A Week in Writing #623 - Report From the Front: San Diego Comic-Con 2026

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

As promised, this is coming to you a day late. We did arrive back yesterday from San Diego Comic-Con, but I wasn't really at my best to tell you everything or really anything.

While I did attend several panels, at least one a day, several of them didn't live up to their titles nor did they really apply to what I'm trying to do. You go into them, hoping to be inspired by the muses, but many tines you only come away with the bios of the muses instead.

The first one I attended was:

How to Get Press Coverage - July 22
Moderator: Rik Offenberger
Alexander Raymon
Francis Sky
Ed Catto
Chris Squire
Todd Spear

I've been to this panel for several years, but it doesn't hurt to get a refresher every year.

A press release for an issue needs to include a cover, what it is about, and when is it coming out. But you need to sell the story of how you got there.

They also dealt with getting your book in retail stores, so in that case you're first marketing to the retailer and then marketing to the consumer. (Note: The how you do that is not addressed.)

They also suggested a way to get publicity is to do an event for charity or a public library and try to get the local press interested in it. If you can get news coverage, like your local network affiliate, you can use that clip in other ways down the line.

It was also said that when you table at a comic convention, you need to show passion for your product. One way to do that is to stand up at the table the whole time. That way you can engage with people.

Build Your Own World and Intellectual Property - July 23

Moderator: Lorran Garrison

Britton Payne

Tara Harrison Avery

Mark Nazal

Quinn McGowan

John Jennings

This, I'm sorry to say, was the least useful of the panels. Again, it wasn't a how-to discussion but rather the personalities and whom they were trying to represent with their creations. There are a lot of niche markets in comic books and the panel represented those. I was hoping to learn how to build a world rather than knowing what others had built.

Pitching Animation in 2026: What Buyers Want Now - July 24

Moderator: Sam Goff

Malia Dawkins-Jennings

Patrick Stou

Bill Drasta

David Trumble

John Rauschelbach 

Since Sam Goff is a talent manager, it should come as no surprise that the panelists were her clients.

They did emphasis that if you're not in the animation business, you're going to need at least one of the following to get into to pitch:

An agent

An Entertainment Attorney

Manager

This was a fast-paced panel using slides that they informed us we should take photos of, so it was hard to do that and take notes, so I'm going to show photos. Apologies for being over to the side of the screen and for the woman's hairdo being in some of the photos, but I hope these will help.

These are the slides from one pitch deck presented:

There will be two distinct pitchdecks. One that you will use for the demo and one to leave behind. They're similar, but the leave behind one should include contact information.

Also, while the presenters were good, they never said if any of the projects they presented were picked up.

The Future of Kickstarter Comics - July 25

Moderator: Chris Hacker

Sean Edgar

Jeff Smith

Eric Powell

John Layman

Rob Guillory

Natalie Andrewson

A bit of a misnomer, as this was not the future of comics on Kickstarter, but rather a panel of established artists and creators discussing their next projects or how they've used Kickstarter in the past. Sean Edgar is noteworthy as he is the new director of comics and collectibles at Kickstarter. Very entertaining but not very informative on what is happening next on the platform.

The Dos and Don'ts to Kickstart Your First Comic - July 26 

Moderator: Barbra Dillon

Shannon Bailey

Ash Troub

Kat Calamia and Phil Falco

Sean Edgar

Even though I have done two successful Kickstarters, I'm no expert, so I was hoping to learn here. However, these are not first-timers at this and since Shannon and Ash represent major brands, Todd McFarlane and Boom!, respectively, they aren't coming at this proces as unknowns. Kat and Phil are very savy at Kickstarters, doing, at their own admission, 2 to 3 a month, however, they have also garnered a niche market with LGBTQ works.

To be transparent, we have had Kat on our podcast, backed one of their Kickstarters and even hired her to advise on our second one with Arthmeric. Still, I'm a little off put by their constant Kickstarters, which all, to their credit, seem to be very successful. I'm just not into Kickstarters as a way of life.

Still, their advise would mean slightly more than the others, since they are in the same field as Powers Squared., indie comics. They were high on women-led stories and horror, two things our book is not about.

General advice:

Don't Over Promise and Under Deliver

Simplify Your Page

Use Graphics to Know What They're Getting

Have Preview Pages and Covers

Make Sure Your Thumbnail is Good (You can also change it during the Kickstarter)

Add a video to your Kickstarter, 1-2 minutes. (According to Edgar, Kickstarters do better with one)

Add a pre-launch page 2 weeks to a month ahead. The length of time varies, but you don't want to have one for six months, as it will go stale.

Don't start one around Christmas or January.

