A Week in Writing #474 - Already Feeling the Effects

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

So, we're already two weeks into the football season, and I'm aleady feeling the effects. As much as I love watching my team play, it's three-hours that I really can't write, so therefore lose. I know that writing is about making choices but this one, while fun, does hurt the output. So, there are only so many weeks to go and I'll have to figure out better ways of balancing.

Spending most of my time this past week on a couple of projects: re-reading and editing Getting Even and working on editing the pilot script. Of the two, most of the time has been spend with the former. I usually get about two hours a night so I have to make decisions where to spend that time. I'm enjoying going through the book. Of the three I'm working on, this might be the weakest of the three, but I'm still liking the idea of making the three books line up better so that the last two I've worked on will flow better.

There's another one that I'm going to also work on next, Paperback Detective. This one also includes Leanne as a character and I think, from memory, that it happens between Getting Even and The Runaway. Even though I query the book as stand alone with series potential, there's nothing wrong with getting the series in order and the four books: Public and Private; Getting Even: Paperback Detective; and The Runaway have elements that would build on each other.

As far as the pilot script, I'm still working through that but have been spending less time on it, at least, this past week.

On the subject of Powers Squared, I would say we're having some production bumps. Work is being done but sometimes there are edits which seem to be taking longer than I'd like to get made. I'm still hopeful that we'll get through Issue #25 this year, but this will be the first year when we've only produced two issues.

Issue #25, "Yuki-Onna", was the subject of our latest OAPS podcast, more of like a preview of the issue, which Paul wrote. It's a companion to one that Trevor wrote, "Gashadokuro", which was Issue #24. The stories take place at the same time with Marty ("Yuki-Onna") and Eli ("Gashadokuro") each fighting their own battles. You can listen to it here or watch it on Wednesday on our YouTube channel.

On Trophy Unlocked, my review of Batman: The Movie was the Saturday Morning Review. It was Batman Day, and it's Batman Month on the blog. I started working on a new review of Ruggles of Red Gap, so that will be something else I'll work on this week, too.

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

A Week in Writing #472 - Reliving the Past

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

After last week's scare, I've been spending time this past week looking back at some of the books I've written. I started with Public and Private for some reason; I'm not sure why, but I've enjoyed reading and editing it anew. As I had mentioned in last week's post, the stories follow a private detective, J.D. Barrister, and his relationships at the time.

He is hired by an agent to retrieve some incriminating photos of an up-and-coming actress, Cassandra Leonard, whose Oscar chances might be thwarted if the photos are released. Cassandra, who knows the blackmailer, Ritchie Fisher, insists on going with J.D. when he tries to make contact. But when they get to his last known address, they find a murder victim, who is not Fisher. After sending Cassandra away with his gun, J.D. calls his ex-, Debbie Estevez, who is a Robbery-Homicide Detective with the LAPD. When J.D. is considered a possible suspect, Debbie has him go with him on a stakeout of Fisher's last known address before sleeping with him, even though she's engaged to Enrique Sepulveda, a defemse attorney.

J.D. also has a romantic liaison with Cassandra when she invites him to a Christmas Eve party she's throwing. When everyone else leaves, she insists that he stay the night with her. That is also the night that Fisher himself is murdered. And while they supply each other with an alibi, she is still considered a person of interest. Also, when it's discovered that her agent, who is on a sky-holiday with his family in Utah, made a quick trip back to L.A. on Christmas Eve, he becomes a suspect, too.

I'm giving the story in very broadstrokes, but I really enjoyed reading it, and I won't tell you who the actual killer is, that would be giving away too much.

Later in the week, I began a similar read/edit of the book I thought I had lost, The Runaway. This one comes after Public and Private, with another book in between, Getting Even. In that one Leanne, J.D.'s current lover, is introduced. (She ultimately become his wife in the new story I started but that's fodder for a later day). I think I'm going to be spending time over the next week or so doing more of this. Then it's on to finish Skylar and get back to the new story.

The new issue of Powers Squared drops on Wednesday, September 6, so just around the corner. This will be issue #18, "Mocha and Raven, Part 3". I sent out several press releases, but I'm only aware that it appeared on First Comics News, who have been very fair to us. The issue is the culmination of a three issue story arc and we discuss it on out latest On the Air with Powers Squared podcast with everyone involved in the issue on the show, including artist Rachel Wells, colorist Julia Canon and letterer Trevor Hankins on the show. You can listen to it here, or watch it on Wednesday when it drops on YouTube.

