A Week in Writing #612 - Blackmail Gets Short Shrift

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing. And Happy Mother's Day to any mothers out there.

My hope this week was to work more on Blackmail, however, I'm far from done. I don't know if this has happened to you, and it's happened to me several times, but I was trying to work on a section of the book that didn't quite feel right. I wanted to have a conversation my protagonist has on his cell phone to be recorded by someone else in the room. I sort of made up something to make it work, but I kept seeing an ad on Instagram for something that could record your telephone conversations and save them to a phone app. Actually, it used some sort of AI feature to make notes of your conversation, but I decided to hijack the technology, minus the AI feature, and have it simply record the conversation. Problem sort of solved. All that said, I'm only at approximately 3/4 of the way through the book.

Part of the reason I didn't get more done has to do with everything else. There were multiple pages of Powers Squared to review and then write up comments. It's coming along nicely by the way.

And then there were reviews. I was asked to write one for The Devil Wears Prada, which turned out to Trophy Unlocked's SaturdayMorning Review. It was proceeded by Paul's Wednesday Game Day second look review of Devil May Cry 2, and followed today by Paul's review of The Devil Wears Prada 2. I'm currently working on one for Dr. Who and The Daleks and I'm going to be writing one for The Sheep Detectives, which we saw this afternoon.

One bad thing that happened at the screening was that the people next to us were involved in some dispute about their seating. The people whose seats they were showed up as the movie was starting, literally as the lights were going down. I don't know why you would sit in someone else's reserved seats, but they had to work this out as the movie was playing.

To accomodate our guest, we pre-recorded our podcast on Thursday night. Our guest was Bin Lee, who had previously been on the podcast promoting his comic book Delegates, but was now back promoting a Kickstarter for his card game, Pack of Penguins. It was great to catch up and we've already backed the game. If you're curious, you can watch it on our twitch channel for the next few days, listen to it now here, or watch the video when it goes up on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared), on Wednesday at 2:30 pm PDT. And you can back the Kickstarter by clicking on Pack of Penguins above. He's over 500% funded, so it's going to happen.

And if that wasn't enough, we also did a What's in My Bag? 2026 Edition, Part 2: Discussion, which is a follow up to last week's video about Free Comic Book Day/Comics Giveaway Day. Last time, we told you what we picked; this time we tell you what we thought about what we read. It's also available for the next few day on our twitch channel, as well as on our YouTube channel now.

So, I have a couple of reviews to write and finish, and then I hope to get back to Blackmail.

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

A Week in Writing #561 - Three Videos and a 4th Query

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

Ever had what feels like a busy week but you're not sure what you've accomplished?

Let's start with the good. Busy YouTube week, shooting three podcasts. For our usual podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared featured an old friend, Josue Kure, as well as his writer Tim Gomez. I had met Josue online in a Facebook group called List Launch, and we had him on the podcast in December 2011, #63 if you're keeping track. He was on, then, to promote a comic book he and Tim had written called Reaper Rules, and this time, he was on to promote Super Foods, and their upcoming Kickstarter. You can listen on our website here, or watch it on Wednesday afternoon at 2:30 pm PDT here.

Or, for something you can watch now, try our videoblog, What's in My Bag? FCBD 2025, Part 2. As no surprise, this is a follow up to our What's in My Bag? FCBD 2025, Part 1, from 2 weeks ago. In that one, Rachel Wells, Paul, Trevor and I talked about the books we'd picked up at our local comic bookstore on Free Comic Book Day. In this one, we actually discuss the books we'd read, which can be the more interesting part. You can only watch it on our YouTube channel, here, or on twitch.tv here for the next few days.

On, if that weren't enough, we also pre-taped a preview of Trevor's next book, Blade of Miracles Issue #3, but you'll have to wait to see that. Ths issue drops at the end of the month. I also did a peek-of-the-week about it too, which you can see here. When the book drops on the 28th, you'll be able to find it on our website in The Campus Store.

I sent out my fourth query this past week. So far no rejections (they're no doubt coming) and no DNRs (they're coming as well). But I'm trying to be consistent and get them done.