According to Edgar, October is "On Fire"

Launch early in the week: Monday or Tuesday, and early in the morning, but not midnight

You can add add-ons and stretch goals as the project moves forward.

On the personal side, we were able to meet our fourth colorist in person for the first time ever. Ninakupenda Gaillard was an Eisner Award nominee for Best Coloring for Chickenpox written by Remy Lai (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers). We're very proud to have been her starting point in professional coloring.

Powers Squared creators, Trevor, Paul and David Hankins meet Eisner-nominated
and former Powers Squared colorist Nina Gaillard at SDCC 2026.

Speaking of Powers Squared colorists, our current and longtime one, Julia Canon, took over our podcast for the week, and on Friday did a two+ hours presentation on her techniques. You can watch it on our twitch channel for the next few days, listen to it here or watch it on our YouTube channel any time after Wednesday at 2:30 pm. Many thanks to her. 

Speaking of On the Air with Powers Squared, we tried to line up some new guests while in San Diego, but until they're confirmed, we won't divulge names. No reason to needlessly get your or our hopes up.

Oddly enough, while SDCC didn't grant us a table, we did manage to sell two trades, thanks to the San Diego Comic Fest table in the mezzanine. At the News Coverage panel, a representative from the Comic Fest asked if anyone had books they wanted to present. I had taken our four trades (3 Powers Squared and 1 The Blade of Miracles) with me and let them use them. When I went back up to take a photo, two of them were gone, even though it wasn't supposed to be a sales opportunity.

There were four trades on the table when I left, but only two when I returned.

On a personal note, I walked over the five days, including Preview Night, 82,537 steps (36.88 miles) and burned 18,255 calories.

Work continued without us on the new issue of Powers Squared, as our artist submitted two new pages (19 and 20) for review.

I also did some writing on a possible script for our spinoff story, Billy and Raven. It needs more work, but I got it from concept to 20 pages.

Even though we were out of town, there was a new Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked, John Wick: Chapter 4 written by Paul, continuing our summertime look at the franchise. No new review from me this week.

This next week, I need to work on the newsletter and questions for our next guest on the podcast.

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

A Week in Writing #622 - Prepping for SDCC

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

San Diego Comic-Con is next week and there are a lot of preparations that have to be made before going; planning out panels, exclusives and the like. I will admit I'm not a big participant in the prep for the event, as my wife and two sons really have their pulses on what's going on. I do appreciate their efforts. I chime in with what panels I'd like to attend, but I'm not really big on autographs or exclusives. There are several panels I'd like to attend, but I also want to walk the floor, and, dare I say it, attend Hall H for the first time in 20 cons.

With the panels I attend, I'll be sure to write something up here next week, though, please be kind, that might not appear until Monday. You are forewarned.

A point of interest, is that our fourth colorist on Powers Squared, Nina Gaillard, will be at SDCC and is nominated for an Eisner Award. We hope to actually meet her for the first time in person and we, of course, hope she wins.

I took it on myself to do a better job cataloging the podcasts. Several are gone and some remain only in audio format, but I've finished cataloging all available 492 podcasts and videos, including our most recent one, OAPS #360 - "SDCC 2026 Prep + Unboxing", sort of keeping with the theme of Con prep mentioned above. If you watch our raw podcasts on Twitch, a couple of weeks ago, we attempted to unbox SRCC 70th Anniversary t-shirts, only to find that we received the wrong order. That was rectified, but we had other reasons for waiting, which I won't get into here. However, the t-shirts were correct and we talked about the new trades, one each for Powers Squared and for The Blade of Miracles. You can still watch it on twitch.tv for the next few days, listen to it here (where you can also find the other platforms it's on), or wait and watch it on our YouTube channel after 2:30 pm on Wednesday.

Julia Canon, our colorist turned artist turned colorist, will be hosting the podcast in our absence, but again there will be delays in getting the video to audio, which will have to wait for our return next week. Catch her on our twitch channel next Friday at 6 pm.

I think I'm finally done with Blackmail, though I won't be doing anything with it until Fall. I've learned that many agents take the Summer off or very slowly, so I won't start the query drudge until then.

I also worked on a couple of outlines for possible stories for Billy and Raven, characters we spun out last year into their own book this year, "Life on the Road".

No new review from my this week, sorry to say. The Saturday Morning Review was Paul's review of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. Today, we published Trevor's review for Descendants: Wicked Wonderland.

Next week, I'll have to start working on the next newsletter, and work on questions for our next guest on the podcast, creator Demi Naito, who will be on August 7.

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

A Week in Writing #620 - Happy 5th!

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing and that you had a happy and safe 4th.

