A Week in Writing #486 - New Issue Out

Hope everyne is staying, and, of course, writing.

Well, the big news this week was the new issue of Powers Squared that was released on Wednesday. Written by Paul, with very little help for me, "Kamaitachi" tells the story of three yokai who ride in on the wind to attack Marty, Eli and their friends on the campus of San Romero Community College. The issue received a good review from Richard Vasseur, who wrote, "This is a great all-ages comic about heroes." The credit goes to the writer and the artwork; one of our best reviewed efforts. You can read the review here. If you like what you read, you can purchase it at one of several platforms, which you can find at The Canpus Store.

My part in this was to get some publicity for the issue, so we did get with an article in First Comics News, which has been very supportive of Powers Squared, and the promise of being included in a holiday guide, though I haven't seen it yet. I'll let you know if it does happen.

No new review this week from me, as we rewatched A Charlie Brown Christmas, which happened to also be the Saturday morning review on Trophy Unlocked and as it turns out on the same day it was first released in 1965. It's nice when those things work out. More on Christmas movies in a minute. Trophy Unlocked was busy this week with three reviews related to the first trilogy of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise. Paul got it started with Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010) on Monday, followed by Trevor's review of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2011) on Wednesday and ending with Paul's review of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (2012).

Back to Christmas movies, the drive-by variety was the focus of Friday's On the Air with Powers Squared podcast. Many, but not all, have been reviewed on Trophy Unlocked and are available in the Christmas Review Hub, If you're curious what films we talked about, you can listen here now or watch it here on Wednesday. Maybe you have a favorite drive by Christmas film; let us hear from you.

Well, that does mean that I was able to spend some real time working on Skylar, the oft overlooked novel that I've been working on through most of 2023. I'm still editing what I had previously written, and hopefully making it better, but it's too soon to talk word count or anything like that.

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

A Week in Writing #434 - And Now for Something Completely Different

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

Perhaps it's a miracle of the Season but the unexpected happened this week. If you've been following along with this blog for any length of time, you know that I have had very little luck with querying. While I have received a few outright rejections, most of my queries have ended up in the DNR pile. That was until this past week.

Wonders of wonders, I received a request from an agent to send the first three chapters and a synopsis. Talk about being caught flat-footed, the synopsis has long been this nagging chore that I have procrastinated on writing. Well, I managed to get that done and Paul reviewed it for me and off it went. Now comes more waiting. But now that I have one written, a tight two-pages, there are more queries I can make, if, of course, this one doesn't pan out.

As I wrote last time, I'm off the query train until next year, anyway.

The 15th issue of Powers Squared dropped this past Wednesday. I gave up on having a special feeling when something gets out. There are no fanfares or public notice that something you've put time and money into has been released other than whatever I've put out. Usually, it's more of a rush, trying to make sure all the pieces fall into place. And despite how much you try, they never do. There is always one platform that appears to lag behind or a review you were counting on doesn't come out. Both happened this time around.

For some reason, Kindle has become more of a bother than a benefit. It seems like a month ago, we put 15 on the site. Using their program to assemble the upload is a bit of pain as it doesn't matter if you're doing everything correctly, it can still crash on you. With this past upload, we opened the previous issue, #14, to check on what answers we gave. Well, ever since then, neither issue is available. Not sure why 14 is affected but apparently there is some sort of review process which is taking way too long. We've missed the release date and 14 is no longer available. Since I can't recall making any money so far from Kindle or from its predecessor ComiXology, I'm wondering why I want to go through the trouble. They seem to more of a hinderance than a boon. Maybe it's time to move on from them.

On the Powers Squared front, our artist handed in thumbnails for the last four pages of Issue 23. We're having a little back and forth on possible covers but nothing really out of the ordinary on that front. Our colorist is down with COVID at the moment and we wish her a speedy recovery. Trevor has finished more pages and I think we're coming to the end of work on Issue #21.

If you wish you had attended our panel at last week's LA Comic-Con, you can watch it now. I posted it on our YouTube channel.

In a couple of days, you can watch our podcast from Friday here. We turned the script and did a Christmas special about reviews on Trophy Unlocked.

On the subject of reviews, my review of the Laurel and Hardy short Big Business went up on Trophy Unlocked as the Saturday Morning Review. I'm working on two reviews this week, one for One Fatal Hour and another one for Snowglobe. The latter will appear during some future Christmas holiday. Over the past two weekends we've watched Snowglobe and a sort of remake, A Snow Globe Christmas, which Paul is reviewing.

I'm sorry to say that work on fka Skylar suffered this week and I never had a chance to get back to it. I will have to do better this coming week.

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