Let's begin with Powers Squared. So much has happened and there is still so much to do. We began the year with a new creative team. Paul and I wanted to take the comic book in a new direction and we were happy to start working with Rachel Wells and Nina Gaillard on the comic book. Because of them, this has been a very productive year, which we will begin releasing in 2019. We've completed three issues and are about a month or so away from completing a fourth. (It previously took us two full years to get five done.)
The last three of the first five issues came out this year and despite some nice publicity, including an interview with FreakSugar, reviews in First Comic News, a nice write-up in Adventures in Poor Taste and an Ask Me Anything, I don't think we broke any sales records. In fact, I don't think we've sold enough to warrant getting paid by comiXology. (In fact, I think the lack of sales caused them to sort of turn their backs on us, so to speak.) It would be easy to give up, but I think the best stories are still to come.
I don't talk about the cost to produce the comic book (and I won't here, either) but let's just say it takes just about every extra penny we have and preventing us, as a family, from doing things like taking vacations, doing things to the house, to buying a new car. I'm hoping to change some of that by doing some crowdfunding in the coming year. I don't want you to cry for me Argentina, but we're hoping to get some help and, hopefully, more exposure for the comic.
We've tried to grow our social media presence with a website, a Facebook page, an Instagram account, Tumblr account, Twitter account, a YouTube Channel, and, lastly, a Pinterest account. That's not to say we've been successful on all fronts. You have to keep feeding these platforms and sometimes that's very difficult. I don't want to get too far ahead with revealing too much about future issues so that when they come out we have new images to share. At the same time, I wanted to promote the issues that came out last year, which sort of left our current Creative Team on the sidelines while we did that.
Now, we can concentrate on our new issues. I plan to submit Issues 6 and 7 early in the new year to comiXology but would also like to see if we can get some support from some of the media outlets that had supported us last time out.
Would also like to look into printing on demand. To that end, I spent some time this week coming up with back covers, both inside and out, for the issues. Now to get those reviewed and then we'll see where to go from there.
Work has already begun on Issue #10. We've submitted the script to Rachel, who has already begun to do some sketches for a new character we're introducing. She also seemed to really like the script which is a good thing as we're going to be living with this story arc for most of the coming year. This story arc is called What's in a Name? and will continue for three issues.
Trophy Unlocked celebrated its eighth anniversary and the 900th review post this past year. We're getting our end of the year posts ready and those will be out tomorrow, the 31st. This past week, we posted three new reviews. In addition to our usual Saturday Morning Review, What Price Hollywood?, we also published a review of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which Trevor wrote. We also published one more from Paul for Ready Player One.
Every year, we spend the day after Christmas watching movies, which we call Movie Day (I know, really clever). As a result, we have a couple of reviews, including Ready Player One and one I wrote for Wonder Wheel. Not sure if we'll be writing reviews of the other films we watched that day or not. One of them, Incredibles 2, we've already written about.
While I wasn't sure last week about the rewrite for The Runaway, I did some work on Christmas Day and a couple of other days this past week. The stumbling block I thought I had sort of disappeared when I got back to it. So I'm about 12,000 words into that rewrite.
Still no word from my editor on Familiar Stranger. Despite his promises to the contrary, it has been radio-silence for most of this year. I did receive about 50 pages but that was literally months ago. I wish I didn't feel the pressure to get the work done but I do. And frankly, I have a hard time when other people don't feel the same urgency. But there isn't much I can do to light a fire under him.
I need to spend some time putting together a list of potential agents to try and sell Broken People. I've kept spreadsheets in the past but I think I'm going to start the process from scratch. There are a few agents from the Writer's Digest Novel Writing Conference that I'd like to query to as well.
So next year, I hope it's a breakout year for Powers Squared, with more eyes on Trophy Unlocked and I find an agent for my books. Tall order, but that's what dreams are made of.
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