With the 250th birthday of America upon us, we decided to spend our podcast on Friday talking with Lucas Scheffel, a comic book creator from Australia, who also happens to have a Master's Degree in American History. Lucas was making his 12th appearance on our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared. We covered a lot of topics and it's always fun to have him on. You can watch it on our twitch channel for the next few days, listen to it now, or watch it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday after 2:30 pm PDT.

The big goal for the week was the newsletter, which we finished and sent this morning. We may not have all the subscribers we'd like but we try to be consistent. The newsletter covers all things Powers Squared and The Blade of Miracles. I've given up asking you to join the mailing list, so you're left on the outside regarding The Hound Dogs' Howl.

Work continues on the next issue of Powers Squared. The first eight are colored and lettered and the next six have been drawn with work on pages 15 and 16 this week. But the issue won't be coming out until next year.

No word from SDCC about tabling. I did reach out to them and ask if I could find out where we were on the waitlist. They did answer back but, of course, didn't answer my question in the least: "Thank you for reaching out and letting us know you'll be able to take any last minute openings. If we have something for you, we'll contact you." Do they work for agents, as that sounds like a form letter, I may be reading it wrong, but I'm not confident at this point. Still, I feel like I have to be ready. I've reached out to our printer about getting books ready, but we're not getting the proofs until Monday, so a big order, just in case. Got to cover my bases.

No new review from me this week. Things sort of got away from us this weekend. Saturday night we were cooking out and making smores, so a movie wasn't really in the cards, though we sort of had A Hard Day's Night on; what's more patriotic than that? The Wednesday Game Day review on Trophy Unlocked, was Paul's review of 007 First Light. The Saturday Morning Review was Trevor's review of John Wick: Chapter 2. And we had a surprise Sunday morning review of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, also written by Trevor.

I did get a chance to work on Blackmail and I'm sort of happy to say I'm almost done; two more chapters to go. I'm at 88,612 words. I'll be finishing it this week. Sorry to see it end in a way.

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

A Week in Writing #612 - Blackmail Gets Short Shrift

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Week in Writing #609 - It's Never Easy

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

I seem to be having troubles with alarms lately. First, it was one of our smoke detectors that was going off with an "error" every 24 hours or so, until I finally had to disconnect it. Now it's our home alarm. I received an email that I hadn't tested it in awhile, so I decided to do that one night. But testing revealed a bunch of issues I wasn't aware of before, and now the alarm is sort of on the fritz, and goes off once a day as well. I tried to work with their AI assistant but sometimes you want to talk to a real person, like all the time, and I finally was able to after about an hour of trying to make it work. The fix will apparently take time, not the alarm company's fault, but it's just another hinderance into getting things done.

Our podcast this week was a conversation with Joshua Pruett, a TV and book writer, who got his start as a storyboard artist. Really engaging conversation, he was funny, witty and appreciative. Great time talking with him, but then the issues started. We've been having some issues with volume, which you might have noticed if you've listen regularly, like you should. Well, in order to fix that Paul had to render the video separately and make the audio version later. But somewhere along the way, 10 minutes got cut off, which no one noticed until I was putting the video up on YouTube. I knew the run time but every version I put up on YouTube was 10 minutes short. I thought I had done something wrong. Paul had to re-render the video and make a new audio file, but then the video was too big to pass using a thumbdrive. Anyway, we were able to replace the audio file, which I didn't know was possible, and load the complete video. For this effort, you can listen to it, in its completeness here, watch in on our twitch channel for the next few days, or watch in on our YouTube channel starting on Wednesday at 2:30 PDT.

Work continues on the next issue of Powers Squared, as our aritst has been working on one page at a time, two a week. The results are pretty good, so I'm feeling good about the upcoming story arc, though it will probably be 2027 before they come out, as we try to release 3 to 4 a year.

Despite all the alarm fun, I'm onto the last chapter of Blackmail. I had to make some changes and I'm hopeful I'll get done early next week. I'll probably do another read through, digitally, and check for commas, and spelling issues before putting it to bed.

As far as reviews, I'm currently working on one for Le Ballet Mécanique, a surrealist short from 1924. I think I watched it in film school at some point but I wanted to share it with the family and it was short. This is like the third or fourth silent movie I've reviewed in a row, so maybe next time it'll be a talkie. But the reviews keep coming on Trophy Unlocked. The Game Day Wednesday review as Trevor's for God of War: Sons of Sparta, and he followed that up with the Saturday Morning Review of Exit 8 (8番出口), a Japenese film he and his brother saw this week.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week. And if you ever have any questions or comments, let me know.