The Saturday Morning Review this week on Trophy Unlocked was Paul's review of Moana 2, the sequel to Moana, which Trevor reviewed last week. I'm currently working on a review of I Wake Up Screaming (1941), which was another of our draining the DVR. I believe this recording was about 5 years old. I had another one I wanted to watch, A Lady of Chance (1928), but TCM sort of screwed up the recording, since it cut off the first few minutes, meaning they went ahead of schedule. But the other got the job done.

I worked some this week on Blackmail, though I think I'm more in an editing mode with it at the moment, so the word count didn't really grow; 34,157.

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

A Week in Writing #508 - Fun with Podcasts

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

You've probably read here before that we do a weekly podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared, and that we've devoted May to the 40th Anniversary of Transformers. My sons and co-creators of Powers Squared are big fans of the franchise and have lined up some great interview subjects. You can listen here to our latest podcast with Bob Budiansky, the man behind much of what we know of as Transformers, as he helped name over 200 characters and wrote bios for them while he was at Marvel.

While the interview went well, after I blew the intro and mispronounced his name, I'm human, the actual mechanics sort of failed us. We had sent him a Google Meet link, which has worked well for us in the past. Well, he couldn't open it, for whatever reason. We discovered this only when we were a few minutes from go-time.

When that didn't work, we opted to try Zoom, which took some time to get us all connected and recording, so we didn't go off on time. But oh, that wasn't the end of it. Since we didn't have an account, the Zoom call came to an end after 30 minutes, but we decided before time ran out to have him set up the Zoom meeting, since he has an account and we continued with Part 2 after that for another half hour. Paul managed to edit the audio together and then the videos, which took about 2 hours to render. The video has been loaded and will be available on YouTube on Wednesday, 2:30 pm PDT. Judging by the reaction via PodBean, counting downloads, it may very well be the most popular one we've ever done.

Bur wait, that wasn't the only podcast we did this weekend, The next day, we had arranged for our former artist, Rachel Wells to join us as a Part 2 of "What's in My Bag?", the video we did last weekend with her about Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) and the books we had picked up. Well, on Saturday night we were to discuss what we thought of after reading them. While that would normally go off without a hitch, it did not.

It seemed to take forever, a relative term, for us to connect using our Discord group. When we finally did, we couldn't hear Rachel. Well, after rebooting a couple of times, we got everything working (the royal We as Paul did all the work) and recorded the video. That too can be watched on YouTube now.

We're coming up on the next release of Powers Squared in about a month on June 12. With that it mind, the first version of the cover, a thumbnail was this week's peek-of-the-week. When we get to that, I start publishing similar images from the book, so if you want to get a look at it go to https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/peek-of-the-week and there is a link there to the issues page.

Shook up the week a little bit, watching the movie Let it Be for the first time in 50 years on Disney+ and then writing a review of it for Trophy Unlocked. That will appear on Monday, which is the 54th anniversary of it's actual release.

Speaking of that blog, my review of Smart Woman (1931). It was literally the oldest one that I had put up on the blog that hadn't been posted, something like three years old. The review is so old that I don't remember the film, but my opinion is there for you to read. I'm currently finishing up one for X-Men: Apacolypse and starting one for American Grafitti, which we watched on Saturday night after the podcast.

As per the usual, Skylar got short shrift. I did work on it one night, and I know you've heard this before, but I have a new idea to incorporate into it, bringing back an FBI character from previous tomes on J.D. Barrister, private investigator.

Well, that's about it for me. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week.

A Week in Writing #456 - One Up, Three Down

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing. Happy Mother's Day as well, if it applies to you.

You might have noticed that I haven't been talking about the actual process of making the comic book, Powers Squared, lately. That's pretty easily explained by the fact that we've been in sort of a lull, production-wise. Our new artist was our former colorist and had some catchng up to do before she could begin working on the new issue. The wrinkle for that issue, #24 "Gashadokuro", was written by Trevor, his first to write alone. The companion issue, #25, was written by Paul, but let's not get ahead of ourselves with that one.

It appears we're headed toward hiring a new colorist, as our new artist doesn't have the bandwidth to do both the drawing and the coloring, so there will be another process to get through to find a replacement. I'll report on that when it starts, but I'm hoping for sooner rather than later.

