A Week in Writing #446 - Internet Ads and QR Codes

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

I don't know about you but there is a lot of non-writing that goes into writing, at least for me. (And, I'm not counting this blog.)

Everyday this week, I've posted on Twitter, anniversary dates for reviews on Trophy Unlocked. I do this every morning between getting home from my morning walk and getting ready for the day. I've tried to shortcut this process by keeping track of the ones I've done in the past, so for the most part it's a case of copy paste and find the image to go with it. I do try to occassionally update the hashtags and stuff but for the most part things don't change too much. My hope is that it drives eyes to the blog, which I think it does. I also post on Facebook and Twitter when there are new posts on the blog, which is at least once a week, sometimes, like this week, twice, but we'll get to that later.

I also post on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram three times a week for Powers Squared. Every Sunday, I post a new peek-of-the-week. On Tuesdays, the posts go up. I set these posts on Sundays through GoDaddy. [Note: For whatever reason, the connection to Facebook had stopped working, please see previous posts where I called this out. I had tried everything I could think to do, including contacting GoDaddy but nothing had worked. GoDaddy wasn't much help. They pointed me to Facebook, which I contacted but never heard back. I had pretty much given up on it but this morning, wonder of wonders, the connection was there.] Once it posts on Facebook, I think share to varrious groups. I'll also post this to our LinkedIn page and any other social media we're on.

Every Sunday morning, I also upload the video from our Friday podcast On the Air with Powers Squared to our YouTube channel. These are scheduled for Wednesdays at 2:30pm to premiere. We've been told this is a good time to post new videos. I want social media posts to go along with it, so I post something on Sundays that will go out at the same time as the video premieres. Paul and I also shoot a short video on Fridays that I put up on Instagram later on Wednesday, again, pointing them to the video on our YouTube Channel. The same process once it appears on Facebook and other social media, including LinkedIn.

Every Friday, I try to post about our upcoming podcast that night. Once the podcast is done, I update LinkedIn making sure that our Powers Squared page gets updated. This past week, Paul and I discussed the topic of "Separating the Art from the Artist", something to check out on Wednesday, or you can listen to it now.

All this leads me back to the headline. With an upcoming release, Issue 16, "Mocha and Raven, Part 1", drops on March 15. I got the bright idea that maybe we should do an ad on all these social media  sites. So I put something together and got feedback from the other creatives involved with the issue.  Today, I got the bright idea to add a QR Code to the ad. This I found not that hard to do. So, as a preview, here's the QR to the Campus Store on our website:

Let me know if it works for you.

That all said, let's talk about what this blog is supposed to be about, which is my writing.

Well, no new review this week. Saturday night turned into a family event, out of town relatives, an acapella performance at UCLA and vegan dinner, you know not the usual but good fun. So no movie, no review. That said, I did have the Saturday Morning review, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. This week, we had a Game Day review, Trevor's for God of War: Ragnarök.

One new query for Broken People. I'm still, for some reason, holding back on Past, Present, but I will do one this coming week.

I did work several times this week on Skylar. I'm still in clean up mode, but I am taking advantage of any moment I can to work on it, it's just the word count probably doesn't reflect it, yet.

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

A Week in Writing #410 - The Work of Writing

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

Not a bad week, really, but sometimes it feels like I'm doing more of the work of writing, rather than actually writing if that makes sense.

I sometimes feel like I spend more time making updates to the Powers Squared website. I thought I had been keeping up but apparently, there were covers to update, links to change and even credits that needed to be updated. It seems like a never-ending process. Even trying to keep up with it, I realize I miss things, like posting links to videos. I decided to change that by posting them early rather than waiting for them to be released. I upload the videos on Sunday mornings and schedule them for Wednesday afternoons, and I also update the peek-of-the-week every Sunday. For both, I schedule Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts for later in the week; Tuesday for the peek-of-the-week and Wednesday for the videos.

There are other posts I make, like every morning on Twitter for posts on Trophy Unlocked that have anniversaries, #OTD. I've been doing that for a couple of years now, but finally got wise last year to saving and reusing the posts rather than trying to come up with a new one every time.

Then there are also posts I make to Pinterest, some for Trophy Unlocked and others for Powers Squared. As I started with, sometimes it feels like the work of writing, not the writing itself that takes up my time.

Worked a little bit on fka Skylar. I had an idea I wanted to introduce but I couldn't find the right place to do it. I guess I'll have to save it for later.

After rewriting the first chapter of Broken People, I started to go back through the book. I even found one section that didn't make sense where it was. I guess it's fortunate that no agent has asked to see more than the first three chapters so far.

I did query the book again, though I'm not really hopeful of the agent. I read some comments on Query Tracker about them. Apparently, they received responses that they didn't like. So far, I haven't received anything, so I'm waiting that out.

Powers Squared continues to move forward with our artist sending in eight pages of pencils for issue #22.

We're going to set release dates for Issue #13 this week and hopefully some more things as well, like new merch.

We had our monthly team meeting on Friday and since we're going to be at Comic-Con, Rachel and Julia may host a show without us. That should be fun. We're also talking about setting up a Comic Book Club for the podcast as well.

Our pitch is finally finished and now we're waiting to schedule someone we trust to go through it for us. So much is going on.

With Trophy Unlocked, I wrote a review for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which should be going up soon on the blog. We watched it finally on Friday night on Disney+. I'm also working on a review for Chance of Heaven (1933) from Saturday night but that's still in progress. For those interested, the Saturday Morning Review was Paul's review of Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe and the Wednesday Game Day Review was Paul's for Bugsnax: The Isle of Bigsnax (DLC).

So in the week ahead, I have to finish my review of Chance of Heaven, work on our monthly newsletter, The Hound Dogs's Howl, make a new query and work on fka Skylar. Wish me luck.

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

A Week in Writing #393 - Quick Rejection This Time

I hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've no doubt read how the book I'm supposedly writing, currently called fka Skylar, is always getting short shrift in my writing. I tried to change that on Monday night but I got too tired to work on it. Has that ever happened to you? I need to do better with that, but there always seems to be something else consuming my time.