A Week in Writing #608 - Always Looking Forward

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

I'd like to think that I'm always looking forward and trying to make this better. Some of that comes with my own writing, and the future of Powers Squared. The latter was the point of our most recent podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared. In our latest episode, Paul and I discussed possible future storylines for the comic book, including the current issue we're working on. If you're curious, you can watch it now on twitch.tv, or listen to it here, or wait and watch it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday, April 15 after 2:30 pm PDT.

Speaking of the current issue we're working on, our artist had some trouble getting started, equipment malfunctioning, but has pretty much completed the first two pages and it's good to see pages coming forward.

I'm still working on the edits of Black Mail. I don't know if you've ever had this happen to you. I'm working on the book and the days of the week don't work out as well as I had hoped. I'm going to have to make some adjustments. I thought about moving the start of the book back a day, but I decided that wouldn't work out any better, so I'm going to have to make changes at the end to match. So more rewrites than I expected. Based on edits, the word count has actually dropped slightly to 87,543.

I finished a new review for Tol'able David (1921) for Trophy Unlocked. While I usually don't know when a review will go up, I'm lobbying for November 21, which would be 105 years since it's original release. This week, the Saturday Morning Review was Paul's for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

Next week, I'm going to continue working on edits for Black Mail and hopefully reviewing more pages for Powers Squared.

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

A Week in Writing #600 - Not My Best Week

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

Not a banner week for me to say the least. And there are a number of factors involved, but I was never able this week to really sit down and write, like I wanted to. I won't go into specifics, but everything aligned this week to keep me from doing too much. My main goal was to work on Blackmail, but the word count changed miniscully to 82,690, which is less than a 100 words up from last week. I've done a lot of thinking about it but that doesn't get words on the page or in the computer.

We had better success with our guest on our podcast On the Air with Powers Squared. Heidi Neunhoffer, a Lorcana artist that the boys liked, was at Pasadena Comic Con, at the table across from us. She agreed to do the show and I think it went very well. Turns out we both went to the same college, though I imagine it was close to 40 years apart. Besides that, she was very open about her craft. I think it could have gone on much longer, but I think we got in a lot at over 81 minutes. You can still watch it for the next few days here (our twitch channel) or listen to it ,or find other platforms to listen to it, here. There is always the option to watch in our YouTube channel at 2:30 pm PST on Wednesday.

Two new pages of Powers Squared were worked on and I really like the artwork. Not sure how the coloring or the lettering is going, but we should have a new issue done in a couple of months. Not quite the assembly line, but pretty good.

No word yet on either WonderCon or ComicCon where we are currently on the waitlist.

Had some printing issues this week, trying to communicate. The printer used a sort of message board where you ask about a particular order or issues in general. However, for whatever reason, if I post a message, I can't see it and when they post a message, I can't see it either. That's not good to say the least.

My review of Little Amélie or the Character of Rain went up on Saturday. It's one of the films nominated for Best Animated Feature. While I fear what the Academy will do, this one should win, but I'm set for disappointment. I'm currently working on a review for Till The End of Time (1946), which will go up sometime in the future.

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

A Week in Writing #568 - A Weird Week

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

A short week with a National holiday at the end really sort of threw me off my game. Let's begin with Thursday. I didn't submit a new query. I know I said I would, but I figured no one was going to react on the 4th of July and I didn't want to start the DNR clock on anything queries. I know it's an excuse, but it makes sense, at least it did to me.

Friday, even though we had pre-taped the podcast, we all forgot about it until about 6:40 pm, only 40 mnutes late. It went up and if I hadn't told you that, you probably wouldn't have known. But we're all about honesty here. This podcast was our 19th Comic Book Club, yes 19. We were a small party of four, with only Julia Canon joining Trevor, Paul and myself in discussing Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo: Ice and Snow. You can still catch it on twitch for a little longer this time (one week), listen to it now here or watch it on YouTube when it goes up on Wednesday, July 9 at 2:30 pm PDT.

On Saturday, which is usually a night that we watch a movie that I review, we instead watched A Minecraft Movie, which Paul is reviewing. So no new review from me for two weeks in a row. As I said, this is a weird week. That said, the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked was my review of Gulliver's Travels, the 1939 film, which was the second animated feature film made; the first being Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

My big project this week was to write the Powers Squared newsletter, The Hound Dogs' Howl, which I'm happy to say went out on time, so something worked this week. This was our June wrap up. A typical newsletter, it talks about what happened in the worlds of Powers Squared and The Blade of Miracles during the past month, including new issues for each. We also recounted the news as it relates to Golden Apple, as well as going vertical with the first issue of each book.

There is then a wrap up of the videos we've done, a link to the current audio podcast we had last Friday (see above), a section I call "Heard Around Campus" (since this is supposed to be a school paper), a spotlight on twins, a recommendation, a list of upcoming Powers Squared  milestones, and any social media mentions of us, if there were any. As always, you can subscribe here, if the spirit so moves you. And, it's FREE.

