A Week in Writing #274

It's amazing the difference a week can make. Our Kickstarter is doing much better. We're up to about 60% funded, so there's still hope that we will fund.

Otherwise, it was a big week for Powers Squared. On Monday, I was interviewed by Adam Torres for his Money Matters podcast. He was really easy to talk to and was not only enthusiastic but also very professional. We talked about the comic book, the Kickstarter as well as let me plug our own YouTube channel and podcast, On the Air With Powers Squared. He also did us a solid and moved the broadcast to the next day to help us with the Kickstarter. A really good experience.

On Tuesday night, we opened a surprise package from Artithmeric, our on-demand publisher. They publish a magazine, Artithemeric 9, the 9th Art and there were two articles that involved us. One was a very impressive story about Powers Squared, which makes us sound like the important comic book we want to be.

The other story was about a promotion Artithneric is doing with Canon printers. Artithmeric uses Canon for their printing because they meet their high standards. Apparently, Canon was also a fan of Artithmeric and wanted to use some of their creators in a promotion with their customers. As a result, Powers Squared was one of three creator-owned comics chosen. As a result, 1500 copies of our first issue will be sent to Canon customers in the United States. Hopefully, that will lead to new readers.

In addition, we received new pages from both our artists, pencils for four pages in Issue #13 and four colored pages from our colorist from Issue #12.

As if that wasn't enough to report, our colorist, Nina Gaillard, is leaving us after she completes work on Issue #12 and we're beginning to look for a replacement colorist. Not sure how we're going to fit that in before the end of the year, but we will try.

In between sending emails to practically everyone I know to mention the Kickstarter, I did manage to do some more work on The Runaway. Got about three chapters done but that was about all the other writing I could manage. It's nice to have the release and I really feel bad if I don't actually write during the week. I don't know what I would do if I didn't.

No new reviews this week from me. Trophy Unlocked did publish one of Paul's for the animated Tarzan (1999).

Well, that's about all from me this week. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #251

Sometimes a week in writing is a week of taking care of the business side of things and not the creative. Such was my past week. I seem to remember I was busy but I don't have all that much to show for it.

Let's start with what I did do, which isn't much and won't take long to write about. I did some work on my review for Sabrina, completing the synopsis and working some on a new review for Their Own Desires (1929), an early talkie starring Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery. I had recently seen the film was playing on TCM and since we don't have a lot of early talkies and no Norma Shearer films on Trophy Unlocked, I thought it would be a good idea to see it. We watched it on Friday night and I started to work on the review on Saturday afternoon.

This past Saturday, Trophy Unlocked celebrated with its 950th, a re-review of  Tangled by Paul, who started the blog about eight and a half years ago. The day before, we published Trevor's review of the recent release Batman vs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. On Sunday, we published my review of Men In Black: International, a new release we saw on Friday afternoon. So that's about it for this week's creativity.

No new rewrites on The Runaway and no new queries on Broken People.

No new pages for Powers Squared, which isn't really all that unusual for the middle of the month. Most of the activity seems to be at the beginning and ending every month.

That doesn't mean nothing happened on Powers Squared, just nothing exciting. This has been more a week of behind the scenes things. Spent some time on Monday registering a couple of issues for copyright. This is probably something I needlessly sat on but it had to be done.

Paul and I then spent some time talking about tiers and rewards for the Kickstarter we're planning for next month. Nothing finalized but at least we're thinking about what we should be doing. We're trying to make plans for what we can offer but we're open, so if you have any ideas on what you'd like from a Kickstarter for a comic book, please leave a comment.

I also spent some time listening to podcasts from ComixLaunch. Still wanting to build up our mailing list. You are, of course, welcomed to join our mailing list at  https://mailchi.mp/9ac7714b0aaa/powerssquaredcomicbook.

Did some very basic research on representation for the comic book, The advise we were given at the Ground Zero Animation Expo wasn't quite true. No one will talk to you without an agent, especially a network. Don't think I'm going to have the time to concentrate on this really until after the Kickstarter.  Too much to do and so little time.

A Week in Writing #231

This has been a pretty good week for Powers Squared. Paul and I submitted, some might say finally, Issues 6 and 7 to comiXology. Later in the week, we received notification that they had been accepted. Honestly, I'm not sure what sort of criteria they have for submissions, it's obviously not a guarantee to sell, but it is a hurdle that has to be crossed. Bottom line, Issues 6 and 7, aka Kirby Good and Evil, will be out soon.