A lot of it seems to go to Powers Squared. I know I spend an inordinate amount of time on this book between reviewing artwork, posting three times a week, and then sharing them on Facebook to various groups I belong to. And there is always something I think I forget to do. Usually, it's updating the latest video on the website. We record our podcast every Friday night at 6pm, live on twitch.tv/powerssquared. Paul then takes the audio from the video, which I upload to Podbean. Over the next 24 hours, it goes out to various platforms, but the best is that it also shows up automatically on our website at https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/oaps.

Later, usually on Sunday, I post the video to YouTube and schedule it for Wednesday at 2:30 pm. Through our website, I write and schedule some social media posts that come out at the same time. Later, I post another one on Instagram and Facebook of a video Paul and I shoot after the show with a link. I then go to Facebook and share the post to various groups I belong to. This supposedly gets us more awareness, though not necessarily more views. I also then post to Linkedin and the page I have set up there for Powers Squared. Again, more awareness though not necessarily more views.

Also, every Sunday, I post a new peek-of-the-week on our website. Again, a social media post gets scheduled for Tuesday at 2:30 pm to advertise. I don't really have a good idea how many people check out this feature but we average about 80 to 90 website visits a month, which sadly is considered good according to Go Daddy. And then there are some more follow-up posts to Facebook groups, again to make people aware.

We've also been prepping the last few weeks for a Kickstarter in March. I've been writing the text for the page with Paul, with feedback from our consultant. There are still some things I'm not sure about but I'm hoping things will get clearer in the weeks ahead.

One new query this week, got rejected the next morning by the agent. Nice not to have to wait for it. "Thank you for considering me as a possible fit to represent your book. I have reviewed your query and, at this time, I do not believe that I am the right agent to represent your work. Please know that we are extremely selective, even with the materials we review. I do appreciate you thinking of us as an agency, however, and I encourage you to continue your search for an agent who is just the right fit for you. I wish you every success in your publishing endeavors." An obvious form letter, but I guess it's better than not hearing back at all.

I spent more time researching possible agents. I decided what I have in Broken People is more of a thriller so I thought I might do better aiming it at them. Lots of agents and while there is overlap, there are a lot more. I'm still going through possibles through QueryTracker, so I'll let you know the count when I'm done.

My review of Ghostbusters: Afterlife went up as Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review. Paul's review of Control Ultimate Edition for the PS5, was our Wednesday Game Day review. No new review for me. On Saturday, we watched Free Guy and since he has more experience with video games, Paul will be writing that review. Look for it next Saturday.

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

A Week in Writing #329 - Making Silly Mistakes

Hope everyone is staying safe and writing.

I hope that I'm not alone in this but this week, I kept making what I'll call silly mistakes. I'd like to put it down to being hurried but since this is a blog where I share the good and the bad, I thought I should share the silly as well.

On Friday nights, Paul and I host a live twitch show, On the Air with Powers Squared, that we call a behind the scenes look at our comic book, Powers Squared but in reality, we also interview not only our creative team but also other creatives as well. This past Friday, we lined up Josue F. Kure, the creator behind Reaper Rules. Josue and I had met through a list launch event and had kept up on Facebook and supported each other's Kickstarters but had not actually ever even spoken.

Well, Josue is a very interesting man with a lot of interests, talents and ambitions so it was a very interesting interview. My silly mistake here was in the lead-up. For every show, I post an image on Instagram, which feeds down to the comic book's Twitter account and Facebook page. Since I'm at work when I make this post, I try to do it as quickly as possible. The mistake here was that Josue uses a middle initial, which while I got right in the image I got wrong in the text. I was able to edit Instagram and Facebook posts, I wasn't able to change the Twitter one. As anyone who has Twitter knows, you can't edit tweets. I didn't have the time to fix it and it wasn't a big deal it still was sort of embarrassing.

On Sundays, I write the newsletter for Powers Squared, this week The Bark,  and while I think the text was good and the links worked I made two more mistakes. To start with, I didn't update the Message line so what went out, rather than saying Happy Holidays Hound Dogs made mention of the now over Black Friday Sale. Since I receive other people's emails, I know that I'm not alone in making mistakes, so I resent the newsletter with a correction. Problem solved.

But wait, no. One of the items every week is a Peek-of-the-Week, or an image from the comic book that is discussed in the newsletter but with a link, in the hopes of driving readers to the website. The nice thing is that while the image may change the link doesn't. And, all is well and good, as long as the website gets updated. But if you don't actually hit the button to publish the change no one will know there's a new image. It took me several hours to realize the image hadn't been updated. Don't know how many people, if any, checked for the new image but again, it was a silly mistake for me to make.

So with that confession behind me, let's move on to other writing and places where I didn't make missteps.

As I've written before, I've decided to wait until the New Year to take up querying again. I just don't want to get caught up in the end of the year desk cleaning that goes on in all professions. And, if you're still keeping track I've sent four and have been rejected once. I have a feeling I'm probably running into that "if you haven't heard back from us" clause, written and unwritten, that means they've passed but I'm not going to worry about it until when I start up again.

I've been working on Skylar most nights. My son Paul writes every night from 10 to 11 and I try to do the same. Some nights it's harder than others. I've had a couple where I start to fall asleep but I still try to make it through. I'm up to 25368 words and 140 pages.

I'm sort of leaving the best for last, I guess. I did write a new review this weekend, Repeat Performance (1947), a sort of mixed genre film that may, by design, not see the light of day until 1/1/2022. This past Saturday, on Trophy Unlocked, I did publish the first of my Christmas film reviews, this one a drive-by Christmas tale, The Last Picture Show (1971). To qualify as drive-by Christmas is either the backdrop or plays a role in an otherwise non-holiday tale.

During the week, Paul published his review of the videogame Injustice 2 Legendary Edition. And on Sunday, Trevor published a review of Onward, the pre-pandemic Pixar release that we watched this past Friday night on Disney +.