On to Blackmail, the book I'm currently writing. I added the chapter I was thinking about, which accounts for most of my work on the book. The word count is a little more than 49,000 words, so there has been progress.

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

A Week in Writing #567 - Three Down (Well Almost)

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

The three down are in reference to my queries for Past Present. One rejection came in this week, ironically, the last query I sent out was the first rejection I received. I won't go into what it said, but safe to say it was a form letter; what else do you expect these days from agents, other than no response at all? I wonder how many form letter emails I'll receive which will include "...please forgive me for responding with a form letter."

The first one I sent, in late April, has over-ripened into a DNR, as it's been two months. And the second one I sent is a few days away at best from spoiling as well.

And, to top it off, no new query this week. I spent most of Thursday night either getting ready for the trip I mentioned last week, or waiting to talk to the artist who did our podcast this past Friday.

Speaking of On the Air with Powers Squared, Julia Canon, our artist/colorst, hosted the show, bringing in her own guest, Kevin Krust. If you have a good memory, you might remember that we had Kevin on as a guest many moons ago, OAPS # 231 - Attempting to Impart Wisdom, She brought him back for OAPS #305 - The Return of KevinKrust...Hold the Krust. You can listen to it here, or watch it on YouTube on Wednesday at 2:30 pm PDT. And, if you act fast, you can still catch it on our twitch channel but only until next Friday.

Despite being out of town, there was a new review on Trophy Unlocked, Trevor's review of to a T. Since we weren't home, no Friday night movie, no Saturday night movie and no new review from me. We'll have to correct that in due time.

Even though I was away for part of the time, I'm now up to over 47,700 words on Blackmail. I did have an idea for it, so I'm going to add a bit at the beginning of the book to, hopefully, set up the subplot of the book. So for a short week, I managed to write nearly 4000 words. I'm impressing myself with that.

For the coming week, I've got a newsletter to write and a new query to make. I'm also having an issue with the copyright office, which I need to address. Oh, the fun never stops.

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

A Week in Writing #550 - Busy March Ahead

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

I think this is going to be a busy month for me and for Powers Squared. Not only is the 24th issue of the comic book coming out on March 26th, but we're also introducing Trevor's own comic book, The Blade of Miracles, which drops a week earlier on the 19th. And, if that wasn't enough, we're tabling at WonderCon on the 28 through 30th. Come look for us in Small Press, SP-5. This one of those moments when it seems like it could easily get overwhelming, even if that was the only thing going on.

We should be pretty well set for WonderCon. The only thing missing are the trades that I had sent to the bookstore in Hawaii. Since they didn't sell, I thought it would be cheaper to have them returned than to order new ones. I hope that strategy pays off. I first contacted the bookstore about it in mid-January about returning them for WonderCon, and after multiple follow ups, they finally sent them back on Friday the 28th, and then sent them via Media Mail, thinking it would take 4 to 6 weeks to get to me. The timing of that really sucks, but according to Informed Delivery, I should receive them by March 17. Still, I'm not sure why it took so long to get them in the mail and why you'd send them on a timetable that would mean I wouldn't get them until after the event I needed them for?

A lot of work came through for Powers Squared, with both Trevor and Jen finishing 8 pages, well 7 in the latter's case. So, we're about four to five pages away on two issues. We also got in some new artwork from Rachel Wells for the trade we're hoping to put out this year. So more to come on that front as well.

We had Australian comic book creator Lucas Scheffel on our podcast for the 10th time. This time he was on the show to promote his coming Kickstarter for Ned Kelly: The 5 Revolvers #1 | Graphic Novel (which you can find by clicking on the link). You can listen to the podcast now here or watch it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday after 2:30 pm, here. And don't forget you can tune in and watch it LIVE every Friday at 6pm at twitch.tv/powerssquared.

This was also newsletter day today. Did you get your copy of The Hound Dogs' Howl? If you didn't, please sign up here.

My review of Anora, went up this afternoon, ahead of the Oscars. Paul's review of Daredevil (+ Director's Cut) was Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review. We also watched Conclave last night, but that review won't go up until some time after Awards season is over.

Did some work this week on Blackmail including a thousand+ word sit down on Friday afternoon. I'm about 9200 words in and it's more a mater of time than things to write.

So this week, have to make sure all the books are uploaded for publication and write a news release about all that's going to happen this month.

I hear you, what no querying? No, sorry that's something that I didn't get to this week. I may not get to it until April at the earliest, given all that needs to get done this month.

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

A Week in Writing #541 - The Christmas Week That Was

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing. Hope everyone has a Happy and safe New Year's Eve.