As a result, I'm going to be reaching out to those who had helped promote Issues 3 - 5 to see if they'll help with the new ones as well. Fingers crossed that they'll say "yes." We've asked the creative team to do whatever they can to promote it and we were very pleased to see Rachel's tweet on Friday.

Rachel is continuing to work on Issue #10. She's sent us pencils for pages 1-8 and it is really looking good. I like that she's taken the script and is making some smart changes to make it better. It's not that what we write is written in concrete and her choices have made the story better.

In other news, we received the final pages and the cover for Issue #9 from Nina, our colorist, which we've sent on to our letterer, Trevor. When he's done, we'll be done with that story arc. Those issues are also known as Mathemagical and introduces a new villain, but we'll wait to get into that closer to its publication.

We're also having a motion comic trailer made for the new issues as well as for our planned Kickstarter. Paul and I discussed various tiers and rewards for crowdfunding. I plan to show it to some other people to get their feedback before we set up the project.

Our efforts to grow our social media presence are still slow. Votes on our weekly poll have been few and far between and views of our YouTube channel have definitely been low. We would really appreciate it if you read this that you would also take a look at our other social media platforms.

This past Saturday, I had a real breakout with The Runaway. As a writer, it's really great when things sort of come together and you can get on a roll. That happened yesterday morning when I was able to write a little over 3500 words in several writing sessions during the morning and early afternoon. I felt like I suddenly got over a hump and was able to keep the momentum going. Feels really good. That said,  I know there is a lot of work still to be done.

I'll just mention it here as a formality, no word still about Familiar Stranger. I guess I'll have to try to reach out, yet again, to my editor to see if anything has happened. I really try not to overly harass people but I don't understand the radio silence that has been going on for months now. Anyone have any suggestions?

I'm still working on the query letter for Broken People. Lying in bed this morning, I had an idea which I got up and wrote out. I'm going to sit on it for a day or so and come back to see if I still like it. Right now I do. I'm not sure if other writers go through this but I sometimes find it hard to put the work out there. I know that rejection is part of the process but that doesn't mean I like it.

This week, finished my review of Cabin in the Sky and published it on Trophy Unlocked as the Saturday Morning Review. Not sure what the next review will be as we rewatched a film we'd already reviewed on Friday, Big Hero 6. I have a couple in reserve so I'm sure there will be something next Saturday as well.

Next week promises to be busy. I need to get going on reaching out to people on behalf of Powers Squared and Broken People while also keeping moving forward on everything else.

A Week in Writing #228

Writing is a business, even though sometimes it feels like a non-profit. Nearly everyone who sits down at a computer to write poetry, screenplays, novels or whatever wants to do it for a living. I'm no different than anyone else when it comes to that. For many, like myself, the first step is to find an agent and that's what I'm in the process of doing for Broken People.

Of course, the first step is to finish the novel, which I've done. For fiction, I cannot emphasize enough how important that is. I have a friend who writes mostly non-fiction, who shared with me his desire to write a fiction novel. He talked about knowing some agents and thought he could write a few chapters and see if they would represent him. I tried to tell him then, and I'm saying it here again, that you need to complete the work first and not only complete it but rewrite/edit/tighten, etc., before he submits it. It may seem like an arduous undertaking, but it's something you have to do to be taken seriously.

I know there are other steps like writing a good query letter and a synopsis but I wanted to put together the agent list, which I felt would be a time-consuming activity. If you decide to go this route, I would suggest a spreadsheet to track your submissions. I've done this in the past, so I was already planning on doing one this time as well. An advantage I found was that I could use the VLookUp function in Excel to see if I had already queried a particular agent or agency about Killer Blog, which you may remember is another version of the story.

I started with a list off of Query Tracker, which I've used in the past. I remember scrapping the data to have been easier in the past, and it might be easier if I was a paid or premium member of the site. So, I began by filtering on agents that handle the mystery genre, copying and pasting what I could from that list into Excel and going from there. Something that I couldn't stop from copying, which I decided to keep, was the country of the agent, which is represented by a flag. While I don't have anything against Canada or the UK, I imagine agencies in those countries are more interested in helping writers from those countries, so I didn't delete them but put them into a different ranking.