In other Trophy Unlocked news, the blog will celebrate its 10th anniversary on Friday. Not only will Paul publish a review on that date but we're also going to cross the streams and discuss the blog on our OAPS that evening. I promise not to make any silly mistakes when posting about that. I hope you'll take this as your invite to watch and ask questions. It is quite an accomplishment. We're live on twitch at 6pm PST, hope you'll watch.

Well, if I don't see you then, keep writing and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #318 - Hey, It Was My Birthday

Hope all is well.

Despite the headline, I'm not looking for belated birthday wishes from last Friday. I'm using it as an excuse for whatever didn't happen this past week that should have.

I guess the big accomplishment for me this week was that I did write three reviews for Trophy Unlocked. As always not sure when they all will appear, one is scheduled, but the important thing is that I did them. Every Friday night, we have homemade pizza and watch a movie but since it was my birthday and we were having something different, we had pizza on Thursday and watched A Rainy Day in New York, a 2018 Woody Allen film that had not, as of yet, been released in the US. I had purchased a blu-ray (yes I still buy discs) through Amazon UK and we watched that. As it turns out that film is supposed to get some sort of release on October 9th, so it's scheduled to run that morning.

On my birthday, we watched another blu-ray that I received for my birthday, Straight Shooting (1917), a silent western directed by John Ford and starring Harry Carey. So, that's review #2.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may also know that Saturday night has turned into drain the DVR day so we watched Downstairs (1932) a pre-code drama starring John Gilbert. Review #3.

I also had the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked this week, with Captured! (1933), a film about World War I. I won't lie, I like to see my reviews get published. On Wednesday, it was another video game review, this time Zone of the Enders (PS2), that Paul wrote.

I've assigned myself the responsibility to post the reviews on Pinterest as well, and as I'm going through the anniversaries or adding new reviews, I'm trying to update the listing with some information about when it was released and if it's a film, who is in it, the director and the genre. I sometimes regret this, especially when a title ends up in more than one category, say Decade and special genres that we call out. It's possible that a title, say an animated Batman film, could end up in three categories. I'm almost through October. I hope that I'll get ahead of it sometime and it will be down to just new titles. I'm mentioning it here because I spent some time on it this week.

A lot of work this week on Powers Squared, with Rachel providing four inked pages for Issue 16, and Trevor finishing the lettering on Issue #14.

Not to leave Julia out of it, she did provide us with an updated website banner. Since at the top of the home page we say Stay Safe, Wear a Mask and Read Powers Squared, I thought we should show the main characters actually wearing a mask. It was an idea I had at the end of the week and it's already up on the website: powerssquaredcomicbook.com.

Other work continues on revamping the website, which we're hoping to introduce with the release of Issue #10.

We also did our weekly podcast/video, On the Air with Powers Squared, and this time our guest actually showed. Rorie Still, the creator of Flashbang, spent about 45 minutes with us on Friday night. You can, if you're so inclined, watch it here on YouTube. If you prefer to listen to it, please go to powerssquaredcomicbook.com/join and you can find about five outlets for the audio version.

But that wasn't the only video appearance for the book, because the next day, Paul appeared on Rorie's Instagram show, Artist Live. He was on her show for about an hour and you can watch that on her Instagram page here.

I'll throw this out, just in case you're interested, but we also put out a weekly newsletter and if you're at all curious, you can look at it here. This is our smaller version, which we call The Bark. Next week, it's the longer newsletter The Hound Dogs' Howl, in which we'll feature other creative twins and make a recommendation or two as well. I put it there just in case you want to, you know, be supportive.

I also did some more work on Skylar, the newest J.D. Barrister story I'm working on. I've got a real good idea for a future chapter, but I'm still slogging through the one I'm on. I think I only managed about 1000 or so words this week. Too much to do, too much cake to eat, you know the story.

Well, I think that about wraps it up for now. Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week.

A Week in Writing #260

This was not a good week for me, due to things I don't want to get into here and now, but let's say things took the wind out of me. I even had to re-edit last week's post. When I can I will write about it but for now, we need to let it go.

On the flip-side, I've been trying to participate more on social media. Never know how effective that is, but I do want to point out the efforts of @PFDonato who on twitter has been trying to help those with smaller followings get exposure to others in the #writerscommunity with larger ones. I really do appreciate her efforts. I've also tried to be more active on Instagram for the sake of Powers Squared. I've heard, more than once, that you have to be careful not to spend too much time on social media so it's always a balancing act but since I wasn't writing for a couple of days, I thought it was something I could do.

Nothing much happened this week on Powers Squared. No new pages from Rachel or Nina until Sunday (which is fodder for next week). Trevor did send four new pages earlier in the week. We have a couple of voting opportunities out there this week, so if you want, you are more than welcomed to participate in them as well. First, we're working with Rachel on developing a mascot for San Romero Community College, the fictitious school Marty and Eli Powers attend. We have the basics of the mascot down but it's the school colors that we need to nail down. We'd like to have it be a community thing and if you're reading this, then you qualify, if you want to. Here are the choices:

Please vote in the comments below or by emailing us at info@powerssquaredcomicbook.com.

The other is voting on social media. It's been our poll question for the past couple of weeks on our website. We're trying to figure out the best sites to concentrate our efforts on. If you follow Powers Squared, which we hope you do, please vote on the website, powerssquaredcomicbook.com. You'll have to scroll down the page but every vote counts.

Spent a fair amount of time this week on, of all things, the spine of our graphic novel. You never think about it but there is some work that goes into something that seems pretty simple. Mostly, it had to do with the orientation of the lettering and what should have to be on the spine as in the names of those involved. We settled on Hankins Hankins Hankins Murti, which sort of sounds like a family law firm with a branch in Indonesia, which is where Sika Murti lives. Sika was the artist on the first five issues and I will say Paul was insistent that his name appear; not that I was objecting or anything, but I want to give credit where credit is due.