Things have sorted of slowed down this past week. There were a couple of big events this week, something called Christmas seemed to really dominated the week. A lot of fun, and, if you're curious, I got some music and books amongst other things. The day following Christmas is unofficially called Movie Day in my house, when we watch/rewatch movies. We still believe in physical media, so we end up watching discs we got, which are usually films we had seen previously in the year.

All that and I did get some writing done. To begin with, I worked on Skylar some, of course not as much as I might have liked. I have about 76 pages to go with this rewrite, so progress is being made.

Trophy Unlocked was busy with four reviews up this week. My review of Sin Takes a Holiday (1930), was the Saturday Morning Review. Before that on Christmas Day was Trevor's review of The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland (2024). On Christmas Eve, was my review of Red One. Coincidentally, both of these films were released on the same day. The week started off with Paul's review of Awaria.

I did write a new review this week for Larceny, Inc., but I wouldn't expect it to see the light of day until next Christmas at the earliest.

On Powers Squared, Trevor finished lettering issue #26, so we're only one issue behind schedule. Nothing to report on the other issues being worked on.

 

We did make a special announcement on this week's On the Air with Powers Squared podcast. Trevor's own book The Blade of Miracles is going to come out next year under the SRCC Press banner. There are still some logistics to be worked out but it was big news for the last podcast of the year. You can listen to it here, on our website, where you can also find other platforms, and, or watch it on New Year's Day when it premieres on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared) at 2:30 pm here.

I also worked some on the newsletter, The Hound Dogs' Howl, which will be coming out next week. Never to late to sign up for it, just enroll at SRCC here. It's free and you get a digital copy of the first issue to boot.

A bit of sad news to report. Powers Squared had our first signing at our local comic bookstore, Galaxy of Comics. We just learned today that the proprietor of that store, Warren Jaycox, was killed in an accident yesterday. My condolences to his family and friends over their loss.

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

A Week in Writing #512 - A Week of Reviews/New Issue

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

Rather than a week in review, this was a week of reviews, as I spent most nights this past week finishing reviews for Trophy Unlocked. I know that doesn't sound like a week's worth of work, but given how things are going, that took the week. A couple of the reviews were pretty far along, American Graffiti and X-Men: Apocalypse, but another was barely started, Pushover. Then there is finding images, spell checking, adding links, posting and placing the images and that takes longer than you might think.

As it turns out, Pushover was the Saturday Morning Review on the blog. That was more of a late Friday night decision but that one's up. The X-Men review will have to wait for summer and I'm not sure when American Graffiti will appear; let's not get ahead of ourselves.

In other news, we have a new issue of Powers Squared coming out on Wednesday. "Mission: Istanistan, Part 2". This issue is a continuaiton of "Mission: Istanistan, Part 1". In that issue, the U.S. military enlisted Marty and Eli to help stop a rogue nation, Istanistan, from deploying a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) that they've been developing. Eli volunteers to teleport into the site and, using telepathy, Marty relays instructions on setting an explosive. But things go wrong and Eli is captured. Even though the Army tells Marty there is nothing they can do, he takes it upon himself to mount a rescue. But things again do not go according to plan. You'll have to read the issue to find out what happens. The issue will be available in print and digital through our website's store, The Campus Store. It's where the Hound Dogs shop.

Not a lot this week with Powers Squared. Our colorist's computer has been on the fritz for awhile, so we don't yet have her pages and I'm not sure when we'll be seeing art from our artist (see last week's post for details on that situaiton.) And no work forward yet on finding a replacement, other than some texts with our current colorist.

Our podcast had a guest all lined up, Lucas Scheffel, the creator of Angry Fred and Gary Gorilla, but he had a family emergency and had to postpone. Luckily, we had recorded a short preview on Issue #21 in April and were able to slot it into the OAPS timeslot. You can listen to it on our website (which also has links to the other platforms it appears on) or wait and watch it Wednesday afternoon on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared).

As always, Skylar got the short shrift. I did find myself editing another of the books, The Runaway, sort of by accident. I was looking for something else, but opened the title and started reading and editing as I went along. A real edit job awaits before I would submit for query, but I think it reads pretty well.

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

A Week in Writing #508 - Fun with Podcasts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Week in Writing #498 - Newsletter and Podcasts

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

Sort of a busy week, though mostly behind the scenes sorts of stuff.

Every month, like it or not, we publish The Hound Dogs' Howl, our monthly newsletter on all things Powers Squared. Now, a lot of this is rather routine stuff, however, the lead, a feature about twins, A Heard Around Campus bit, as well as a recommendation have to be written. And wait for it, here comes my monthly pitch to have you, dear reader, consider signing up for it by enrolling in San Romero Community College. It's FREE!

