A Week in Writing #533 - Busy Week but Fall Back Looms

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

I'm sort of happy to have last week behind me. Congrats to the Dodgers, but those games pushed everything back in my house. And then there was Halloween, which, while fun, was also a bit of disruption as well. And, of course, looming ahead this week is the great fall back, which means it'll get dark earlier and that could affect me, since it has in the past. But that'll be next week's post.

On to this week and let's start with Powers Squared. At the moment, we have two artists, Julia Canon and Jen Moreno, working on separate issues. While I thought that would be a good idea to get more work done, it also means they'll both want to be paid, and deservedly so, for their work. Julia is finishing her work on issue #27, which is a standalone Billy and Raven story, and Jen is working on issue #28, which is the first of a two-parter that we're aiming for 2026. After a slow start, Jen has shown some real talent for sequential storytelling and we're very hopeful going forward.

So during the week, there was a lot of reviewing of pages from both with comments and some revisions, so good for the future of Powers Squared.

This week was capped by our newsletter, The Hound Dogs' Howl, which we send out once a month. I'll put in my plea here for readers to subscribe. It's easy, free, and can be done here. (You get a free digital copy of Issue #1, an added inducement.) We covered the usual topics, including our tabling at LA Comic Con, our bookshelf debut and our support of the Neurodiversity Comic Con, which is happening next week. We also do a salute to twins, this month being  animators Tom and Tony Bancroft, whom we met at Lightbox and much more. Info on subscribing (enrolling at San Romero Community College) can be found here.

Our Friday podcast was a salute to 40 years of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. You can watch it here on Wednesday at 2:30 pm PST or listen to it now on our website or one of the other platforms you'll find there as well.

Still working on my review for Elektra, which I need to finish. And I might be reviewing The Thirteenth Chair (1929). That said, my review of The Man with Two Faces (1934) was the Saturday morning review on Trophy Unlocked. However, it was far from the only review that week on the blog. Paul continued his tribute to Resident Evil games with a second look at Resident Evil Village for the PS5, and on Halloween his review of Silent Hill 2 (2024) went up.

And let's not forget Skylar, I managed to work on that novel for a couple of nights. Some rewrites, but mostly updating per my own edits. I am finding that my chapter numbering in the first draft was pretty inconsistent; I think I had three chapters with Chapter Twenty-Nine as the header. More to come on that.

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

A Week in Writing # 532 - First Time at LightBox

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

This past Saturday, yesterday, I attended the LightBox Expo in Pasadena with Paul and Trevor. They are old hats at attending, but this was my first time to go. If you've never been, the main floor is like a giant Artist Alley, with nice tables, etc., and from what I could tell original artwork, not glorified fan art that you find at many Cons. The emphasis, though, is on animation, so it's a chance to meet and talk to animators, character designers and some voice actors.

There were two panels that I wanted to attend, but was not able to get a ticket for. I know the excuse is to blame line management, but in this case, I think they're not very organized as you're told one thing will happen when something else does. We were told to come back in thirty minutes when they would have the line up but when we came back early, there were already too many people in line for us to get tickets. And, another time, someone from the Expo moved the line we were in only to abandon us and leave us out of the running for tickets.

But otherwise, we had a good time and did make some connections that we're hoping will turn into guests on our podcast.

Speaking of OAPS, this past Friday we had a conversation with Ramon Gil, a comic book writer, artist, creator and teacher about his career and the Neurodiversity Comic Con that's coming up on November 9 at the Gillen Brewer School in New York. Gil is curating the event. Powers Squared is a sponsor and while we won't be in attendance, we have donated a couple of our trades to be auctioned. You can listen to our conversation here or wait and watch it on YouTube on Wednesday at 2:30 pm PDT here.

And, on the subject of trades, I'm happy to announce that our first trade has made its bookstore debut at the Talk Story Bookstore in Hanapepe, Hawaii. So, if you're going to Kauai, please be sure to drop by.

On the subject of Powers Squared, some good work done, but no pages ready to share just yet.

My review of Island of Lost Souls was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. I've been assigned to do the review of Elektra (2005), which we watched on Friday. Saturday night was a MS3K Night after all the walking at LightBox. While my review may have ended horror month, Resident Evil Month continues with Paul's review this past Wednesday, a Second Look - Resident Evil 7: Biohazard with more to come.

