A Week in Writing #229

This week I continued my work on what I'll need for sending out queries, the most important of which is the actual query letter for Broken People. Of course, there's a template and I don't think I'll be breaking much new ground here: the hook, the book, and the cook. These mean take a paragraph to tell them why they should read it, two paragraphs to tell them what they would be reading (i.e. a brief synopsis, as well as genre and word count) and a paragraph to tell them about yourself. There are, of course, variations on this last part. Some just want to know who you are, others want to know what qualifies you to write this book and, still, others want you to use your marketing degree (you do have one, don't you?) to tell them what you would do to market your book. (This latter bit really scares me, since I, oops, don't have a marketing degree.)

I've made a couple of versions so far but I know I'm not through trying to come up with the final version. Then there are the extra add-ons which seem to vary from the first 500 words up to the first 25 pages, depending on the agent/agency. This is where you need to look at the agency's website before you query them (again, I'm not breaking new ground here but it might help to read it again.) Some even want you to write a complete, though short synopsis of your book before you query them, so I've got that to look forward to as well.

I don't mean to burst your bubble if you think you just write a novel and then send it out to an agent but this is what it takes and after all that, it is still a crap shoot. Keep writing.

As a result, I didn't get all that much done on The Runaway, sorry to say. Remember the goal is 1000 Words a Day, it is not always the reality.

I did write two reviews this week for Trophy Unlocked, one for the Laurel and Hardy short, Tit for Tat (1935) and, staying in the 1930s, a review for Smart Money (1931). These will appear later. This week on the blog, our Saturday review was Stan & Ollie, which is in theaters now. This was a film we saw last week and wanted to share how much we liked it.

This week in Powers Squared was surprisingly slow. Last Sunday, Paul and I went through the thumbnails Rachel sent us for the first eight pages of Issue #10. Usually, we hear back from her in a few days with a compilation of what they would look like but so far no word. This is becoming more of the norm so we're not too worried about it.

Our colorist asked us if there would be more issues after #9, which she is still working on. We did receive pages 13-16 from her and she should have the rest of the pages and the cover for us by the end of the month, so she's back on schedule. We hadn't sent her the script, which we did this week and as long as we can work around her other projects, we should be good to go.

Still wanting to Kickstart Issue #10. Part of that is figuring out what to give away to donators. Since we're a digital comic, there really isn't anything physical to give away, which makes it easy but does limit what we can do. Hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, we can come up with a plan.

Did get some feedback on the back cover (inside and out) for actually doing a publish-on-demand version of the book. There is still some work to do to pull that together but the good news is that there was progress.

This weekend, Paul and I sent in the registration to copyright Issues #6 and 7. The progress is pretty easy though we ran into a hiccup when trying to upload the second issue. Not sure what the issue was or how exactly I got around it but I managed to do it. The time frame to hear back is literally months and I don't know what effect the government shutdown will have on that.

Paul and I did our weekly vlog on YouTube, which we would really hope you'll watch and while you're there subscribe to our channel. This week, we touch on a couple of the things I do here, but we also talk about a couple of new characters, villains, Dr. Brubaker and Dr. Reynolds. You'll need to watch the video and/or read the book to know who we're talking out. Please check it out.

And later this week, Paul and I will go through the process of uploading them on comiXology so that we can get those published. Hope you'll buy them when they are. To quote John Lennon, "It'll be the usual rubbish, but it won't cost much."

Will update here next week.