Just to confuse things, we did videos with our artist emeritus the last two weekends. Both videos have been about Free Comic Book Day: What's in My Bag,  Part 1 and What's in My Bag, Part 2 - The Discussion. In the first video, which we made a week ago Saturday, was about what issues we picked up at our local comic book store; and the one we made this past Saturday was about what we read and our thoughts about them. You'll have to watch to see.

And those are additional videos to our normal podcast, which this week was about Summer Movies 2023. We'll getting back into comic books next week with our next Comic Book Club and the next week, our team meeting.

Did my usual query this week but also DNRd three that seem to have outlived the timetable of the agency where they were submitted. I'm sure I'll probably hear something more official from one of them in the coming months but for now the queries are dead, as far as I'm concerned.

I wrote a review of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which we watched on Friday night. And, no, no knowledge of the board game it's based on is required. Not sure when it will appear but probably soon as it is still out in theaters.

Busy week on Trophy Unlocked, starting with my review on Monday of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 3. Wednesday was Game Day with Trevor's review of  Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal, followed on Friday with his review of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. The Saturday Morning Review was Paul's for The Angry Bird Movie, which I believe is the last review from the movies we watched during our recent plane rides to and from Dallas in April.

Work continues on Skylar. I won't say rewrite since I haven't yet finished the draft and I'm to a point where I will probably be deleting more than I'm adding for awhile, so no word count this time as it will probably only go down.

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

A Week in Writing #455 - Getting Things Ready

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

I think I spent the past week on the business of writing and not so much on the craft, and I'm afraid I'm not 100% done either. My main focus this week was to get the next three issues ready for printing; not an arduous adventure but one that took longer than I had hoped. Some of it has to do with working after hours with businesses in Florida and England. Best to hope for is twenty-four hours later to hear back, but that's not always the case.

Artithmeric, which is outside of London, has a 24 hour hold on .pdfs you upload before you can submit them for proofs. And granted that hold doesn't necessarily last that long but for me it might as well. They were very quick about releasing them but, even 11:35 PM is after hours for me, so it has to wait until the next evening. And it doesn't help if you upload the wrong .pdf, which I did for one issue. Granted, they caught it, but we're back to the 24 hour cycle, no delayed a day by my error.

Ka-Blam, the Florida printer, requires that you pay first before you can upload the .pdfs, so it's at minimum a two-day process for me while I wait for the invoice to be generated.

Still need to do Kindle and GlobalComix; the former is much more difficult to work with than the latter. Kindle, which used to be called ComiXology, has an approval delay in the process though they are much more strict than the others and take much longer. We had one issue that seemed to take a month to get approved and by then, the release date had come and gone. But of course, the sales make up for it, which is a lie.

The other work project I took on was getting the newsletter ready to go. And, yes, here comes the monthly ask for subscribers. You have to "enroll" at San Romero Community College to receive the newsletter. It's Free, of course, and it would really make me feel better if you did, if you indeed care about my well-being, dear reader.

I've got myself in a bit of a reading pickle. Saturday was Free Comic Book Day and we did a video with our former artist, Rachel Wells, What's in my Bag? FCBD 2023, Part 1. Well, now I have to read five comic books by next Saturday and I read about five to ten pages a night, so I feel doomed to fail. And I have to read another book, Made In Abyss, for our Comic Book Club and I just got my chance to start last week as well. (I finally finished Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which I feel like I had been reading for months.

Worked more on the pilot outline. I guess I'm ready for it to be reviewed, I just haven't submitted it yet.

Did some work on Skylar this week. It's a bit of a cheat, as I wrote the ending, which had been swirling around in my head for a couple of weeks, so I thought I might as well get it down in Word. Things never read as well on the screen as they sounded when you're driving around thinking about it, but at least the first draft of that part of the book is finished. Now, it's just the next 10 to 20,000 words in between. Piece of cake, right?

One new query this week and so far, knock wood, no new rejections. Of course, that doesn't mean I haven't been, as I'm sure some time frame has elapsed on one of them, but I like to think I haven't been rejected yet on those; gives me hope.

Seeing as it was FCBD, my review of Dick Tracy (1945) went up as the Saturday Morning review on Trophy Unlocked. Now, I'm being tasked with writing the review for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, a movie we saw this morning, so I should probably get on with that.

Keep writing, and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #404 - Plowing Forward

Hope everyone is well, and, of course, writing.