I've also been working, slowly it seems, through the rewrite of Skylar, but I am working on it most nights.

So, this coming week, more of that, my review of Elektra and work on the newsletter The Hound Dogs' Howl, which comes out next Sunday.

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 #529 - Report From the Front - Tabling at L.A. Comic-Con

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

This week, Powers Squared took a step that it had never done before, that is tabling at a "major" Con; and I intentionally put major in quotes. While L.A. is a major city, L.A. Comic-Con does not have the same reputation as say San Diego Comic-Con, or even WonderCon, though the last event was a bit of a disappointment.

Friday was the first day of the Con. As you might imagine, no one really slept well the night before, mostly due to anxiety; we were delving into the unknown for us. We had been told that we would unload and then get our badges and were expecting that when we got to the Convention Center. However, there was a long line of cars that wasn't moving. Getting out to investigate, I was told I'd have to check in first and when I went to check-in, I was told that I'd have to have the badge first.

We left the car in what was supposed to be a turning lane to go get our badges. I told the guy behind us that we would be leaving the car there and he was cool with it, as he was aware and his wife was getting their badges. Picking up the badges wasn't hard, though it's a long walk from the back of the convention center, through the garage to the front lobby. The only hitch was, even though I had informed the Con and had been told it would be taken care of, initially, there were only two badges, when I had requested four, but that was easily overcome and off we went.

Badges in hand, we got our pass, took the truck up and unloaded all the stuff we'd brought. Unloading wasn't hard and then we moved the truck. We had been told parking would be $25 and it turned out to be $30.

After setting up the booth, we took some boxes back to the truck and waited. We had been introduced to the floor manager, but when I tried to approach him later, I couldn't catch him. We had brought four chairs and didn't need the two assigned to the booth. I wanted to get rid of them, but not be charged for missing chairs or some such thing. We spent the day with the chairs, to make a long story short.

Being on the booth side of a Con is a much different experience. Time moves very slowly and especially so when there is little foot traffic. We did manage one sale and got three people to sign up for our mailing list. I don't think there were many sales going on around us, but for all we'd put into it, the results weren't great to say the least. But it's the first day of the Con, right?

We had brought a laptop to make a stab at recording our Friday night podcast, but due to connection issues, we ended up calling in with Paul's phone hooked up to a microphone and two headsets. I haven't seen the results, but they're available here to listen to and will be uploaded for Wednesday's premiere on our YouTube channel.

Saturday was a longer day than Friday and was somewhat uneventful for our booth. It was chibi shirt day, as we all wore chibi shirts of the four main characters, Marty (Paul), Eli (Trevor), Mocha (my wife) and Dr. Atlas (me). It actually helped with the pitch, as I could use my shirt to explain Dr. Atlas being in the story.

If you look at the description of our neighboring vendors, you might get the wrong impression of the people behind the table. To one side of us was a company that published spicy romance and erotica books and on the other side was a couple that published images of the boss cat back at their bookstore. Our pre-apocalyptic comic book was wedged in between. We could literally watch people look at the books and the oh and ah over the cat images; and, of course, passing us by in the process.

However, we did sell 3 issues (all #1) and 1 trade, so sales were way up from the day before.

Sunday was our last day and possibly the best day we had at the Con. We sold 17 issues, most to one person, and 1 trade. We also had a panel to attend, Under the Radar, which was a good experience. John Barber came up from San Diego to moderate. Steven Prince (Monster Matador) and Erik Arreaga (Chingona) were panelists along with the three creators of Powers Squared. As was the case the last time we had this panel, the panelist outnumbered the attendees most of the time.

We had heard that packing up at LA Comic Con is the worst, so we planned ahead and got off the floor before it got really bad. We would have made a quick getaway, but we couldn't find my keys. I wasn't sure what had happened to them and they didn't show up until we got home and were in my backpack, which we had searched several times on the way out. Tricky keys.

A big shout out to my wife, Nancy, who pitched in and did so many things for the Con, from setting up the booth to passing out business cards that I know it wouldn't have worked as well without her.

You can see images of our tabling at https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/events. Scroll down one event to watch the slideshow.

