrow to know what I thought about it. Otherwise, Trophy Unlocked is starting a summer of John Wick reviews, beginning with Trevor's review of the first film, John Wick. There will be other reviews, but we had a backlog of those films, so stayed tuned.

This coming week, will be more about the monthly newsletter than anything else. The Hound Dogs' Howl comes out once a month on the first Sunday of the month, so if you want to get your own copy, sign up. It's FREE!

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

A Week in Writing #618 - Tell Me If This Has Happened to You

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing. And Happy Father's Day!

We were going to do a very different podcast than we ended up doing. The idea was to talk about the 70th anniversary of San Romero Community College, the fake college where Powers Squared is based. The plan was to do an unboxing of the t-shirts I had ordered to celebrate, and, hopefully encourage someone to buy when they went online. Instead, we ended up talking about Toy Story 5 as well as the entire franchise.

The pivot came when we unboxed the shirts and discovered we got the wrong ones. Instead of the 70th anniversary shirts, we got the regular shirts. To complete the tale, I had also ordered one for the artist who designed them and she received hers earlier than we were going to do the podcast. She said they looked good, so I thought we were good to go. Turns out, I had inadvertantly ordered her the old t-shirt and she was tired when she looked at it, and didn't notice the error. The supplier is supposed to make good on ours, so hopefully that'll come quickly. And, yes, I ordered the artist the correct one this time. My guess is someone completed her order and then just continued with ours not noticing they were different items.

If you're interested, you can listen to the podcast here, and/or wait until Wednesday at 2:30 pm PDT to watch it on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared).

Speaking of Toy Story 5, I wrote the review, which came out today on Trophy Unlocked. This was a culmination of Toy Story related reviews, including the Wednesday Game Day review of Toy Story 3 (Game) by Trevor, and his second opinion review of Toy Story 4, which was the Saturday Morning Review on the blog.

I did mention last week that I was going to Designer-Con, known as D-Con on Saturday in Pasadena. It was my first time to attend. Even though we had weekend passes, it was pretty easy to do it all in one afternoon. It's more like LightBox than say Comic-Con. A lot of creatives showing their wares. We were able to make contact with someone we would like to have on the podcast, and see artists we were familiar with, but overall, we had a good time. No panels to attend, but still a lot of walking.

Work continues on the next issues of Powers Squared, though we sort of working on the same page for a week now. I think it'll get sorted out, but it really comes down to consistency of how a room looks now to how it's looked in previous issues.

I did work, and I'm still working on Blackmail. I'm still going through the last few chapters, currently making minor changes. It's currently 88,467 words, if you're still counting.

This coming week, we're planning to go to Golden Apple and pick up the trades that didn't sell. We were supposed to go back about six months ago, but Saturdays are hard to plan, so we're planning to go next Saturday. Hopefully, some sold, but otherwise, we can reuse them.

Still no word about SDCC, but I'm still trying to get ready in case it happens. We're hopefully, readying possible trades of both Powers Squared  and The Blade of Miracles. We got proofs back yesterday and made some minor changes, so hopefully, they'll look better.

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

A Week in Writing #617 - 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.