So my list started with 327 agents. I'm in the process of ranking them from 1 to 6. Since there may be more than one agent at an agency, I figured I might have 1 through 3 that I might consider querying. I'm thinking in the case of an agent who is also the head of the agency I might consider querying another agent there. This sorting is still in progress. For the those who might be a good fit but are in other countries, I'd rank 4. Now there are 17 who are either in the UK or Canada.

If I've previously queried an agent I ranked them as 5. I'm thinking of also including those who only accept mailed queries. These would be second-tiered as they are sort of behind the times.

Those ranked 6 would be those who are not currently open to queries or who don't list mysteries in their online bios or in the genres that the agent/agency accepts. For 6, there are 175 agents so you can see the original list is quickly decreasing. I did add in one agent from the Writer's Digest Novel Writing Conference who wasn't in the Query Tracker's list but handles Mysteries, so that's one going the other way.

I'll continue with this list and update you as I do but I think I'm going to have a final starting list of between 80 and 90 agents/agencies. Then there'll be the harder work of coming up with a good query letter and a good synopsis. I'm thinking some of that can be used from the Killer Blog querying.

As far as actual writing, I did some more work on revising The Runaway. I'm up to page 100 and about 17,459 words. A little less than a 1000 words a day, but not too bad really.

This week in Powers Squared, there was more progress on Issues #9 and 10. Our artist sent us some more character sketches as well as thumbnails for pages 1-8. Rachel had some good ideas that we hadn't thought about. That's one thing that I enjoy about the collaboration is the sharing of ideas from both her and Nina. The goal is to make the comic book better so we're open to any ideas.

Nina sent us pages 13-16 from Issue #9 and Trevor sent us some updates for Issue #8, though I think we might not be done. Again we're all going back and forth to make sure we're happy with the end result.

Paul and I did our weekly vlog on our now rechristened YouTube page, Powers Squared Comic. This week, we talked about all the above as well as the origins of villains Dr. Horatio Atlas and Instructor Agnes Miller, who were first introduced in the first two issues. You can watch our latest post here. While you're there, please feel free to subscribe and ring the bell; your support is always appreciated.

This past week's poll on Powers Squared received its most votes, four. That might not seem like much but it is a huge improvement over 0 and 1 which have been more of the norm. This week's question, "Who would you rather be friends with Kirby, Steve or Don?" has received three votes, but the week is still early. You can vote, too, on the website.

All of the other things I wrote last week that I wanted to work on didn't happen so that's what goals are for.

With the end of the Christmas season, I went through all the social media platforms and updated the avatars and homepage images that had once been adorned with Marty and Eli in Santa Hats back to just Marty and Eli. For some reason, I had issues with changing Tumblr and went around and around trying to update the image. I followed all the steps but when I hit Save, the image would revert back to Santa Hats. I even wrote to Tumblr help to find out what I was doing wrong. After that, I asked Paul if he would let me show him what I was doing. Same steps but this time the image updated, so in case Tumblr is seeing this, I no longer need your help, but thanks.

Last, but not forgotten, completed and posted a review for Way Out West for Trophy Unlocked. We watched this film a week ago in prep for watching Stan & Ollie, which came out late last year. We saw the film just this morning so there will most likely be a review next week.

So plenty to work on in the week of writing ahead. See you next week.

A Week in Writing #223

The big news for Powers Squared this week is the new banner and channel description we've put up on the YouTube website. The image was done by Rachel Wells. Paul wrote most of the description, which was better than the one I came up with, something along the lines of  "A weekly exercise in futility as two men try in vain to grow their social media in a series of unviewed vlogs."

Seriously, we would appreciate it that if you read this blog you'll also take a look at our latest video and would like it even more if you could subscribe and ring the bell so you can receive  notifications when new videos are available. They're the usual rubbish and no longer than a few minutes, so it won't take long to show your support.

Seeing as this is the end of the month, we've received eight pages from Rachel, bringing us up to page 16 and four more pages from Nina, bringing that part up to page 8. Trevor also lettered three pages, so it seems to be firing on all cylinders.