Wrote a review this week for The African Queen, but published one for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the new and recently released film by Quentin Tarantino. We saw the movie on Friday afternoon and the review appeared as Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review the next day. This is a good example of the difference in writing reviews for films. When a movie is in the theater, like Once Upon a Time..., I try to write ones that don't give the plot away, while with older films, like The African Queen, the reviews are much more detailed.

Did a bit of writing this week, as mentioned above, but I did send out a query earlier in the week.
I have noticed a trend in querying that I know is more efficient for the agent. Two of the last four queries have been online through the same application, called Query Status Portal. At the end of the process, after filling out the form and uploading my pages, I've been given a URL to check to see the status of my query. If rejections could get any colder, having to look for yourself is about as impersonal as it can get. Which I guess is only slightly better than not hearing back at all. Now, that said, I did receive an email from the first person with this system, so maybe it won't be as cold and impersonal as I suspect.

Well, I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things, though I will have to be writing next week's post during the week, as I will be traveling back and forth next weekend to a family function in Northern California. Losing a weekend is tantamount to losing some of my most creative time, but there are things you do for love and loved ones.

So, until next week, keep writing.

A Week in Writing #253

It seems that no matter what the intentions might be, every week turns into a Powers Squared week.

Sunday night, after I had published my last blog, we received pages from Rachel. These were jpegs before the tiffs. Our last chance to make any comments. We had none on the artwork, but we did exchange emails about the depiction of one of the characters. I won't go into who since she has yet to appear in the book, but it was good to come to an agreement. We got tiffs later on Monday.

Monday got off to a start with information from the U.S. Copyright office. It seems like every time we file for copyright, there is something that we've done wrong. Now it takes something like half a year from the time we applied to when we hear if we've made a mistake. And when I asked for direction on how to avoid making the same mistake in the future, surprise, they didn't respond. However, we should get the paperwork shortly. This delay is something that people never tell you when they tell you to get something copyrighted. Now, I guess you could pay a lot extra to have it expedited, but that doesn't work for me. Just remember it takes about six months to get a copyright.

On Tuesday, I got an email from another creator asking me questions about our print on demand service. He had good questions and I tried to give him my positive, but realistic assessment. Of course, I invited him to learn more about Powers Squared and, of course, he made no commitment to check us out.

We also received four new pages from Nina, which we passed on to Trevor, however, I'm not expecting him to get right on them, since he had a fall on Monday and fractured his radius in his left arm near the elbow. He has his arm in a splint and a sling so he's slowed down, to say the least. The work can wait, of course.

I also spent part of the Tuesday night listening to another installment of the List Launch, the podcast series that's supposed to help us build up our list prior to launching a Kickstarter. This was the reason behind our wanting to name our "fan base." We asked readers last week and, well, the response was underwhelming, to say the least. Despite that, we did decide to call the group "The Hound Dogs" and rename our newsletter, the Hound Dogs' Howl, after the fictitious newspaper of the community college the Twins attend in the book.

The new image we're using on social media.

Listening to it this time made me decide to update our banner image on social media, which we did on Wednesday, changing out the old image for one that's more dynamic and more reflective of our current books.

Posting last week's Peek-of-the-Week on Instagram got more discussion than we normally get, which was nice. Hopefully, we can get that sort of interaction across other social media.

We did receive more pages from Nina later in the week, on Friday. Everything was good but we did ask for a couple of changes in some of the colors. It's funny how important some things seem, like the color of a character's eyes. As usual, she made the changes very quickly, so no complaints here.

I did manage to work on The Runaway, doing at least a chapter a day for the first four nights of the week. Any progress is good, though there is still plenty more to do.

As with every week recently, nothing new to report with queries or contacting the editor on Familiar Stranger. I'm going to have to call him and work out the best time to do that.

I did write a review this week for Yesterday, a film we watched on Friday afternoon and published as our Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked.

Well, that's about all for this week. So until next time, keep writing.

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.

A Week in Writing #239

It seemed like every time I turned around this week there was something going on with Powers Squared. Not that it was always underfoot, but there always seemed to be something that needed to or should be done.

We made two unboxing videos this week, the first one when we received new issues from Artithmeric (Kirby Good and Evil, Issues 7 and 8), and a second one when we received our Merch (T-shirts) the next night. Since we didn't want to turn into an unboxing video channel, despite our first such video being our biggest one yet, we delayed the second one until Sunday morning. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say it got delayed until Sunday morning.

Thursday I posted a preview image for this week's thumbnail on Instagram just because I want us to be active. Friday I post a poll question on our website. For the first time in 26 weeks, I posted a question a second time. While I'd like to say it was on purpose, I have to admit it was a mistake. I posted the same question that I had on week #13. Back then it got a whopping one vote and as it turns out that choice is not on this week's question. Again, another accident but I decided that I would post the same question in 13weeks. Let's see if anyone notices.

On Friday, we received inks from Rachel for pages 17-20 and the cover for Issue #10 as well as pages from Nina, 5-8 of the same issue. And finally, on Saturday night, pages 1-4 lettered by Trevor. He had been having some issues with WeTransfer which is how we send and receive pages to be lettered with him. I think that's a leftover from the first issues and when we used WeTransfer to communicate with the artist and colorists.

With Nina, we use Dropbox, which this week got to be full, so I had to offload the files prior to issue #9. I've already sort of saved them on my own computer as part of the workflow but I saved those files to a flash drive, you know, just in case. I'll admit that  I do a lot of backing up with this as well as all my writing. I like having a copy with me of everything just in case something comes up while I'm away from my computer.

Paul and I shot our weekly vlog on Sunday afternoon and posted it on our YouTube channel. After which we shot a little promo video for Instagram. Now, I just tuned into this, after what 26 weeks, but I've been sort of double posting about our weekly videos. First through YouTube hitting sites like our Facebook page, Twitter and Tumblr, which are the same platforms I can access through Instagram. So I decided to type in the web address into the description of the Instagram video and then I can skip doing the individual shares from YouTube. The goal is always to spend as little time as you have to on social media, isn't it? (I'm probably passing on the obvious.)

