A Week in Writing #611 - Still Churning

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

I'm still working on Blackmail. After the print out edits, I'm going through it again on the computer, making more edits as I go. I'm not quite to 3/4 of the way through. Currently, the word count is 89,238, though that is subject to change, either up or down. Doing it this way is sort of slow going but I hope to be done soon. I'm also making changes that I may have to also make in previous books, trying to stay consistent with the characters.

The newsletter, The Hound Dogs' Howl, came out this morning. Click the link if you want to read it. It includes links to our YouTube videos, Heard Around Campus section, and a feature on twins in the arts,  as well as a recommendation, and more. It's Free, so take a look.

This past Friday we had the pleasure to interview Megatron, actually Daniel Riordan, who voiced the character during the Robots in Disguise (2001) run. As always, that interview is available on our Twitch channel for the next few days, available as an audio podcast, and will be up on our YouTube channel this coming Wednesday at 2:30 pm.

And because Saturday was Free Comic Book Day/Comics Giveaway Day, we did our annual "What's in My Bag?" stream, in which Paul, Trevor and I discuss the books we picked up and then next week we'll discuss/review them in another stream. Usually, our former artist Rachel Wells will join us, but she couldn't this year.

No new review for me this week. Saturday was a long day, and we decided to watch one of the MST3K films that our recent podcast guest, Joshua Pruett had worked on instead. My recent review of Le Ballet Mécanique went up as Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review.

Progress continues on the next issue of Powers Squared. Our artist has completed work on five pages for the next issue, "Aroma Therapy, Part 1", and it is looking good.

My goal this week is to try to get through Blackmail. I'm also going to finally submit the 3rd trade for printing. I'm hoping to have some on hand should we get chosen again from San Diego Comic-Con, Last year, there was so much to get done in a little over two weeks, so I'm trying to be better prepared this time through.

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 #247 | Distractions and Writing a Synopsis

Okay, I'll be the first to say it, I didn't get to everything I wanted to this past week. Sometimes I think I never will but that's part of the fun, I guess, in writing. There's always something else to be working on.

There were a couple of factors this week. I've been trying to spend some time each week with ComixLaunch's ListLaunch seminars. That got off because last week we had an assignment to try to come up with a personal brand. It was only supposed to take a couple of hours but I never had the time, or want for that matter, to spend this much time on something so I never got to the next seminar. I never really liked homework and perhaps wrongly saw this as a major timesuck when time is at such a premium during the week. I played at it a little bit but I never have that much time to spend on it. I'm probably going to skip this and go on to the next seminar without having completed it.

Time is one of the reasons I don't watch much television during the week. Let me restate that by saying the TV may be on but I'm not really watching. I don't consider reruns of Friends as something I'm watching. They're on, in the background, as a sort of wallpaper. I don't need or want complete silence when I write. Even now I'm listening to a Sirius XM Alt Nation Xtra channel. There are very few shows I really watch and they are usually connected to a meal.

Well, this past week, one of the few shows I actually watch, The Big Bang Theory, went off the air and the final episode was an hour long, which delayed things to the point that a lot of the night was over before I could get started. Not to say die, I did work a little on a synopsis for Broken People, the rewrite I'm trying to query; so far with no effect. I came across one agent who wanted a synopsis, which I didn't have in my back pocket to send. I figured I'm fairly close, however, having written one for A Killer Blog, the predecessor to the current story. So I've spent a couple of nights this past week working on that synopsis. And this is the short one at that. It's going to take some work to get into shape, but I know it's a necessary part of the process.

Sadly, I don't think I got back to The Runaway at all. Nor have I heard back from the editor on Familiar Stranger. It's sort of like he doesn't exist or more like I don't exist in his universe. It's been more than a year since I sent it to him. I guess if you're immortal, time doesn't mean anything to you.  That's the only explanation and even that doesn't make much sense.

I did complete a review for Trophy Unlocked, Heat Lightning (1934). Not sure when it will appear since we're still in the midst of Batman month on the blog. This past Saturday's Morning Review was Batman & Robin, which Paul reviewed.

Powers Squared was a bit more active this week. To begin with, we received 4 penciled pages from Rachel. Paul and I had a couple of suggestions, which she turned around pretty quickly.

We paid for our table, so in two week's time, we'll be at the San Fernando Valley Comic Book Convention looking for additions to the mailing list and to hopefully introduce new readers to Powers Squared.

One thing that goes hand in hand with readers is criticism. Now that people are reading Powers Squared they're making their opinions known, always to our face. I'm not going to identify who said what or what they said but only it is part of the process for every creative. People have opinions which sometimes sting a little, but at the same time, you have to learn to live with. There is no need to get into a tit for tat with people, that's a no-win situation. But I do see why many actors and artists don't read the reviews.

Paul and Trevor's photo from the story in The Roundup.

Speaking of media coverage, which I really wasn't but go with it anyway, Powers Squared got a bit of it this past week. "Dynamic Duo on and off the page" was a feature story written about Paul and Trevor by the Features Editor of Pierce College's The Roundup, the student paper at the community college, the boys attended. You can read it here.

One of the things we've toyed around with is the idea of pitching Powers Squared as an animated TV series, it's even in the article linked to above. Well, to that end, I began the very tentative steps towards putting one of those together. Like doing a comic book, we really don't have any idea what one looks like or how much work it takes, but we're willing to learn. More as that develops.

So that looks to be it for this week. Keep writing.

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 #244

For the first time, in quite a while it seems, this was a more balanced week. Still heavily weighed towards Powers Squared, there was still some time left for other "literary" pursuits. But let's dispense with the big dog on the block first.