I'm sure you get tired of hearing this, but a lot of the week was taken up with Powers Squared. To begin with, there was new artwork for Issue #21 from our artist, Rachel Wells, to be reviewed. Maybe that wasn't the first thing but it is the most important thing to review. We had some back and forth on the cover earlier but that seems to have been worked out. We're going for a Metal Gear vibe with the cover.

We had two shows this weekend, one with the entire creative team, our monthly team meeting. If you didn't catch it live (and I'm betting you didn't) it'll go up on YouTube on Wednesday at https://youtu.be/fGZ8_vs0wWg. We sort of had a discussion about what to do if Twitter goes weird (weirder?) after Musk's proposed takeover (Is it back on or still on hold?). I was on it before and still am, but I'm concerned about what could happen to it in the future. Is there an alternative?

We did another show with Rachel on Saturday morning (LA time), wherein we discussed the books we had all picked up on Free Comic Book Day, which was last week. We did that live, as well, on twitch.tv/powerssquared and also posted it that day on YouTube at https://youtu.be/1SEHw-o8adA. That's available now.

Next the fun of submitting proofs. Ordinarily not a hard process. We use two on-demand printers: Artithmeric (our partners in the Kickstarter) and Ka-Blam in Florida to provide a domestic source. Both have different processes for submitting and neither is as easy as you'd want.

We're still waiting for the fine art prints to sign. I've been told they've been sent but I don't know when to expect them or how to send them back once we receive and sign. I did receive my share of the cut from the Kickstarter, which wasn't really all that much. However, I'm prepared to move forward on the translations.

We did a table read of the pilot script, a real family affair with my sons, my wife, and I each taking parts. Read pretty well and with a few minor changes, we should be good to go with it.

Had one of those going to sleep thoughts about the next scripts for the comic book. I had written one with Marty and Eli's parents coming for a visit. In the first few versions, it was coming for a Parent's Day at the school but I didn't really like that. I set it at Christmas and we were going with that version when last night it hit me that the prior issues (20 and 21: "Mission: Istanistan") take place at Spring Break and I didn't like the time skip implied.

Did a rewrite today taking out the Christmas references and I think it still works. The holiday wasn't so important to the plot as a nice backdrop and a chance to get some Christmas stuff for the comic book. I guess that'll have to wait.

I also tried my hand at a script explaining Jennifer Perry's past. For those of you unfamiliar, Jennifer is Eli's girlfriend in the comic book. When we did the first go-round of the Pitch Packet, we got surprisingly negative reviews on Jennifer, which we tried to fix by giving her a backstory that still fits with the book but gives her more depth. That was the script I was working on. I haven't given up but it seems to be harder than I thought to make an issue out of it.

No new reviews from me this week, though I will be working on one for The Killer is Loose, which I saw on Saturday night after watching the Amphibia finale (and no, I won't spoil it).

Only one new review on Trophy Unlocked this week. Paul's Saturday morning review of Wonder. My review of Our Town will follow next Saturday. If you've seen Wonder, it makes sense.

More writing on fka Skylar but never enough to take note about.

And I did manage one new query for Broken People on Thursday. So far nothing back on any of the others, which in this day and age means an eventual rejection when the clock runs out.

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

A Week in Writing #403 - Am I Getting Anywhere?

Happy Mother's Day!

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

Do you ever have weeks when you feel like you're running in place?

For some reason, it struck me this week that I'm feeling that way with my writing. I feel like I'm going through the motions but not advancing. Have you ever felt like that?

It's not that I plan on walking away from writing, only that I need to figure a way to shake things up. I'm thinking about this in connection with the thriller I'm querying and the comic book, Powers Squared. Week after week I do things, the "right" things, but I'm not seeing results. It's all about growing a fan base, which is the one thing I really struggle at. 

I think Powers Squared is a good comic book. We're telling an interesting story, and getting better at it as we go, but I feel like we're stuck at the beginning of the process. No one new is coming on board and that's sort of defeating. As I've written here many times, a writer wants someone to read their work and so far, at least, no one seems to read it. The Kickstarter was sort of a wake up call to me. If there is a secret sauce, I definitely don't know the recipe.