This week's podcast features Moni Barrette, the Director, Collection Development & Publisher Relations at LibraryPass Comics Plus was our guest. While we try to have this be a conversation, questions still have to be drafted and reviewed. Moni talked about her career as well as getting comic books in libraries, one of which ways is through Comics Plus, which is what we're doing with Powers Squared. You can listen to the podcast now here or wait until Wednesday and watch it here.

I'm growing more and more frustrated with GoDaddy, which our website uses. Every Sunday morning, I upload the previous Friday night's podcast to the YouTube and the new peek-of-the-week to the website. I then update the website with links to the new video, update other pages related to the peek-of-the-week, especially when it involves the cover and then write and schedule two social media posts to coincide with the new data.

The last thing I need at 7 o'clock on a Sunday morning is for GoDaddy to f### up, which it did today. For some reason, the new color cover wasn't inserting like it should. There had been a black and white ink cover that was being replaced with the colored version. But, oh no, GoDaddy wouldn't do it. I manged, after several attempts to get the colored version to show up on the pages I wanted to put it on, including in addition to the peek-of-the-week page but also The Campus Store and the page about the issue. I try to keep them in sync, as it doesn't make sense to have a peek-of-the-week that is already available elsewhere on the website.

The biggest problem I had was in trying to do the social media posts. The colored version wouldn't insert, but rather the previous black and white one would insert in its place. I tried to remember what GoDaddy had advised I do when things didn't seem to work, which was to clear the cache. This is something I hate to do, since I have relog into every app and, surprise, surprise, that doesn't always go well, as the saved password for whatever reason doesn't match the password it's supposed to be per the site. I'm still not completely logged into X as a result. The better solution, since that didn't fix the problem, was to reload the image; that worked. If anyone has a good suggestion to replace GoDaddy, I'm all ears. Leave it in the comments.

Well, I finished my review of X-Men: First Class and started a new one for Naked Alibi (1954). On Trophy Unlocked, the Saturday Morning Review was Paul's for Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. And ICYMI, Leap Year (1924) made it to the blog. Just as a warning, we're coming up on March and it will be mostly devoted to the God of War franchise, so buckle up.

I did manage some fictional writing this week, but it probably doesn't add up to 1000 words, but there I did do something.

I still have more of that to do, a review to finish, press releases to write and, hopefully, more pages to review from our artist and colorist.

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

A Week in Writing #497 - Monday Was a Great Day

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

I had one of my best days as a writer on Monday. Not only did I finish the review, X-Men: The Last Stand, but I also rewrote the script for "Billy and Raven", a one-shot related to Powers Squared, wrote about 1500 words on my new story and read one of my son's short stories; something I was very overdue at doing. And if that wasn't enough, my entire family built the Megablocks set "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Beatles", which was 681 pieces and took three hours to build.(Note: I'd still be building it if I was doing it if my sons hadn't done the heavy lifting.) Not bad for a free day from the office.

I tried to duplicate the 1000 words again on Tuesday, and sort of barely made it, on Wednesday, I just fell short of 600. None of this, mind you, had anything to do with Skylar, but I have been thinking about making some changes in her backstory, so it's not like I've forgotten that book, it's just that I've had ideas for this newer story.

I still have to write a review this week for X-Men: First Class. Trophy Unlocked will be doing a series of X-Men movie reviews leading up to the release of Deadpool and Wolverine later this year. Only one review this week: Trevor's review of PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie was the Saturday Morning review.

Started working, over the weekend, on the next Hound Dogs' Howl, the Powers Squared newsletter. Still time to sign up for it at https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/srcc. I also need to write a press release or two for upcoming releases. If you're at all curious about the issues, below is a graphic showing when they'll be released through the rest of the year. They'll all be available through The Campus Store as they come out.

Speaking of releases, made the mobi files for the issues this year. I'm not sure why, but it always takes more than one try to make an issue using the software. Sort of frustrating, but the last three went pretty quickly. Paul and I posted the first issue this afternoon, so it will be available for pre-order in a day or so. We also posted the next issue on GlobalComix, so everything seems to be moving forward.

We had our monthly team meeting on Friday for On the Air with Powers Squared, and we all agreed to give Billy and Raven a one-shot. You never know, it might catch on. You can listen here now, or watch the video on our YouTube channel on Wednesday at 2:30 pm PT.

I had to resend the second trade to Library Pass this week. Apparently, the first one failed (?). Next week, we'll get more into the Library Pass when our guest will be Moni Barrette, the librarian we've been working with there. We go Live at 6 pm PT on Friday at twitch.tv/powerssquared.

Just so it's no surprise, no queries yet. Still have some thinking and homework to do on that before I launch into a new soul-sucking round of that.