This is the week that both Powers Squared and Trophy Unlocked made their first appearances on Pinterest. While I've had an account for awhile, I had never really done anything with it, other than collect pins on a private board. I decided that maybe it would be another way to publicize both. Pinterest brings up to six the number of social media accounts we now have for Powers Squared. For Powers Squared, I'm trying to upload images from the comic book pointing back to the website. I started with the main characters and will hopefully be adding more as the days go on.

Speaking of Trophy Unlocked, we had a bit of milestone this week as Trevor's review of
Starlink: Battle for Atlas for the Nintendo Switch makes the 900th one on the blog Paul started 8 years ago.

We also got the Christmas Holiday reviews started with Trevor's review of the animated The Tailor of Gloucester (1993), an adaptation of a Beatrix Potter story. Recently, Trevor has really gotten into Potter's artwork and this seemed like a natural for him to review and to kick off the season.

On that subject, I came across a Christmas review that I had done but had not published, Laurel and Hardy's Babes in Toyland (1934), aka March of the Wooden Soldiers. That will most likely appear before we wrap up our annual salute to Holiday films.

I also published my review of A Star is Born (2018), just on the tail end of its theatrical run. We don't see all movies when they first come out so it's no slam on the film that it took so long to get a review written. Publishing it became tricky with the milestone, so it had to be fitted in before it got to be too old. Oh, the joys of blogging.

In other writing, I finally finished my rewrites on Broken People, though there may be some tweaking to come. It sort of felt a little anti-climatic to finish it. While rewrites are a bit of a beast, I get nostalgic for the process as I'm finishing it. This one, as I've discussed, was more than just rewriting but also blending two stories into one. I sort of changed the ending, as I took the better of the two previous ones with a bit of a twist. Right now, its 94,281 words and 519 pages.

And just when you think you're done hearing about it, I do have news on the editor and Familiar Stranger. It seems he had a birthday recently, which means he's still alive, so one question answered. In my greeting, I slid in something like "Hope to hear from you soon" to which he replied that I would be soon. Now soon isn't exactly a definitive time but this was the first acknowledgement from him in months, so who knows, something might actually come of it. I guess the keyword here is "Might" but at least there's hope. And what a better way to start out the holidays.

A Week in Writing #220 - Radio Silence Really Sucks

Do you ever have weeks where you feel like being nice isn't paying off? I have that feeling about my editor on Familiar Stranger. It's been two months since I received any pages and then it was only the first 50 with only grammatical changes. We've talked once since, not for lack of trying on my part, I've called him several times, though spaced out over weeks, left voicemails and no response. I've texted and I've written emails, but nothing. I've tried to be lighthearted about it but what I'd like to ask is what the @$#!! is going on? You're raised to be nice, so I asked if it's something I've said or done, instead. I'm truly getting tired of being ignored, especially when he said he wanted to do the editing, said he liked to work with me and even when we did speak, say pages would be forthcoming. I don't understand the radio silence.

There seems to be a lot of that going on. We're not hearing regularly from either the artist or colorist on Powers Squared. Not sure what's up with that either. The only communique has been an invoice from the colorist, which I paid. Usually, that means pages are coming but so far nothing. I would have thought they might ask about the L.A. fires, make sure we're alright since we're about ten miles from one of them but no.

Paul and I did our seventh Week in Powers Squared vlog on our channel where we share what's new this week. It's pretty short, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/FUwtUAB1f3A.

Thus concludes our ranting section of this week's post.

On the writing side, I've continued to make edits on Broken People. The rewrites are in two stages. There are the pencil and paper edits and there are the updates to the manuscript based on those. With the former, I'm up to page 299 and with the latter, page 197.

What happened this week, is that before dinner, I was working on reviews for Trophy Unlocked, after dinner updating the manuscript and then before bed the pencil and paper edits. I would say that for the most part, it seemed to be working.

As far as Trophy Unlocked, I wrote a future one for The Secret Bride, a film I happened to see on Monday night. With that completed, I wrote one for our Chrismas season on How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the original TV special from 1966. With that completed, I began working on one for The Santa Clause. When that's done, we'll have one more needed for the Christmas reviews that will be published on the December Saturdays leading up to the holiday.

For the Saturday Morning Review, published Shadow on the Wall (1950) as part of our Noirvember celebration.

I wish there was more to talk about. I'll be trying to contact everyone this week so maybe I won't be ranting about radio silence again next week. Until then, keep writing.

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.