For Trophy Unlocked, I finished my review of Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow, which I should publish next week. This week's Saturday Morning Review was Paul's take on Devil May Cry 5. Planning ahead, Trevor wrote a review of Shazam!, which we saw as part of an early screening through Fandango. We're going to save it back until the week of the film's release, so please look for it then.

As far as Broken People, I did send off two more query letters this past Thursday, mostly so I didn't have to write here that I had not sent any again. So for those playing at home, it's three queries out and no rejections (at least so far). Sadly, didn't really have time for much more this week. Sometimes this gets pushed to the back burner though I never want it to go out.

Hopefully, this next week, I'll get a chance to do more with this part of my writing. I'm going to contact the editor on Familiar Stranger. I know I sound like the little engine that could but I will, I promise you. Will I get a response? Well, that will be up to him.

A Week in Writing #233

Okay, I'm writing this and I am a little nervous. Not because of this blog but I finally sent my first query letter off regarding Broken People. I know it's something that I've been talking about for weeks but I finally pulled the plug and sent one off. And I know I need and will do more but sending off query letters is a little like riding a horse, when you get bucked off (or rejected as might be the case) you have to get back on and send out more query letters.

The agent I sent mine to is one that I had met or rather heard at the Writer's Digest Novel Writing Conference last October. I really had the book pretty much completed then but had to hem and haw my way to sending it out. There is always a good reason not to send a query but I knew this day would come. I will, of course, update here as the process continues. I don't and won't name names, as that's not the way we roll at 1000 Words a Day, but this would be my dream agent at this point. But then again, any agent that would take me on as a client would be my dream agent, let's be real.

Already got a response, though it's a form email. I've had it be where I've spent hours to hone the query letter to a particular agent only to have them reject me in a matter of minutes so my first thought was not a positive one when I got the email so quickly. Rejection is never far from my thoughts when it comes to query writing.

Did a little more work on The Runaway as well. I wrote myself into a possible corner but managed to think of a solution before the trail got stale. I'm a little short of 35,500 words into the rewrite. I have a general idea where this is all going it's the getting there that still needs to be worked out.

No new word on Familiar Stranger and I truly doubt the editor reads this blog but we're coming up on almost a year now. I don't know if he's immortal but I'm not and time's a-wasting. I'd like to get this done sooner than later. I will have to follow up and I will let you know what, if anything, I hear back.

Published a review of the short The Balloonatic on Saturday on Trophy Unlocked. Part of our salute to shorts during the shortest month of the year. I've watched and written a review for next week of Making a Living (1914), Chaplin's first short for Mack Sennett's Keystone studio. Look for that next week.

There is also a review I wanted to point you to on that blog, The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part was reviewed by Trevor after we all went to see it on Saturday afternoon. He was the best one to review it as the rest of us sort of blipped out from time to time if that's any indication on how good the movie really is.

This week in Powers Squared, we finished Issue #9 which is pretty exciting. Since we've just submitted Issues 6 and 7 to Comixology it may be quite a while before 8 and 9 are published.

Speaking of 6 and 7, I've reached out to the websites that had provided us with reviews, interviews, and previews for issues 3-5 and only one, First Comic News, has responded. We're hoping their reviewer will do one for the new issues. I sent them to him this morning after emailing the editor-in-chief. Hopefully, we'll get a positive response.

Our poll questions have taken an uptick in the past few weeks and I have to thank our fans in Singapore and San Mateo for getting those numbers up. 11 responses last week and 9 this week is nice. It makes you feel that you're not just writing in a void. I've asked them to perhaps watch the videos as well.

Paul and I do a Vlog every Sunday with whatever is new with the comic book. The last several, despite pushing them on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Pinterest have garnered zero views. We keep hoping that trend will reverse itself. It hurts, people, it hurts.

We're still working out the details for the Kickstarter that I want desperately to do. Trying to see if our artist is willing to do something by hand that could be used as a tier reward and maybe be used as well on t-shirts and maybe even an alternative cover.

A fellow comic book creator is trying to start an Instagram Pod to support each other. I'm all for it but he wants me to do more than just publicize the videos which I need to do. I went through the last two issues and pulled out all of the sound effects so I might be posting them for a while.

Well, that about wraps up another Week in Writing. Please check back next week and I'll update you on queries and reviews. Until then, keep writing, cause you know, you gotta.

A Week in Writing #232

I'm sitting down to write this while watching the Super Bowl since I don't have a pony in the race to mix my sports metaphors and thinking back on the past week.

Still making some progress on The Runaway though I didn't have the burst I had last week. Still, I got about 5600 words further into the book, which surprises even me. Some of the writing is rewriting I will admit that. I'm trying to use as much as I can from the previous version. There is nothing better to find a passage or chapter that can be placed somewhere else and with some tweaks can be reused elsewhere in the story.

I'm finding that I'm making a lot of changes in the story, killing off a character sooner than I had previously. I think it's making it a better story but we'll see. I mean, I'm a little prejudiced but if I don't like it there's no point in writing it.

For Trophy Unlocked, published a review of Tit for Tat (1935) as part of our salute to Shorts during February, the shortest month. Managed to also write one for Buster Keaton's The Balloonatic (1923) which should appear next week.

This week in Powers Squared, there was a lot of progress on Issue #10. Rachel sent us the first 8 pages inked just before the end of January as well as thumbnails for the next 8 pages. Nina has the first 8 pages for this month.

Started to work on a final review of Issue #9. There are a couple of changes we need to make to some of the dialogue but it's really nothing major. At least, that's what I've found, Paul still needs to give it a once over before we give it to Trevor for any fixes.

Paul and I finished our next A Week in Powers Squared video just before the Super Bowl. This week we went over a little bit of Issue #2 as well as discussed the progress that's been made since our last video. You can watch it here. While you're there, please feel free to subscribe and ring the bell.

Last week, we posted a video to Instagram about making the video. This week, we actually added it to our story, so we'll see if that gets as many views as our video did last week.