On the subject of Powers Squared, we're getting closer to finishing the art for Issue #21, "Mission Istanistan Part 2", coming years from now it seems. Our artist has finished thumbnails, so pencils and inks will probably be done this month unless her other gigs get in the way. Not sure yet what the next story will be, though I do have three scripts already written.

In addition to our usual On the Air with Powers Squared we also did a special What's in My Bag? related to Free Comic Book Day. We included Rachel Wells, our artist, for the first time. We're doing another special next Saturday to discuss the books we've read. It'll be live on twitch.tv/powerssquared at 11 am PT, if you're interested.

Need to get back to the Pitch Packet and the pilot script. We're having our artist redo one of the character designs and I think we've made a character that was sort of weak stronger as well. They happen to be one and the same. Jennifer Perry was not a favorite of the person we showed the pitch to and we need a new image to move forward with finalizing it. It is interesting that the "show" and the comic book are the same but different and I think the pitch is helping make the book better as well, though on a go-forward basis. We're not going back to the first five issues. No, you can't make us. I think I can speak for everyone involved that we're done with those.

Changing to Trophy Unlocked,  this was Star Wars week with five reviews, starting Monday with Paul's review of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition for the PS3. That was followed on Tuesday with Paul's review of Second Look - Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, another videogame; Wednesday was Trevor's Second Look - Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens; Thursday was Paul's Second Look - Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi; and the week ended on Friday with Trevor's Second Look - Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker.

For something completely different, Saturday Morning's Review was mine for The Egg and I.

I did write one new review this weekend, Our Town (1940). Interesting story, Paul has been reading some middle grade fiction because the book he's written fits in with that age group. One of the books he read was Wonder, and so on Friday night, we watched the film version. In the movie, at least, the high school put on Our Town as their spring play. I had recorded the film from a previous showing on TCM, so it seemed appropriate to finally watch it on Drain the DVR Saturday.

One new query this week and no responses for far from anyone. Circle back to the title of this post for how I feel about that.

Did some more writing on fka Skylar this week but never enough.

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

A Week in Writing #365 - A Little Bit of Everything

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

It was a busy week, with a little of everything going on. I'd like to say everything was humming along on all cylinders, but that's not really the case (I'll get to the details later).

Let's start with querying. I managed, on Thursday, to send out my second one in a row. I know that's nothing remarkable, but it's something I hate doing. I'm pretty sure I'm not good at it, considering the results I've been getting with this round of queries, which is none. But I try to be positive and hopeful. I'm not sure if that's a sign of insanity or not.

I'm still going with agents who want email queries, which is this one. For those keeping score, I have two live queries out there now. There was a third, but it's been 12 weeks, which is what the website said was when I'd hear back if they were interested. If I hear something later from them, I'll consider it a bonus, though the last time I heard late from an agent it was to just reaffirm the rejection.

I did work on Skylar again this week, though I haven't worked on it since Wednesday.

When it comes right down to it, I'm only writing 5 to 6 nights a week, including query Thursday night. If you're curious as to my schedule, Friday nights after we do OAPS, more on that later, we eat pizza and watch a movie, so no new actual writing gets done. It's not like I'm not working, but the actual writing is rare on that night.

Speaking of Friday, we did our 101st On the Air with Powers Squared with our creative team on the show for our monthly roundtable. I'll admit I was in a bit of a bad mood going into the show. Maybe I'm being impatient, but sometimes it doesn't seem like the artwork (plain and colored) are coming in fast enough. I know I'm not the only sole support for either artist, but I thought we had agreed to a certain number of pages a month and that's not always happening. I think I made the issue clear and we managed to have a good show, especially when we got off topic and started talking about bird stories.

Saturday was Free Comic Book Day, the second anniversary of our first signing at the local comic book store. We decided to do reviews on next week's show about the comic books we pick up, so we did a "What's in My Bag?" video, ala Amoeba records. While they have celebrities tell you what they purchased, or what they're trying to hype at the moment, we discussed the five comic books we picked up, as a preview for next week's OAPS. You can watch the video (it's short) here.

One of my unofficial positions on the podcast is playing producer, so I'm in contact with the next people we plan to have on the show. Now it seems their appearance may be shifting since it's supposed to be when their Artithmeric Kickstarter starts and we have been told different dates, so we'll see.