Of course, you could also buy the issue when it drops. The links will be added throughout the day on Wednesday when they become available, but they will be on The Campus Store on the website; "Where the Hound Dogs Shop."

As always, would appreciate it if you would sign up for the newsletter.

This is Batman Month on Trophy Unlocked. This got its official kick-off on Saturday with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm written by Trevor. I'm currently working on a review for Gotham by Gaslight, which will appear this month. I'm also working on one for We're in the Money (1935). I hope to get them done tomorrow.

I still need to get back to the Pilot script, you know, with my free time.

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

A Week in Writing #469 - Rethinking the Queries

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

Sometimes it's best to stop doing the same old thing and try something new. I've finally come to that conclusion with my query letters for Broken People. I'm not sure what's not clicking but obviously, after so many query emails and nothing to show for it, I'm going back to the drawing board on it. I'm trying to rewrite how the story begins. Maybe those sample pages will work when the ones I've been sending haven't so far.

I began that quest on Thursday night, my usual night for sending a query letter. In the meantime, I'll consider sending out another story. I was close with Past Present, maybe I'll revive that query letter and send it out. Give me a little time on that one though. I've also got Skylar to finish and a new story to think about. Too much, too much.

A big week for us with our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared. David Petersen, the creator of Mouse Guard, was our guest for a little over two hours. If that seems long, I think we could have gone another hour but I thought two hours was long enough, not only for any listener/viewers but also for us. He was a great interview, very open and funny. You can still catch it on twitch and the audio is available as well. On Wednesday, the video will premiere on YouTube.

Busy week for me with reviews. My Barbie review was the Saturday Morning review on Trophy Unlocked and my review of Oppenheimer was published today. Sorry, it took us a little time to get to Barbenheimer, but life is complicated. We wanted to see Oppenheimer in 70 mm IMAX, but the theater we went to, the TCL Chinese's 70 mm projector failed. I used to really like the Chinese theater, but the last two times have been disappointing. We got free tickets, rather than a refund, but I'm not sure I can count on them to come through. Not sure what happened to the theater, but it's a shell of what it used to be.

I'm also finishing up another review for the blog, Find the Blackmailer, a definite B-movie from 1943.

I've begun working on the rewrite of the pilot script after receiving notes. And I actually had an idea for the book, a story involving one of the boys' friends, Steve. We've sorted of hinted he has a secret and now it gets revealed and it isn't good.

On the subject of Powers Squared, I've been making some updates to the website following some advice from a fellow and more successful creator, Russell Nohelty, whom I talked with at Comic-Con and followed up with post show. He pointed out that it is not apparent how to get a sample of the book, so I'm adding buttons on pages pointing how to do that, as well as where to buy and our weekly peek-of-the-week feature, which, while on the webpage, is sort of hidden under the More tab on the homepage.

I'm always open to making things better.

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

A Week in Writing #468 - Starting to Feel Normal Again

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

Well, two weeks out and I'm starting to feel normal again after Comic-Con. I hate the expression "getting back into the swing of things", though I'm pretty sure I've used it before. Let's just say I'm starting to feel normal again, good or bad, for what it's worth.

After writing last week that I hadn't worked on either Skylar or my new idea, I sat down and started working on a chapter for the new story. It's a bit of a fantasy chapter, so I don't think it will make it whole into the finished work but it was an idea I had to write down nonetheless. I worked on it off and on throughout the week and ended up writing about 3200 words. I may do another round of cleaning it up before getting back to Skylar, which I know I need to finish.

I also worked on the latest edition of The Hound Dogs' Howl and writing a piece on the M-Twins from the Marvel universe. Again, it's only available to enrollees at San Romero Community College, which you are free to enroll in.

I'll admit I was getting frustrated with the slow pace of pages for Powers Squared, but our artist turned in 7 and our colorist 8 this week, so I'm feeling a little better about things.

I've been reading Mouse Guard by David Petersen, as he will be our guest this Friday on our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squard on twitch.tv/powerssquared and later on YouTube. If you've never watched or listened to the podcast before, this might be one you don't want to miss.

Rounding out the updates on Powers Squared, I got feedback on the script and there is a lot to be done to make it better. Something else I want to look at this coming week.

For Trophy Unlocked, I'm currently working on a review for Blondie (1938). We haven't decided yet who will be writing it but we have a review to do for Barbie. Next weekend, we're finally going to see Oppenheimer so we want to do our own version of Barbenheimer when we do. Comic-Con sort of got us off as far as seeing movies when they first come out. I wanted to see Oppenheimer in IMAX and it wasn't until next weekend that opportunities and times worked out.