Even though we were busy all week, we did manage to keep Trophy Unlocked going, with Paul's post of Resident Evil 5 on Wednesday and my review of Little Shop of Horrors on Saturday morning. Given the circumstances, no new reviews for me this week.

I also managed to do a little rewrites on the next story, but not much as time was short getting ready.

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

A Week in Writing #528 - Happy Birthday and then Happy Birthday!

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

The birthday stuff is real. I had mine on Wednesday the 25th and then my sons had theirs on Saturday the 28th. I only mention it since it did impact writing this past week, as we actually went out to dinner twice in three days. We had a good time though, which is what really counts, and I got some cool gifts along the way.

The real story is LA Comic-Con, which seems to be rushing at us like a freight train. I think we're about as prepared as we can be, but there is bound to be something we missed. But it's a necessary step in the process of trying to grow our audience, which is what I hope happens as a result.

If you're going, were in Small Press SP304. And if that wasn't enough, we're participating in the Floor Tour, organized by Don Nguyen, who has been a guest on our podcast. The flyer is pretty self-explanatary:

And, if that weren't enough, we're also part of a panel: Under the Radar. If you remember, we did this same panel at LA Comic-Con back in 2022. This time, we've upgraded the moderator, from me, to John Barber and the guests are pretty impressive as well, Erik Arreaga (Chingona) and Steven Prince (Monster Matador).

And there are also these three stragglers, me and the boys behind Powers Squared.

We had a pre-panel discussion on Friday's podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared. Erik wasn't able to attend, but we had a good discussion with John and Steven. You can listen to it now here or watch it on Wednesday at 2:30 pm on our YouTube Channel. Our better yet, you could attend the panel in person to lend support.

The rest of the time, I spent editing Skylar. I'm finally at the part where I need to do some more writing to tie the story up. That may have to wait until after the Con.

No new review from me this week, as we went out for dinner on Saturday. But there were still reviews on Trophy Unlocked, with a Wednesday Game Day review of The WereCleaner by Trevor and then the Saturday Morning Review was also his for The Wild Robot, which we squeezed in on Friday afternoon.

The next week will probably be Powers Squared-centric, as the Con is coming and I also have to work on the newsletter, which, like this missive, will be delayed one day because of the Con.

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

A Week in Wrting # 527 - Editing is My Favorite Part of Writing

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

I've spent most of my writing time this past week editing Skylar. This is my favorite part of the writing process, since I feel that I always want to make it better. While I've been working on this book, for what seems like forever, it is interesting to read passages that I haven't in months. I haven't quite gotten to parts that need major revisions or new content, though I do think that's coming at some point.

I was spending the rest of my time working on t-shirt displays for LA Comic-Con, which was basically sizing images and QR codes. Speaking of LACC, I believe we've purchased almost everything we're going to need for the show, but there is still some signage that needs to be dealt with, including pricing.

I'll be honest, I'm a little nervous about the Con. There are so many unknowns involved. I'm hoping that all the planning will pay off and we'll have a pretty much smooth operation, but there are other factors I can't yet imagine, since we've never done anything like this before.

Some of that was covered in our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared, this past Friday. It was our September Team Meeting with artist/colorist Julia Canon, artist Jen Moreno and Trevor, who letters the books. You can listen to it here or wait until Wednesday and watch it on our YouTube channel at 2:30 pm LA time. These are usually some of my favorite podcasts, though some of the best conversations happen after sign off.

Next week, the podcast will play host to John Barber, Erik Arreaga, Steven Prince and the creators of Powers Squared for a pre-panel virtual meet and greet. The six of us will be moderator and panelists at Under the Radar, at LA Comic-Con. I believe I'm the only one who has spoken to everyone involved and want to be sure we all know each other a little better before the panel. That will be next Friday at 6 pm PDT on twitch.tv/powerssquared. Be There and Be Squared, as we say.

Okay, no new review from me this week. The plan was to watch something I'd recorded, but since it was Batman Day, we decided at the last minute to watch Batman: Hush and I won't be the one writing that review.

My review of  We're in the Money (1935) was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked, but it was far from the only one this week, as on Thursday, Trevor's review of Transformers One was published and Wednesday was Game Day with Paul's review of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which was also the 1600th review on the blog.

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