Big shout out to our best fans, who happen to live in Singapore, who actually heard the call and answered our poll question on the website. Maybe those votes help spur others on since when I last checked, we had 6 votes. I'm not a mathematician but that's a whole lot more than the zeroes we've been getting the last few weeks.

We're still working out some of the details for our Kickstarter tiers. Hopefully, we'll get those ironed out this week, hopefully being the key word there.

Going to be reaching out to some of the websites that helped us with our last release to see if they're interested in doing something with the new releases.

Whatever happens, I'll be letting you know here next week.

A Week in Writing #216

A lot of radio silence this week. Still no word from my editor on Familiar Stranger. My fault for not contacting him but it wasn't a good week for making phone calls. Not wanting to let moss grow under me, I've been working on the novel fka A Killer Blog, though it doesn't have a new name as of yet.

I've been making pretty good progress though I decided I needed to take into consideration another version of the book I had written. Like the other novels, the protagonist is a private detective, J.D. Barrister. In the original story, he meets a former news anchor, who was disgraced when she appeared in a sex video. She sees a case J.D. is working on as a way to redemption. The case is the murder of a blogger, hence the fka, who was murdered when he discovered that the mayor of Los Angeles was being funded by the leader of a Mexican drug cartel.

The woman's past was not agreeable to agents, so I ended up changing her, making her simply a waitress who is more of a bystander to the case; even changed her name to Abigail Dietrich. Her past was shady but not as overt as Stacy's had been.

In light of the #metoo movement and the recent arrest of a couple that would drug women and then videotapes them having sex, I got the idea to make Stacy's video one in which she was a victim. She still loses her job because no one believes her at the time but she is now a victim of circumstance. I hope the change will make her more acceptable.

What I'm finding is that some of the work from the second version helps the overall story. Most of it is the sequencing of the story which I think the newer version helps. The issue is gelling the two together. The final version will be a bit of cut and pasting between the stories as well as some new bits to connect the two. It can be a little overwhelming but hopefully rewarding.

On the review side, I completed the review of The Mummy (1959), meaning we have the necessary ones for Trophy Unlocked's annual celebration of horror films. This week, we published a review of Doctor X, an early Technicolor horror film directed by Michael Curtiz starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, and Lee Tracy.

Now we're starting on film noir of Noirvember, which is just an excuse to celebrate the genre prior to Christmas films in December. We watched While The City Sleeps on Friday so I will be working on that review next week.

Something I had thought I would have been working on more this past week was Powers Squared. Except for checking on them after the destructive Hurricane Michael passed through Georgia, where both are based, really haven't heard anything from either the artist or colorist this week, though we did appear in an Instagram story Nina put up earlier in the week, so I know she is working on it.

Trevor, who is working after Nina completes the coloring, has just completed the first six pages of Issue #8, so progress is being made.

We added a new poll question on the Powers Squared website. Again, its a question related to the comic book. This time we're asking for people to choose one of two superpowers Marty and Eli share: telepathy and teleportation. Interested in what you might think so please vote. We change the poll every Friday afternoon, so hurry.

I did learn, vicariously, through Nina's Instagram about something called Linktree. One of the downsides of Instagram is that it allows you only one link in your profile. Linktree allows you to create one link that contains several other links, sort of like the branches of a tree coming off the trunk. I set one up on Instagram for Powers Squared. Fairly easy to do and something I would recommend to others who are trying to use Instagram for promoting their IP.

Paul and I also made our weekly Vlog about Powers Squared, available on our YouTube channel.

A Week in Writing #215

This is a good week to talk about the process of putting together an issue of Powers Squared, especially since this is the first week of the month and we're beginning work on a new issue #9, Mathemagical Part 2, with our artist Rachel Wells.

Every month, Rachel finishes 8 pages of art in inks and the next month, our colorist, Nina Gaillard, will color those 8 pages. With an issue being 20 pages, it takes about three months, including the cover and then another month for the coloring. Lettering can take place during that time but usually wraps up about a month or so after Nina is done.

So, this week, as it is the beginning of the month, Rachel sent us 2 sets of layouts for the eight pages she'll do this month. Paul and I sit down with the script and compare the layouts vs the script and decide which version we like best. Not only do we go back and forth on pages, as in the A version of page 1 and the B version of page 2, but sometimes it's down to the panel with the first four from the A version and the next two from the B version. Rachel will then take those and start work on the pencils.

This month, she had some ideas on the script, making suggestions about the actions and placement of items within the panel/story. I don't know if anyone else is out there writing an indie comic book but sometimes you don't notice inconsistencies or that having him play the guitar is better than having it by his side just before someone says "I heard you playing..."

She also made a suggestion about moving one panel from the top of page 8 to the bottom of page 7, since the action would flow better. Hey, our scripts are not written in stone so we're pretty flexible with suggestions and encourage a collaborative working relationship. The goal is to always make it better, which is the same approach I try to take to my writing.

In other Powers Squared news, we put up our second poll question on the website. Seeing how the first poll question registered no responses, I'm happy to report that right now, and after two days mind you, we have 4 votes on the poll question. The poll question this week is "Would you give up super powers for true "love"?" You can vote on the Powers Squared website. The poll is on the homepage.
The poll questions will relate to items related to the story of Powers Squared. If you're curious as to the first question, it was "Are you a twin? Yes, No, I don't Know."

We're still trying to publicize our YouTube Channel including the Vlog post Paul and I put up last Sunday. I boosted a post on Facebook about it and while they say we reached 348 people and received 100 likes on Instagram, the YouTube shows only 2 views, which is, of course, disappointing, to say the least. But Rome wasn't built in a day and so organically growing a social media following is a slow march. In the meantime, you can watch the video here. While you're there, please subscribe and ring the bell to get all of our YouTube notifications.

If you're wondering if we've heard back from our contact at comiXology, the answer would be "No" and I'm not pushing it at this point. There is this other comic book convention in New York that he is no doubt attending. I figure I'd give him a week to recover and then resend Issue #6 as well as Issue #7 to him. If he doesn't respond after that, then he's an ass and we can all agree on that.

