A Week in Writing #609 - It's Never Easy

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

I seem to be having troubles with alarms lately. First, it was one of our smoke detectors that was going off with an "error" every 24 hours or so, until I finally had to disconnect it. Now it's our home alarm. I received an email that I hadn't tested it in awhile, so I decided to do that one night. But testing revealed a bunch of issues I wasn't aware of before, and now the alarm is sort of on the fritz, and goes off once a day as well. I tried to work with their AI assistant but sometimes you want to talk to a real person, like all the time, and I finally was able to after about an hour of trying to make it work. The fix will apparently take time, not the alarm company's fault, but it's just another hinderance into getting things done.

Our podcast this week was a conversation with Joshua Pruett, a TV and book writer, who got his start as a storyboard artist. Really engaging conversation, he was funny, witty and appreciative. Great time talking with him, but then the issues started. We've been having some issues with volume, which you might have noticed if you've listen regularly, like you should. Well, in order to fix that Paul had to render the video separately and make the audio version later. But somewhere along the way, 10 minutes got cut off, which no one noticed until I was putting the video up on YouTube. I knew the run time but every version I put up on YouTube was 10 minutes short. I thought I had done something wrong. Paul had to re-render the video and make a new audio file, but then the video was too big to pass using a thumbdrive. Anyway, we were able to replace the audio file, which I didn't know was possible, and load the complete video. For this effort, you can listen to it, in its completeness here, watch in on our twitch channel for the next few days, or watch in on our YouTube channel starting on Wednesday at 2:30 PDT.

Work continues on the next issue of Powers Squared, as our aritst has been working on one page at a time, two a week. The results are pretty good, so I'm feeling good about the upcoming story arc, though it will probably be 2027 before they come out, as we try to release 3 to 4 a year.

Despite all the alarm fun, I'm onto the last chapter of Blackmail. I had to make some changes and I'm hopeful I'll get done early next week. I'll probably do another read through, digitally, and check for commas, and spelling issues before putting it to bed.

As far as reviews, I'm currently working on one for Le Ballet Mécanique, a surrealist short from 1924. I think I watched it in film school at some point but I wanted to share it with the family and it was short. This is like the third or fourth silent movie I've reviewed in a row, so maybe next time it'll be a talkie. But the reviews keep coming on Trophy Unlocked. The Game Day Wednesday review as Trevor's for God of War: Sons of Sparta, and he followed that up with the Saturday Morning Review of Exit 8 (8番出口), a Japenese film he and his brother saw this week.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week. And if you ever have any questions or comments, let me know.

A Week in Writing #608 - Always Looking Forward

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

I'd like to think that I'm always looking forward and trying to make this better. Some of that comes with my own writing, and the future of Powers Squared. The latter was the point of our most recent podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared. In our latest episode, Paul and I discussed possible future storylines for the comic book, including the current issue we're working on. If you're curious, you can watch it now on twitch.tv, or listen to it here, or wait and watch it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday, April 15 after 2:30 pm PDT.

Speaking of the current issue we're working on, our artist had some trouble getting started, equipment malfunctioning, but has pretty much completed the first two pages and it's good to see pages coming forward.

I'm still working on the edits of Black Mail. I don't know if you've ever had this happen to you. I'm working on the book and the days of the week don't work out as well as I had hoped. I'm going to have to make some adjustments. I thought about moving the start of the book back a day, but I decided that wouldn't work out any better, so I'm going to have to make changes at the end to match. So more rewrites than I expected. Based on edits, the word count has actually dropped slightly to 87,543.

I finished a new review for Tol'able David (1921) for Trophy Unlocked. While I usually don't know when a review will go up, I'm lobbying for November 21, which would be 105 years since it's original release. This week, the Saturday Morning Review was Paul's for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

Next week, I'm going to continue working on edits for Black Mail and hopefully reviewing more pages for Powers Squared.

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

A Week in Writing #607 - Newsletter and Blackmail

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

As I wrote last week, this was newsletter week, so I spent a good part of the time working on that. In addition to the usual, the feature on twins was about the Starn Twins, and some unauthorised usage of our images on X. Here comes the pitch, if you'd like to receive that, it's FREE and you get a digital copy of the first issue of Powers Squared, that comic book I keep mentioning over and over. To be added to the email list, you "enroll" at the fictious college where much of the action takes place, San Romero Commnunity College. There is no further obligation and we send one, maybe two emails a month, and that's only when we release issues. End of pitch.

Besides that work, I did make progress on the edits and rewrites on Blackmail. It's never as much as you want, but I'm up to page 222 of 406, and the word count is now at 88,143. Slow work but it's coming along.

I'm finishing a review of His New Job (1915), Charlie Chaplin's first short at Essasnay. I had recently purchased a remastered set of his work at the studio and time was short last night. Information on it is scarce and I had to rewatch/skip through the short to make sure I captured everything. Most synopses I found are basically extended log lines. As always, not sure when that will come out.

There were two reviews on Trophy Unlocked this week. The first was a Wednesday/Game Day review by Paul of Super Mario Galaxy for the Switch. The Saturday Morning review was Paul's of George of the Jungle, the live-action remake of the animated cartoon.

Our podcast this week, was our 23rd Comic Book Club. Due to mis-scheduling, Julia wasn't able to attend but our former artist, Rachel Wells, joined in on Volume One of Void Rivals, written by Robert Kirkman, and illustrated by Lorenzo De Felici, & Matheus Lopes. You can watch it on our Twitch channel for the next few days, listen to it here now or wait to watch it on our You Tube channel on Wednesday after 2:30 pm PDT. You might want to play it loud, as our microphone isn't doing well and we need to replace it.

Powers Squared is going through a bit of a lull as our artist had to replace the pen she uses, so not much to report there on the new issue, Aroma Therapy.

We've applied for Artist Alley at the next WonderCon in 2027. Our past experience with Small Press left a bad taste in our mouths that still hasn't gone away. We think we'd do better where there are people around. We'll see how it goes, though I'm not crossing my fingers.

Next week, I'm hoping to work more on Blackmail and a script idea I have for Powers Squred. We'll see how it goes.

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