That may explain why my review of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One didn't appear on the blog until Saturday morning. Sunday saw Trevor's review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, a film we managed to see close to it's original release on Friday afternoon. The first review last week was also Trevor's Game Day review of Tron: Identity for the PC.

To round things out, I did manage a new query this week. I'm down to four "active" queries, which may lead me to redo the synopsis on the query letter and maybe even rewrite the start of the book to bring the action more to the forefront.

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

A Week in Writing #464 - Blame the Fireworks

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

I can't say that this was a banner week for me. Maybe it was the holiday, but I don't think I ever got this week fully off the ground.

Tuesday evening had a lot of promise but blame fireworks for what didn't happen. On that night, about a dozen of teenagers/young adults descended on our neighborhood and took over the intersection a house down from mine. To make a long story short, things got out of hand and the police were called. I'll admit I was surprised at the response, but about five cars showed up.

A couple of the culprits tried to hide out next to one of our neighbor's houses. One neighbor, whose involvement prompted me to call, had video of the shennigans but it took up most of the evening and I didn't get back to writing, as it was already a quarter to 11, which is about the time I'm wrapping things up.

As for the rest of the week, I don't think I have all that much to show for it. I didn't even send out a new query this week, just to show you what it was like for me. I keep getting a late start and never get anything done. I did research some potential agents but by the time I was ready to send something, it was already after 11 and I wasn't up to it.

I also didn't do a review this week. Oh, I wanted to and we were all watching The Woman on the Beach, but even though there was about half an hour to go on the recording, it stopped at about 48 minutes in. And, though I looked, the film wasn't available anywhere to stream; another damnation of the streaming present: Not all films are available to watch. Granted the recording was pretty old, 2015, but I guess I assumed it would still play. I'm wondering now about even older recordings I've been saving. They're probably junk as well. If that's true then draining the DVR won't take as long as I once feared.

Trophy Unlocked didn't wait for me though, and there was a new review out on Saturday morning, Paul's for An American Tail.

Spent a good deal of time the last few days on SDCC, which opens in about ten days. Everyday since Thursday, they've been releasing their program schedule for that day. I'm looking for panels that will "educate" me about whatever it is I'm doing, but I'm sure there are ones I've missed, it's the same thing every year. The other thing about a schedule is that there are always compromises that have to be made as you go along so everything I've earmarked will not come to fruition for me, that's just how it is. Unfortunately, there can be two programs at the same time and I can't be in two places at once. And sometimes, they're too far away (Library) to make it to the next one, etc. As always, I'll write a Report from the Front the Monday I get back.

I look forward to going every year, though I still like I'm a spectator and not really a part of it. I really want to change that and am hoping to make next year the breakthrough year. The only "major" con left this year is LA Comic Con, but it comes at that very awkward time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so attending it is problematic for me. We'll see.

We had a fairly good conversation with the creatives on Powers Squared about A.I. in Media on our podcast on Friday. You can listen to it now at https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/oaps or watch it on Wednesday evening (after 2:30 pm PT) here: https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/videos. It's a link to the YouTube channel on our website.

Next week, we'll be talking about Comic Con at 6 pm PT @twitch.tv/powerssquared and the week after (same time same channel) the women of Powers Squared will be doing the show without us. Those have been some of my favorite shows in the past.

The one thing I think I did do was finish a first draft of the Pilot script. A first draft for me includes several edits but I'm think I'm ready to share. I think it's pretty good, but I'm a bad judge. I'm sure there are things that still need to be fixed with it.

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

A Week in Writing #463 - Pilot Scripts and Newsletters

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

My writing this week took a different bent. I started working again on the pilot script for our proposed series based on Powers Squared. It's something that we've been kicking around for a while now and I finally got back into it. If your curious, there are some subtle changes between the origins of the story in the comic book and what will be in the pilot. I won't go into details but the same basic story will get told but in a slightly different way based on some feedback we've gotten on the idea. I had been trying to work on one scene a night so I'm only about three into it. This is a first draft, mostly for myself, so it won't be the one that sees the light of day.

Just in case anyone thinks differently, I am not a member of the WGA nor am I trying to show this to anyone prior to the end of the current strike. This is, at this point, for myself and Powers Squared. I support the aim of the strike and want all writers to get fair pay and compensation.

To cover it, while I did some work on my new idea, I didn't, this week, work on Skylar. It was more down to time and what I spent it on, which was the script.