If you're wondering if I heard back from the editor on Familiar Stranger, the answer again would be "no". Not the same excuse here but I'll have to follow up, again, and see if I can shake some pages loose.

On my own, I finished editing fka Killer Blog with a pencil and now will start the updating process this week. It may take a couple of weeks but I should have the re-edited version done soon and will then try to send it out to agents. I wouldn't mind having someone edit it but I'd like to shop it around before I die and that seems unlikely given the current rate of getting feedback at this point. Oh, the fun of queries.

Trophy Unlocked published Trevor's review of Coraline as our Saturday Morning Review, seeing how it straddles the animation theme from September with the horror theme for October. I've also completed my review of Get Out and am working on one for Hammer's The Mummy.

Next week, the challenges are going to be time-related again. We have a concert to attend on Thursday night and another birthday next Sunday, my wife's, so time will be well spent but not all of it on writing.

A Week in Writing #208

Well, let's start at the top with Powers Squared and Monday. I dutifully did as I said I would last week and reached out to my contact at comiXology trying to get feedback on Issue #6. Don't look too shocked but no word back. I won't go through the litany of reasons why, just that I have not heard back.

Meanwhile, work continued on the new issue. Later that day, Nina sent us the first four pages of issue #8. It's all looking good. I haven't sent them on to Trevor for lettering yet, as he's still working on Issue #7.

On Wednesday, we received pencils from Rachel for pages 9 through 12 of the same issue. We had a couple of comments but nothing major. It's always interesting to see things develop and the words on the page come to life, so to speak.

Later in the week, we got our quarterly accounting from comiXology on sales. While I'm happy to report sales were up 350% from the previous quarter, sales were still pretty miserable, considering all the work we've put into it and all the publicity we did receive around the release of Issues #3-5. Let's just say all that work amounted to less than two dozen sales over the five issues. Very disheartening.

Now, there are three ways to approach this. Either I/we could fold but that wouldn't be fair to the story. I really like the story and hope that it would eventually find its audience, so that wasn't really an option, though it did cross my mind. I like having a creative outlet that at least reaches people, even if those numbers are small.

The second option, I/we could continue the same thing and hope things would just turn around. That would be wishful thinking on my part.

So I took the third option and tried to change the way we present ourselves to the world. To begin with, I updated the home page on the website to make it easier to buy the books and how to communicate with us, i.e. join the mailing list. I also updated our Facebook page, activating a Shop Now button. I also followed the marketing advice from Comic-Con and advertised on Facebook, boosting one of the more recent posts. I didn't spend very much but we do seem to be reaching more people and have added several new page likes. I know that seems shallow, but you got to get the word out.

I'm also exploring options with media, including press releases and the like. More on that as it materializes.

The planned-for weekly video didn't come to fruition. We had technical problems connecting with Nina on Google Hangout.

Continued to post on Instagram, which does generate content on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. Rather than publishing the same images over and over, I try to find a theme or something for the posts. This week has been first appearances in the story, rather than in flashback. Most of the artwork, so far, is from the first issue. Trying to build up to more recent first appearances in the comic book.

Nina also posted an image from our website on Instagram, one I had posted as a preview of Issue #6. That was unexpected and pretty cool. No one has ever posted anything about Powers Squared because they wanted to, so that was a new experience.

In other writing, I did finish the review I mentioned last time for Christopher Robin, which we published on Saturday morning on Trophy Unlocked. During the week, we also published a review for the video game Epic Mickey 2 written by Trevor and just today Sharknado: The 4th Awakens prior to tonight's final installment of that wrung out TV movie franchise. We had been reviewing them but had overlooked this one for some reason.

On the rewrites, I'm continuing to work on the rewrite for Getting Even. I've read and edited up to page 451, so I think I'll be finishing that next week. Okay, I said I would contact my editor about Familiar Stranger and I didn't do that. There never seemed to be the right time. Unlike the contact at comiXology, I don't think I can just send him an email and hope to get a response. He will take a phone call and unlike the guy at comiXology, I feel like I can call him up, it's just that I never had the opportunity at the right time. So, that's something I need to do next week.

A Week in Writing #206

Well, the week started out fairly normal and I'd have to say quiet. I was trying to get back into the swing of things. I was making some final edits to a script of a future Powers Squared issue and posting some images from the comic book on Instagram, you know like you're supposed to.

On Tuesday, saw a tweet from AMAfeed for an article they published on boredpanda.com titled 11 Non-DC/ Marvel Comics You Should Read Before This Year Ends (Part 1). The cool thing and the reason I received the tweet was that Powers Squared was mentioned as #4. I was pretty excited and sent the link to Paul, Trevor and my wife.

While all of the other comic books had images of their covers, our mention had the same out of focus one of me from our AMAfeed last July. I would have picked a better image if I wasn't in a hurry (I was painting a bathroom at the time) and had known I couldn't ever change it. But there it was a few weeks later staring back at me from the article. Not a good showing.

Paul noticed that the brief write up also listed Marty and Eli Powers as the creators of their own comic book. Strange, I didn't remember them being there at the time. I wasn't miffed that I was omitted, even though I had lead the AMAfeed earlier in the month, but it didn't look good to have fictional characters listed as the creators.

After a couple of messages with AMAfeed through twitter, to their credit, they picked another image from our website and corrected the creators to be Paul and Trevor. Two out of three ain't bad, as they say and it wasn't worth going back a third time. At least now we have a better listing as you can see above.

I mention the incident not only to point out a bit of recognition but also to point out that under the right circumstances you can get "bad" press turned around. Now, if only the article said where you could buy the comic book.

On Friday, Paul and I had a delightful Google Hangout with Nina Gaillard our colorist, which was also posted on our You Tube channel. We also picked up our first subscriber, so that was nice.

Our colorist, Nina Gaillard during our Google Hangout.

Watched and wrote a review for She Had to Say Yes (1933), a Pre-Code drama directed by Busby Berkeley and George Amy and starring Loretta Young, which was published as Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review. Need to work on one for Game Night, a recent film that I only recently watched from a Digital download.