To begin with, there is the signing coming up next week. If you're in the San Fernando Valley on May 4th, the co-creators and I are having our first ever signing at the Galaxy of Comics store at the corner of Louise and Saticoy. If you're on the mailing list, or follow us on Instagram or visit the website, you may have seen our banner. If not, here's a peek:

Everything seems to be either in place or in delivery mode. Our final order is still coming in but should be here early next week. Otherwise, we should be ready to go.

We're trying to look at this as a sort of con-lite. While I would like to sell out all the issues we'll have, I'm not sure how realistic that will be. Everyone tells you to have low expectations. The goal is to get names and emails for our mailing list.

To that end, I started the coursework at ListLaunch, part of the service that we started at the beginning of the month. I sat through my first two sessions on Wednesday night and there is still many more to come. We need to have a more robust mailing list before we attempt a Kickstarter, which we need to do.

If you're interested in joining the mailing list and won't be at the May 4th signing, you can get on the action here: https://mailchi.mp/dc302d04a252/powerssquared. We'll include you on our weekly newsletter featuring all things Powers Squared.

Speaking of which, it's been a busy week as far as the comic book goes. Rachel has sent us four new pages, penciled. Paul and I asked her to make a few changes, which she did. Part of the process is to discuss the look of the panels she sends us versus what we had in mind when we wrote the script. Sometimes, I will admit, that we're looking for changes when we see her artwork. When we can, we try to send her a photographic reference to use. Usually finding an image we're looking for is only a Google search away. This week, I came to find that that is not always the case. There are some images that are out there, or else, I don't know how to describe it properly.

If you're like me, and you lived in a time before mandatory seat belts, you most assuredly had this happen to you: the car is in traffic, your mother is driving and you're sitting in the front seat, which is where you sat back in the day. All of a sudden, your mother applies the brakes hard. There is nothing that stops you from hitting the dashboard, except your mother reaches over and with only her hand, holds you back. I mean, who needed seatbelts? Well, I was looking for that image to send to her but could not find one on the internet.

The best we could do was that Paul and Trevor, who had no reference to that either, remembered a similar gesture in the manga and anime for My Hero Academia. Paul managed to take a photo off his computer from the TV show and after reversing the image, we came up with this:

All Might is doing the gesture we tried to describe to her.

Our colorist is preparing more pages, which we should have before the month is over.

In addition to work on Powers Squared, I managed to complete a review of Batman (1989) which will appear next month. Trevor had the idea of making May Batman Month on Trophy Unlocked. We have all the reviews written so look forward to that next month on Trophy Unlocked.

This past Saturday, we published a review Trevor wrote of Whiplash, a videogame for the PS2, so we're going back aways in time with that one.

I also managed to write a little more on The Runaway, but not enough to write home about, though I will mention it here. I also sent off a couple of query letters for Broken People. My goal is to send off a couple every week. Got to keep that dream alive as well.

I'm sorry I don't have more to report, but that's all for this week. Until next week, keep writing.

A Week in Writing #243

Writing time this week, like I predicted, was spent working on a five-day Kickstarter Challenge run by ComixLaunch. The assignments weren't really all that hard, just time-consuming. It required me to listen to a one-hour live Facebook lesson every day at work from 11 to 12 and then at night write up what I needed to provide.

A good exercise, not only did it get me to write a new bio, but also write up a story about my creative origins (as they relate to Powers Squared), think about where I want to get to in five years, think about the next milestone and then map out what I know and, more importantly, don't know about a Kickstarter project. I also had to play tag team with another creator, Josue F. Kure, who has his own comic book which he is producing called Bloody Reaper Comics. Kind of cool to connect with him and others in the challenge. Good to get out of my comfort zone.

For Powers Squared, we made some progress towards the signing we have scheduled for May 4th (Free Comic Book Day) at Galaxy of Comics (ours won't be free). We received the banner we ordered last week on Friday and put up an unboxing video on our YouTube channel. It's pretty cool. If you want to see the banner, it's the Peek-of-the-Week on our website. While you're there, answer the poll question and sign up for our mailing list. The second newsletter has gone out, you don't want to keep missing out, do you?

Trevor delivered the next four pages of Powers Squared, so he's caught up with what our colorist has delivered. By the end of the month, we should have more pages from both Rachel and Nina and the show goes on.

Paul, Trevor and I shot our weekly vlog this afternoon. Since there weren't a lot of pages to discuss, we spent a good deal of time in a discussion of the 21 MCU films so far. It was an idea that we had after a spontaneous discussion earlier in the week about the same topic. Paul captured the essence of the discussion in a post on Trophy Unlocked, Ranking the Marvel Cinematic Universe (So Far).

Speaking of Trophy Unlocked, I published my review of Life of Pi as the Saturday Morning Review. Mine was the last review of the three films we watched on our recent plane trip to Dallas at the beginning of the week. I also started, barely, a new review for Batman (1989), which will be a part of Batman Month on Trophy Unlocked, starting on May 4th.

Managed to do a little writing on The Runaway and sent out two more query letters for Broken People. Had that "Oh s---!" moment when I realized I had a misspelled word, one of those where it should be "that" rather than "than". Damn. Of course, no word back from any agent I've queried since my rejection letter. So now there are four out there, though I suspect the first two are "lazy passes", meaning the agent will not write back to tell you they're passing, you're just supposed to realize it on your own. One of them was the agent from the Writers Digest Novel Writing Conference that I really wanted, but I guess the feeling wasn't mutual.

Next week, I'll be sending out press releases for our May signing; wish me luck. Hopefully, time for other writing as well. In the meantime, keep writing.