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

A Week in Writing #496 - Attempting to Impart Wisdom

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

I'm stealing the title for this post from the latest On the Air with Powers Squared podcast. On Friday, Paul, our artist Julia Canon, and I spent about an hour talking with a future comic book creator, Kevin Krust, answering questions he had about doing a book. That reminded me that every so often, I hope that I am doing that here. Sometimes, this is a rant session for me, sometimes just a place to enumerate whatever it was I did or didn't do the previous week, but every so often, I hope some wisdom is imparted, however little that may be.

If you're interested in what we imparted to Kevin, you can listen here now or wait until Wednesday and watch us on our YouTube channel. I don't know what you may think, but I believe Kevin thought we were helpful.

Speaking of Powers Squared, I believe we've set a release date for Issue #20, Mission: Istanistan. The release date will be March 13th. We'll be talking about that release on our March 8th podcast, which will feature everyone connected with its production, including artist Rachel Wells, colorist Julia Canon and letterer Trevor Hankins. Be There and Be Squared. We go live at 6 pm on twitch.tv/powerssquared.

We'll also, hopefully, be talking with Moni Barrette from LibraryPass/ComicsPlus on the March 1st podcast, so you might want to tune in for that as well and find out how we pulled that off.

On the subject of Powers Squared, work continues on Issue #26, "The Great Escape", with Julia sort of outlining pages 15 through 17, the next three pages she'll be working on.

After that, I'm thinking at this point of maybe doing our fourth one-shot in a row, Billy and Raven, which would be the first Powers Squared story not to feature Marty and/or Eli. Billy was first introduced in Issue #1 and Raven in Issue #16 "Mocha and Raven". It would be a big departure for us, but not all of the Archie comics featured Archie. I'll be revisiting that script in prep for that, even if we decide not to do it.

I've also been working with Rachel on some Powers Squared paraphenalia that might come up when we do our next Kickstarter.

On the Trophy Unlocked front, I finished my review of Chang (1927), which was one of the three films nominated at the first Academy Awards for Best Unique and Artistic Picture, losing to Sunrise. I had got to thinking it would be cool to watch and review all six films nominated for the Best Picture categories and Chang seemed the hardest to find. I had to buy a used Image DVD in order to watch it. You'll have to wait for publication to know if I thought it was worth it or not.

I'm still working on my review of X-Men: The Last Stand. I believe there will be a flurry of X-Men reviews on the blog coming out ahead of Deadpool and Wolverine.

The Saturday Morning Review this week was Paul's review of Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief  the 2010 feature and not the Disney+ series. The Wednesday GameDay review was Trevor's for Transformers: EarthSpark - Expedition.

I'm afraid not much other writing happened this week. As usual, Skylar got short shrift again and no queries were sent. This is the part of post where I mention what I didn't do this week and these two items seem to be permanent residents.

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

A Week in Writing #491 - Resizing

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

I don't normally lead with the podcast but I think the one we did on Friday might be of interest. Our guest was Doug Neff, the co-author of Epic Win! The Geek's Guide to the Journey From Fan to Creator; the book that is sort of responsible for this weekly blog. We had him on the show a couple of years ago and had him come back to talk about obstacles for creatives and solutions to work around them. If you're writing a comic book or making a video, you might find it interesting. You can listen to it now on our website:  https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/oaps, or watch it when it drops on our YouTube channel @powerssquared on Wednesday. The link will be https://youtu.be/cR20Ghxstho. While you're there, if you like the content, you can always subscribe and ring the bell so you'll never miss a video. And a comment wouldn't be bad either.

Most of the week, or at least several hours Monday through Thursday, was spent resizing about 92 pages of future Powers Squared pages for the next four issues. We haven't set on dates yet, but the first will probably come out in March. More to come on that.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that Powers Squared was going to be available on LibraryPass in January. Well, that day has come and our first trade, Volume 1, The Adventure Begins is now available at https://lpfullcontent.librarypass.com/publishers/product_lines/277.

LibraryPass is a service provided to high schools and colleges that allows readers to digitally check out books, include comic books. So, if you know someone at those levels, tell them to ask their librarian to choose Powers Squared.

On to other writing, my review of Illicit from about three years ago went up as the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. I also wrote new one for a film called Leap Year (1921). I picked the film for the obvious, 2024 is a leap year, but this was one of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's Paramount films that was shelved after he was charged with manslaughter in connection with the death of Virginia Rappe. Charges he was acquitted on in 1922, by the way. You should be able to read it on the 29th of February.

I was able to spend sometime this week with Skylar. I'm trying to get through a chapter a day with editing. So, I can say I'm actually working on it for a change.

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