We're still working on ours. Trevor is about done with the remastering work he's been doing on the lettering and our artist just finished, at least inks of, the cover and some thumbnails for the back. I had hoped we'd be done by the end of the month but I fear it will go into September, which is why I set the deadline early to cover that contingency.

Wrote a new review this weekend, Private Detective 62 (1933), publishing date unknown. However, my review of Yankee Doodle in Berlin (1919) went up as the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. Wednesday's review was Paul's about Papers, Please, a puzzle simulation video game from 2013 for Microsoft Windows and OS X.

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

A Week in Writing #245: Powers Squared's First Signing

This blog of late has turned into A Week in Powers Squared. Everything for the last few weeks has been aimed toward an event that took place on Saturday morning. As part of the store's Free Comic Book Day, Galaxy of Comics, our local shop, offered to let us have a signing; an opportunity we jumped on.

I wish I could write that the rest of the week was just getting things ready for the event but there were, of course, bumps in the road. In order to have copies to sell at the event, I had ordered hard copies of all seven issues that have been published. We figured if any issue sold, it would be Issue #1, so I ordered 25 copies of that. For Issue #2, in case someone wanted the entire story arc, we ordered 15 copies. For the remaining issues, I order 5 copies each. At least that's what I thought I had done. Instead of receiving five copies of Issue #3, Ka-Blam, which we had been using for these copies, sent me 10 copies of Issue #5.

I found this out on Monday night when I got home from work. Not sure what to expect, we looked for a local backup printer. Our first thought was Kinko's, which we have used for several school projects over the years. (These were the same people we went to about a banner, which we found online for about 1/3 of the cost.) There were issues with the files, and I had to spend most of Monday night fooling around with tiffs and pdfs. I went back the next night and there were more issues. I would have to join pages before they could print them properly. It was a job they said they could do in 24 hours, but the cost was prohibitive; over $24 an issue. I decided to not use them.

I had messaged Ka-Blam on Monday night and they did respond on Tuesday. While I still think they got the order wrong, they did come through. They printed the five copies of Issue #3 and sent them to me with two-day delivery. I got them on Thursday night.

On Wednesday, Paul and I had gone up to the store to check on the details. The store would supply the table and two chairs. We had already rented two additional chairs, as my wife would also be up there for the duration.

We got up on Saturday morning at about 4 am to get ourselves ready. One of the press releases I had sent got a response and the Features Editor of the Pierce College paper, the Roundup was going to be there before the event to interview Paul and Trevor. We put the issues and the other paraphernalia for the signing in a red wagon, which Trevor drove; I carried the chairs and away we went at about 5:30.

When we got to the store, we were told there wouldn't be a table for us to use. I won't go into all the thoughts that went through our heads, but we were not going to be denied. We had a table at home and my wife and I went back to retrieve it. We were up and running before 6. The editor was there and we sold our first copy when a friend of the boys from middle school showed up and bought the first issue.

Celebrating our first issue sold.

Sold and signed.

We were situated outside the store but away from the main flow of customers. Again, one has to hope that wasn't deliberate. We hoped that we would hear them mention to customers who were there for free comic books and the sale that we were outside, but I don't believe it was ever mentioned. We were stuck with trying to wrangle people on the way in or on the way out and I would say we had pretty good luck. We did meet a lot of people and had a good time.

After about 9 1/2 hours, we decided to call it a day. We packed up and rolled our wagon home. On the way, one more friend of the boys from Yu-Gi-Oh! locals chased us down the street to buy an issue. He didn't, however, want to join the mailing list. Go figure.

Paul put together a video of the event, showing us before, during and after the signing. This became our weekly vlog, which can be watched here. There's also a slideshow of photos on the website: https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/events.

The point of the exercise wasn't so much to sell issues but to try to grow our mailing list. We sold less than 20 copies but did more than double our current mail list. There were a couple of names and email addresses that we couldn't read and only gave up on them after three failed attempts to guess at the right one.

We sent a free copy of the .pdf for the first issue to everyone who signed up that day and sent our weekly email to 63 names, the largest distribution so far. I'm sure there will be some drop-offs as time goes on, but it seemed to be a win for us as we try to grow our list.

