A Week in Writing #549 - Worrying About WonderCon

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

I'm wondering if I should be getting nervous about WonderCon. We're about a month away and not everything is pulled together. I've ordered additional copies, on the hopes that we'll sell well at the con, but I'm also waiting for some things to arrive, or be sent for that matter.

After L.A. Comic Con, I sent five copies of our first trade to a bookstore in Hawaii. Well, in the middle of January, I wrote to see if I could get them back. Here were are nearing the end of February and I haven't gotten any indications that they've been sent, despite my asking for that. I'm pretty sure we should get them in a week, but they have to send them back, and yes, I have to pay for that shipping, but it would be less than ordering new ones.

I've also ordered some business cards specific to The Blade of Miracles, Trevor's book, that we should also be selling at WonderCon. TBOM will be the first non-Powers Squared title on the SRCC Press label. We're planning to put it out on March 19, so stayed tuned.

I've also revamped the website,  https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/ to include TBOM  and make it more visible, but bunching up the Powers Squared issues to match the trades we've put out or are planning to put out; Issues 1-5, 6-9, 10-14, 15-18, and 19-23. I'll be adding a new page for 24, probably next week, since we're planning to put that one out, the week after TBOM and two days before WonderCon on March 26.

Speaking of Powers Squared, we had our February Team Meeting on Friday with Julia attending. You can listen to our brief update here or watch it on our YouTube channel here after 2:30 pm PST on Wednesday. If you do watch it, I hope you'll also like and subscribe.

Our artist was unavailable when we do the podcast, so I'm hoping we can find a day and time that she might be able to appear, and yes, we do pre-tape on ocassion. Of course, we haven't heard much from her lately, as her work schedule runs into the night.

One more note about Powers Squared, since the month is almost over, I need to write the newsletter for publication next Sunday. You can, if you're interested, sign up for the newsletter, here. It contains some of the information I write about here, but is still different content. Hope you do.

Because of all the hype we've been hearing about it, we watch Anora last night. We're planning to put the review up next Sunday morning. The review I wrote last week, The Locket (1946), went up as the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked, mostly because of the tale I mentioned in last week's blog. The Wednesday Game Day review was Paul's for Sonic Superstars (PS5).

No querying this week, I still want to make one more pass on the list, putting email queries above Query Manager submissions. I guess I'm a little nervous about what I'll have to have for those.

Did some work on Blackmail this week. I'm up to 6345 words so far. My protagonist finds out a secret about his wife and her ex-husband and has to work for her ex- in order to get the evidence back.

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

A Week in Writing #548 - Valentine's Day Special

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

Seeing as Friday was Valentine's Day, hope you had a happy one, this week's On the Air with Powers Squared was titled "Powers Squared Valentine's Day Special". The podcast was dedicated to a look at relationships and romances in the comic book, of which there are several. If you want to find out more, you can listen to here, watch it on twitch.tv for the next week, or wait and watch it on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared) when it premieres on Wedneday at 2:30 pm.

Big week with Powers Squared, as we recieved and reviewed pages from our artist, from our colorist and from our former artist, who is doing a cover for an upcoming trade we're planning. It was good to receive pages, a lot of good work, but hopefully our feedback was helpful.

I finished my query list this week. After looking at agency websites, here's my current breakdown, which is subject to change as I actually start: 2 are green, meaning they seem like good ones to query first, 85 are next up, meaning they are open to queries and they seem to represent mysteries, 66 are ones I would query if it gets to that point. They were listed on Query Tracker as taking mysteries, but their website either doesn't specify genres or they're not taking queries at the moment. That left 75 which either didn't specify mysteries, or want a cozy mystery, or want something for a different age range. So, basically, I have 153 possible queries to send. I hope it doesn't take that many to find representation. Well, that's fodder for another day.

It's been Paddington week on Trophy Unlocked, with two reviews from Trevor, Paddington 2 was the Saturday Morning Review, and we put up his review of Paddington in Peru which went up this morning. I'm currently working on a review of The Locket (1946). Funny story about that. We try (and fail) to clean out our DVR. When we watched this one, last night, it turns out we recorded it in 2015 during TCM's last Summer of Darkness. Nice to know a ten-year-old recording still plays.