Our latest newsletter came out this morning with the usual news about Powers Squared. If you're interested in reading The Hound Dogs' Howl, I encourage you to join the mailing list by enrolling here: https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/srcc. For those of you unfamiliar with it, SRCC stands for San Romero Community College, which is where the story is based. In order to get on the mailing list, you enroll at the school. SRCC is not a real school and there are no fees attached with enrolling. All "classes", such as there are, are free. The only thing that costs are the books and merch. End of ad.

There is currently some momentum on the new issue as our artist dropped the last four pages of the month and has already made the edits Trevor requested. It is his story after all. We're about a month away from starting on its companion issue, written by Paul.

I'm also thinking seriously about a new Kickstarter next year, promoting these new issues as well as a new trade of issues 6 through 9. Stay tuned for that.

No new review for me this week. We ended up watching a movie we had seen before, thanks to my confusion. I had originally written the review for Their Own Desire back in 2019, but it hadn't yet been published. I must have forgotten the title and when looking ahead at TCM last week, the logline sounded more salacious pre-code than I remembered. But seeing it again did help me with putting the photos I'd downloaded with the story, so it is now at least in draft form on the blog.

Three new reviews on Trophy Unlocked this week, though none of them mine. Monday started off with Paul's review of Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, which has proven a very popular post with over 100 hits so far. Wednesday's Game Day review was Trevor's for We Love Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie and the Saturday Morning Review was Paul's for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, an MCU title we did not see in a theater.

One new query this week to round out the checklist and I DNR'd a couple that have spoiled on the shelf. They're the "No Word means 'No'" sort of agencies.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you again next week. And, have a Happy and Safe Fourth of July.

A Week in Writing #461 - Quick Turn Around

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing. And, hey Happy Father's Day to everyone that applies to.

Well, I got one of the quickest turn arounds on a query this week. This was an agency that just wants a letter, so I sent one on Thursday night at 10:32 pm PT. And less that 14 hours later, I received this following rejection at 12:10 pm the next day:

Dear David . . . Thank you for your query for BROKEN PEOPLE. Unfortunately, I'm unable at this time to consider representation, but I wish you the best with your project.

Short and not so sweet from my perspective but at least it's definitive. I will say I've had one rejection sent even quicker like first thing the next morning but this is pretty quick. Of course, nothing to be learned from the experience except the agent is quick.

Moving on -

This past week saw the release of Issue #17 of Powers Squared: Mocha and Raven, Part 2. If you've never done a comic book, there is a lot of work that goes into one and you really want people to read it. Still waiting for it all to someday pay off. We' re half way through with our releases for this year with the next one, which ends the story arc comes out in September.

This morning marked a new round of peek-of-the-weeks for that issue. It's a weekly feature on the website, Instagram and Pinterest. I try to spotlight one panel or image and show its progression from thumbnail to finished work.

I would say we introduced our new colorist, Jen Moreno, on our Friday podcast, but it was more like we met her for the first time. You can listen here or wait until Wednesday to watch it on YouTube.

Adding her to the group reminded me that the SRCC page on the website needs some updating. We're trying to, in a small way, emulate a college catalog so we need to update courses and professors to go along with our new creative team. I have ideas but I want everyone to agree before I implement anything.

Getting some work in on the books. Trevor finished work on Issue #22 and Julia's turning in pages for Issue #24. Since its Trevor's script, we're giving him final approval over the art.

Finished another draft of the Pilot script outline and waiting for feedback. I'd like to work on this project this summer.

Wrote a new review for Trophy Unlocked, this time about The Flash. We squeezed in a showing of it at 2 o'clock on Friday afternoon and I wrote the review that night with some more wide-eyed edits the next morning. It was my idea to go so I thought I should write the review. The post went up on Sunday. 

I was all set to write another one, this time for Armored Car Robbery, part of the drain the DVR, but the recording ended before the movie was over, so I haven't seen  how it ended, so that's one for a later time.

Busy week on the blog with five reviews coutning mine for The Flash. There were three game reviews by Trevor all from the same series Bluehills County Stories: Parsnip (on Monday), The Testimony of Trixie Glimmer Smith (on Wednesday), and Three Lesbians in a Barrow (on Friday). The Saturday Morning review was Paul's review of Ratatouille; sort of our way to acknowledge that Pixar has put out a new movie, but one we're not planning to see in a theater.

All that and some work in the early part of the week on Skylar; finished a chapter but thinking about where to go next with the story.