I spent most of Wednesday night listening to more from ListLaunch and it seems that we're at least not doing anything wrong yet with our mailing list. As always, if you want to join the mailing list, and I hope you do, you can join here: https://mailchi.mp/dc302d04a252/powerssquared

We did receive pages from both Rachel and Nina, both on Monday night, which weren't able to look at until Wednesday. And on Wednesday, Rachel sent us two versions of thumbnails for the next 8 pages, which we got to look at on Thursday. She made some really good suggestions and Paul and I went with them. The point is always to make it better.

Paul also had a good suggestion for pages that Nina sent. It was nothing to do with her coloring, which is always good, but with the image itself. We're doing our first two-page spread in an upcoming issue and his idea would make it better. Rachel and Nina both agreed and Nina turned the pages around very quickly. This is the best creative team we've worked with so far.

Not everything this past week was Powers Squared-centric. I did work on a review of Cat People and Trophy Unlocked did launch Batman month on Saturday. For the month of May, in celebration of the 80th year of the Dark Knight, we're going to do reviews all month of various Batman films. We started the celebration with Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders.

Hopefully, now that things have calmed down, I'll be able to get back to other writing. The Runaway is still in limbo and there are those query letters that need to be sent and rejected for Broken People. Who knows, maybe the editor will get back to me on Familiar Stranger. Hey, stranger things have happened.

A Week in Writing #242

If it feels like these are becoming Powers Squared-centric the last few weeks, there is a reason for that. My work on Powers Squared has seemed to have taken over my writing time because it has.

To begin with, we received pages from Rachel and from Nina this week. Rachel sent us four penciled pages from Issue #11 and Nina sent us four pages from Issue #10. Both are doing their usual really good work and Paul and I have been happy with what they've sent us.

There is a bigger and bigger share of the work that I would refer to as the business of a comic book. We're scheduled to do a signing on May 4th, Free Comic Book Day, at our local store, so there is a lot of work involved in getting ready for that. Chief amongst them is having books to sell. I'm pretty sure we'll have them but in order to make sure, I had to expedite the shipment for the first two issues. With shipping, the prices are such that even if we sell out, we'll lose money on the deal. I put some of it down to poor planning on my part, but I'm trying to look at the upside. Hopefully, we'll have more fans afterward, which should make doing things like the Kickstarter easier.

Also, we decided to buy a banner for the event, which I know is more money, but again we're hoping it is something we can use more than once. Not sure if you've ever tried to buy a banner on the weekend, but it's rather hard, as most print shops are closed on Saturday and Sunday. There are in fact two places in our neighborhood, but they never seem to be open at all. We went to FedEx/Kinkos and while they were very helpful and informative, their prices were too high for us, again considering we're losing money on the signing to start with. We ended up buying one online which comes with a stand for about $80. When it arrives, of course, there will be video and photos to share.

We managed to squeeze in our weekly vlog which you can catch on our YouTube channel and on Pinterest, Tumblr, and Linkedin. So really, when you think about it, there is no excuse for not watching it. Paul and I had some constructive discussions after our taping about future vlogs. We both know we can and will do better, so please keep watching.

This weekend, we also bought a selfie stick for our Instagram videos as my arms are only so long. We'll hopefully start using it next week.

We also sent out our first newsletter to the people on our mailing list. I was a little disappointed that it ended up in my junk mail, but I think that's probably par for the course. You, too, can sign up for that by going to https://mailchi.mp/dc302d04a252/powerssquared and signing up. Be sure to add info@powerssquaredcomicbook.com to your contacts to avoid the junk mail issue. If you received it, I would really like to hear what you thought. Always want to make it better.

Next week, I/we are going to go through a ComixLaunch 5 day training on Kickstarter. Hopefully, it won't be all time-consuming, but you never know. The mailing list and newsletter were just steps in a longer process.

Not all the writing time was about Powers Squared. I did manage to complete a review of Life of Pi, which should be up next Saturday on Trophy Unlocked. Trevor published a review of Smallfoot mid-week and Paul published his review of Venom this past Saturday.

Sad to say, no novel writing worth mentioning and no new queries but also no new rejections, so I'm still two out and one rejected. I'm going to have to follow up on the first query soon, so I'm girding for disappointment. (I know, such a positive attitude.)

Well, that's about it for this week. Next week, no doubt, more Powers Squared. In the meantime, keep writing.