Still in a bit of a holding pattern with J.D. Barrister stories. Still no word from my editor on Familiar Stranger and I haven't had the will to re-edit the ending of Paperback Detective, yet. I made some brief notes for another story but I really think I should re-edit another of the "unfinished" books before I venture into uncharted territory.

I'll make the decision this week and let you know here as usual.

A Week in Writing #203

This was sort of down week for me, energy-wise and creatively. I'm not sure if it was going back to work after nine days off but it was really tiring and I had low energy at night. That means less of everything, including a week off of Instagram, etc.

Most of the work on Powers Squared seemed to revolve around the AMAfeed we were doing. It ended this past Friday after a week. We had, if my counting is correct, 32 questions. Some of the questions weren't directed at me, which was fine and how it should be, though I had to make sure every question got answered. Hopefully, this will be something people will continue to look at and that it will drive interest in the book. You can read the Q & A here.

I opened the questions to our artist and colorist, though only Rachel wrote any answers. There were some directed towards the artists or related to their work as much as ours. I really want to see them get involved in publicizing Powers Squared, too. Up until now, the issues that have been published have been mostly the work of others but from Issue 6 on the visuals are theirs.

To that end, we did a Google Hangout with Rachel, which was almost the first time we'd ever spoke with her. That was supposed to be the plan, but we had issues with getting it going so I had to call her before, a couple of times, as a matter of fact, to try to work through it. The process is not intuitive despite what we'd been told. Rachel had to put us in her "circle", whatever that is, to get the video feed to work.

The camera is only on her throughout, I'm guessing people have tired of seeing me or the boys talking. I think I monologue too much this time and don't let Paul talk but we're working on the bugs. The most important thing was to get Rachel involved. You can see her speak here on the Powers Squared Channel on YouTube.

We really appreciate her work on the comic book and her taking the time to talk to us. I would also like to do something similar with Nina in the near future.

There was progress made on the artwork this week. Rachel did pencils for the first four pages and made some minor changes Paul and I wanted her to make. It's always exciting to see things taking shape.

Trevor made the updates to Issue #6 that Paul and I requested. Really looks good. Now we can take the issue with us to Comic-Con next week. There are a few people we can show it down there. There are also some panels I'm looking forward to taking while I'm there, including one about writing better panel descriptions, which is something I can improve on. I will be writing more about Comic-Con next week. As a reminder, the next post will take place on Monday, rather than Sunday.

As far as other writing goes, I did work on two reviews this past week and completed one for Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, which will be going up next Saturday. I think its kind of fitting for the occasion. The other one, Dumbo, still needs some finishing touches.

Big week for Trophy Unlocked and Trevor as we published three of his posts this week. On Saturday we published Trevor's review of G.I. Joe: Resolute, a telefilm compiled from short episodes of a television series. The day before, he published a Review Hub in honor of the Metal Gear video games on the anniversary of the first game's release. And the day before that, his review of Moss, a VR game.

No word yet from my editor on Familiar Stranger and I did manage to work through the ending of Paperback Detective, though it's still pencil edits. I'm hoping to finish it up before we head south.

Hope next week goes smoothly for us and for you as well.

A Week in Writing #201

Well as weeks go, this was a big one for us at Powers Squared. Not everything we had thought would happen did, but there was a lot that did. The week started with Adventures in Poor Taste's [EXCLUSIVE] Comixology Preview: Powers Squared #3 on Monday. This was a really nice write up about the three issues that were going to be released on Wednesday.

Then there was the actual publication on Wednesday of the next three issues of the book, a story arc we called WITH GREAT POWERS COME SOMETHING, SOMETHING, SOMETHING... on Comixology. All three issues are available for purchase, time to shill: Issue #3, Issue #4 and Issue #5.

Comixology wrote up a very nice piece about us on Tumblr NEW SERIES Debut Powers Squared, which prompted us to open our own account on Tumblr.

Thursday saw the release of our interview on FreakSugar.com THE CREATORS OF POWERS SQUARED ON FAMILIAL AUTONOMY & TEAMWORK which was our first not self-driven interview. I encourage everyone to read it.

On Friday, we published the third part of the interview of Paul and Trevor talking about their involvement with the development of Powers Squared. You can find that video on our YouTube channel. Next week, we're planning on releasing another video, our answering of FreakSugar's questions before we submitted our final answers. And after that, we're planning on doing a Google hangout with our artist, the Friday after that, so there's something to look forward to.

We're still waiting for some reviews that we were told were in the works. Not really sure what became of them. Our PR contact went radio silent on us, so I don't know if they're still going to happen or not. The contact they were using was also one I had cultivated so I may not wait for them if there is no response on Monday. I hate to make a pest of myself, but I really really hate it when people suddenly stop communicating.

We've also been approached about doing an Ask Me Anything session. Not sure if that will come to fruition but I will let you know if that comes to fruition. It sounds sort of exciting and scary at the same time.

Our Instagram following is growing, which seems to be the best reception we've had on social media. That has been a very accepting place for us to be and it allows us to also update other platforms at the same time. So it's a win-win for us.

Our colorist delivered pages 13-16 for Issue #7 this weekend, so her work on that issue should wrap up in July. Looking forward to seeing what our artist does with Issue #8 as we're now starting on the next story arc. Always trying to stay ahead of ourselves.

On to other writing, still no word from my editor on Familiar Stranger, whom I'll be calling next week to make sure he's still alive. Again, radio silence. I've been working on my other book, Paperback Detective. I'm going through the edits I made in prep for the rewrite of the ending, which sorely needs it. That's not to say its bad, but I think that it takes place at the wrong location in the story, so I'm hoping to fix that.

Worked on a review this weekend, about 2000+ words on the film Captured! (1933), a film that I had recorded from an earlier showing on TCM. That will wait for a future time. This past Saturday, we published a review of the Switch version of Bayonetta written by Paul.

So, besides calling my editor and following up on reviews I'm looking forward, trying to finish the rewrites on Paperback Detective and seeing Ant-Man and The Wasp later in the week.