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

A Week in Writing #455 - Getting Things Ready

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Week in Writing #454 - You Don't Need to Tell Me Three Times

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

Okay, I get it. I received a rejection notice on April 4, which I wrote about in that week's post; it was part of a flurry of rejections (two) I received while travelling. I had actually sent pages to the agent, upon his request, and had been waiting an appropriate amount of time before bugging following up with him. The rejection letter sort of stopped that.

Well, just to make sure I knew I was rejected, Martin Literary Management sent me a second rejection this past Thursday. Interestingly, it turns out the agent is no longer at MLM. Did that play a part in his rejection? I'll never know. At the time, I felt like the letter was based on the first email rather than the submission and I thought it was a form letter. Now, they're two for two:

Dear David,

Thank you for submitting the requested additional materials for your project. I regret to inform you that ______ ____ is no longer affiliated with Martin Literary Management. Your material is no longer under consideration, but we wish you all the best in your literary endeavors and hope that this development does not discouraging you from pursuing your goals

Sincerely, 

This one sounds like they received the materials I sent at least. I don't imagine anyone read them. And, no, there was no signatory on the email, just the logo for the agency. Form? I believe so; probably sent to everyone who had submitted to the agent. So Martin Literary is a no-go. You don't need to tell me three times.

I did submit a new query this past week. This one requests a compelling letter, a paragraph about yourself and the first chapter. Hopefully, what I sent fits the bill.

And, no, I haven't yet queried Past Present. I know, I know, I should but I'm still not happy with the query letter for it.

Spent part of the week working on two projects, Skylar and the Powers Squared Pilot outline. With the former, I'm up to nearly 65,000 words, still way short of my goal but little by little I'll get there. Still not happy enough with the latter to share but I think it's better than it has been.

Working on a review of  Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). As it happens, as part of the drain the DVR, this Harry Belafonte film was there and felt like it would be an appropriate time to watch it with his recent passing. I plan to work on it some more tonight and this week, though that won't be the main project. Trevor's review for Lyle, Lyle Crocodile was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. No GameDay review this week.

This coming week, I think I need to spend time on two projects, both for Powers Squared. The first is the upcoming newsletter which goes out next Sunday. Even though it's pretty much laid out there are still articles to write. I think this month, we'll be doing a write up on the Mario Bros., who are, as it turns out, fraternal twins.

The second project is getting ready for the next issue, which we've scheduled for the middle of June, so I need to get proofs, etc. and start arranging for reviews and release. I'm also going to go ahead and do the same for the other two issues we're releasing this year, at least with the proofs. I don't think that will take terribly long but there's always something that comes up along the way and it has to be done.

Speaking of being done, I think I am for now. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #452 - A Week of Lapses

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

I seemed to have a week of mental lapses when it came to the business side of writing, by that, I mean social media posts about Powers Squared. As the old saying goes, I was a dollar short and a day late all week long.

The crux of this were the usual posts I make during the week. On Sunday mornings, I schedule posts for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for Tuesday's peek-of-the-week feature and for Wednesday's YouTube video release. These, of course, don't really get much beyond those platforms unless you repost them to various groups, which I have been doing fairly religiously for several years now. I also add them to other social platforms and LinkedIn, where Powers Squared has a page. For some reason, this practice skipped my mind on Tuesday and when it came to Wednesday, I felt awkward reposting both, so I cut back on where I reposted each. I know that might not feel like a big deal, but I think the YouTube video, our Comic Book Club on Stray Dogs, may have suffered, as until today there had only been one view. Not that our numbers are ever really high, but that's particularly low.

I'll blame some of this on the time crunch at the end of the day. My day job doesn't always end smoothly at 6, so it may be later before I'm done. And then I'll usually want to go for a walk, usually my second of the day, to get my step count up. And then my wife and I will watch the evening news. At dinner for the past week, we were watching episodes of The White Lotus, which are about an hour long, so the bit of time I have to write is very limited by then and the social media posts have gotten squeezed out as a result.

I did work pretty much all week on Skylar, but I think the word count may have actually gone down with the updates I'm making. I'm just under 64,000 words and I should hit between the 70,000 to 90,000 word count threshold when I'm done. I think I'm several weeks away from that, though, and then there's the editing, which is the part I really like the most.

I did send out one query this week, but it was very late in the evening before I got it out, like 10:55 pm. And no time for the Past Present one I keep promising to do. One thing that has kept me from the online forms is the question of comparative fiction, or what else is your book like or whatever the question they ask. I was watching a few minutes of the Max series Perry Mason. While I'm not a regular viewer, I do see parallels with my J.D. Barrister stories. While they deal with a case, the show, like my books, also deal with what is going on with the main character, i.e., relationships, etc. Of course, mine is not about a lawyer and the time frames are decades apart but I think there is fertile ground there. Of course, we'll see when I try it.

