Sunday, May 28, 2017

A Week in Writing #144

Turned out to be a much different week and weekend than I had hoped for. With the three-day Memorial Day weekend, I had visions of getting some writing done on my book and finishing up a review I started for the film San Francisco. But Friday afternoon, all that changed when I received word that my step-father was near death and my wife and I flew back to Dallas to see him. So writing has been replaced with packing, travel, and family. I do hope to write on the plane, but I will probably be away when this gets published.

That all seems to temper the good news of the week, which is that our comic book Issues #1 and 2 have been accepted at ComiXology. Now the waiting begins anew as I don't really know what the next steps in their process are or what sort of buildup there will be before it is published. I guess it's in the realm of we'll see.

The submission process was more daunting than it should have been, but I put that down to exhaustion on our part after the push for the graduations. We messed up a couple of things that and even though they had us resubmit the first issue in a slightly different pdf format, we couldn't update it on our own. Funny, they didn't ask us to resubmit Issue #2, even though it had the same incorrect setting. Go figure.

Had hoped to spend part of the weekend working on further submissions, but that seems unlikely, though I do hope I can work on a cover letter and synopsis. There are really not that many outlets for creator-owned material, as most of the majors like to think they have the content covered. And I'm getting the feeling that I should be submitting before we got this far, while the comic was still in development, but hey we are what we are.

Also had wanted to put the website out there more, but I'm not sure if that will happen or not.

The artist seems more committed to four pages a week, but sometimes I think he would hope we weren't as picky as we are about some of the panels. We have a certain look that we're trying to maintain, even though we're not the artists. Communicating that can sometimes be problematic.

The colorist has been doing her usual good work on four pages a week and our letterer is somewhat keeping pace, though he is still somewhat behind her; but we do have a while before we need the next issue.

Getting the artist and the colorist to be both working on four pages a week is a blessing and a curse. Yes, it is moving us forward, which is good, but it costs more and the nightly review of work takes up a lot of time. I know that may sound like complaining, but as we all know time and money are always in short supply. Spending the evening looking at a drawing or a layout seems like it is work that is never done. We're committed through Issue #5, so we'll see how it is going when we get there.  I'd like to think this could be an ongoing series, in much the same way I'd like to be a best-selling author, but that's up to the comic buying public.

Did publish a new Saturday morning review on Trophy Unlocked: Night Nurse (1931). While the film stars Barbara Stanwyck, the draw was supposed to be that the film was an early Clark Gable role.

Not sure what the next couple of weeks are going to look like. I don't wish this, but I'm imagining there will be other family commitments ahead.

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