As far as Blackmail goes, I did do some work on it, but it was more editing of what I've already written. I need to do more.

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

A Week in Writing #547 - Not Sponsored

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

The headline is about our latest On the Air with Powers Squared: OAPS #282 - Fidget Toys (Not Sponsored). We decided that since we have an affiliate code for a brand of fidget toys, we decided we should do a podcast about fidget toys. Trevor, who uses them, came on to discuss ones he's used and which ones worked, or didn't work for him. If you're curious about them, you can listen to it here, or better yet, since it's visual, you can watch it on Wednesday at 2:30 pm PST here on our YouTube channel (@powersssquared).

Good news, our artist came through and submitted pages. We've been sort of on hold waiting for them. Hopefully, things can get back on track and receive them more regularly going forward.

More work on my query list, I'm down through the Os. I've decided to have four colors. Red for not right for me or I'm not going to query for whatever reason, usually genres they take (44). Yellow for ones I plan to query (84), Green for ones I plan to query first (2) and orange for ones I'm going to come back to later (7). More to come.

For Trophy Unlocked, I completed a review for Five Steps to Danger, as always not sure when it will appear. We've been on a Paddington kick of late, so Trevor's review of the first film Paddington was the Saturday Morning Review. Early in the week, was Paul's review of Sonic Frontiers as the Wednesday Game Day Review.

Not a banner week for me writing wise. I've done about 2,000 words on a new story, which I'm calling Blackmail, but not much else, I'm afraid, at least on that book.

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

A Week in Writing #546 - The Waiting Game

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

I've been in a holding pattern on the next issue of Powers Squared. Our current artist is about a month overdue with pages and I'm feeling very frustrated. I've tried to be "nice" about it, but it's really starting to make me mad. There have been about two or three times when pages would be uploaded into our dropbox, but those days have come and gone and there are no pages. And days go by without a reply to my DMs and that's something that I've already made clear is not acceptable to me.

My understanding is that there are issues, but she hasn't really ever told me directly what they are. She has a lot of talent, at least in what I've seen so far, but you have to deliver at some point, don't you? I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I am thinking about letting her go if things don't start happening. We haven't fired anyone off the project since we let our first artist go, but that was more quality than quantity issues. I'll let you know what happens when it does.

While this was newsletter day, I have a bit of information I didn't know at the time, so you'll be the first to know, but it appears our table at WonderCon will be SP-305. I don't have a good map, yet, to show you where it is, but based on the map from last year, it appears it's against the wall. If you're going to WonderCon, I hope you'll look us up.

Worked some more this week on my agent list, which is honestly boring work. I would be further along if I enjoyed it. I'm looking at individual agents and agencies and am through about 66 agents, and a solid third are on my don't query list. Either they don't mention mysteries on their list of genres or they're interested in BIPOC writers, which I am not. Of the remainder, only two have gotten green on my list, which is the best; most are yellow, which is I will query. It's all subjective, but that's what I've found so far.

I'm a little wary of agents who don't specify genres, don't have websites or don't have any guidelines on what they're looking for from writers. Also, if they only take postal submissions, you have to wonder how they communicate to publishers in this day of electronic everything.

I did spend some time on my second story idea, but it's sort of bogged down between what I want to have the characters say. What might sound good while I'm driving to and from work maybe doesn't work when I try to sit down and write it several hours later. It's all a process.

We celebrated 25 years of Yu-Gi-Oh! anime this year on our latest podcast, OAPS #281 - Yu-Gi-Oh! DM Quarter Century Retrospective. You can listen to it here, watch on twitch here for the next few days, or watch it on our YouTube channel after 2:30 pm PST Wednesday here.

For Trophy Unlocked, there were two reviews this week. On Wednesday, Game Day, there was Trevor's review of PIO, and the Saturday Morning Review was Paul's review of Black Dynamite. As a result of that film, which is a parody of blaxploitation films in the early 1970s, I thought we should watch a real film from that time, so we watch Coffy, the one we have in our video collection. Because of that, I wrote a review of that film, and as always, not sure when it will be released.

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