We had someone we would consider to be a big guest on our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared, artist Patrick Ballesteros. If you've ever been to San Diego Comic-Con and in Artist Alley, you'll know you're near his table because of the long line in front of it. Trevor had taken a class from him and we've known each other for several years now, but we were all surprised that he accepted our invitation. Hopefully, he'll publicize it, too. I think we all thought it was a good interview. The link above will get you to the audio and the video goes up on Wednesday on YouTube or you can watch the recording on twitch.tv for the next 10 days or so.

My review of The Real Charlie Chaplin was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. This was a movie that I watched over two flights during our trip a week ago to and from Dallas. The movie isn't that long, but I had only watched part of it one way and finished it on the return trip. We sort of rushed it out, since today (April 16) is Charlie Chaplin's birthday. See the tie-in?

The Wednesday/Game Day post was actually a review hub for the video game series Hitman, which Paul has reviewed.

I'm currently working on a review for The Last Command (1928), which we watched on Saturday night. I'm also supposed to add to Paul's review of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, you know a non-gamers point of view.

Not much is happening at the moment with the actual Powers Squared book. Our new artist is still working through things and says she should have 5 to 6 pages this month. I must admit I'm getting anxious now that we've passed the midway point of the month and we haven't seen anything yet. But I have faith.

I did make some updates today to the website, adding a preview, minus cover, for Issue #17, which is coming out in June. The cover is done by the way, but I wanted to save it for a future peek-of-the-week series prior to release.

I'm anxious to try to return to the pilot script that we abandoned several months ago. Still at the outline stage and I want to get back to it.

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

A Week in Writing #440 - A Lot of Work in Progress

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

I feel like there is a lot of work in progress this week.

Let's start with my least favorite part about writing, the query. I did send one but I'm now down to two active ones; the one that asked for pages and this new one. There is one in limbo, the agency's instructions are to follow up if you haven't heard back. I'll do that this week. However, the rest of them I ended up DNRing, since the response time would have appeared to have expired.

I did work some on aka Skylar but I only worked on it through Tuesday; I'll get to why later. Up to 58,156 words. Should be better and I'll continue to work on it.

I've got two reviews in progress, the one from last week, Bakshi's Lord of the Rings and a new one, Nancy Drew... Trouble Shooter (1939). I'm over 2000 words on both reviews and I'll try to finish them both this week.

Speaking of Trophy Unlocked, the reviews this week were both Trevor's. The Wednesday Game Day review was Ed, Edd n Eddy: The Mis-Edventures and the Saturday Morning Review was A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon.

So, now we're down to why so much seems to be up in the air, Powers Squared. We've got a couple of things going on at the same time. New issues, 16-19, which we're trying to get ready to release this year and the old pitch that we've been kicking around for a while now, and in particular the pilot script, which I'm trying to write.

Paul went through the four issues and made good notes. He's much better with grammar that I am, so is Trevor for that matter. One of the things he mentioned as something we need to do, and I won't give that away just yet, but it got me to start working on that story. And considering it's a 20-page issue, I'm about 2/3 through a draft.

Got feedback, as well, on my pilot script outline. Again, good notes but we need to talk about it before I take another try at it.

BTW, I'm still having social media post issues with our GoDaddy website; Facebook won't connect. They want me to spend the time recording what I'm doing in incognito. It doesn't sound like it will take that much time really but this week it's been that bridge too far.

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

A Week in Writing #439 - Writing Without a Net

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

I've been working most of this week without any backup, or way to back up what I've been doing. (I know there's backing up to the web but I'm not set up for that.) While I was writing, in the living room, which I do every night, the battery was getting low. I have a separate power supply in the room just for situations like this and when I got up to retrieve it, my foot got caught up in the cord for the mouse.

As I tried to free myself, I managed to topple the TV tray I use and my laptop fell to the floor. The "h" key, which has been known to become detatched popped off but other than that everything was okay. I put the h key back and all was right with the world, except the two thumbdrives I use to back up my work were both worse for wear; bent and damaged.

I was surprised how hard it was to find replacements and get them in a timely manner. If  I was still willing to wait for delivery, I could have ordered from Amazon, which is my go-to site for such things. Instead, I found them on Office Depot but I had to wait three days to have them delivered.

Both of the drives are 512 GB; though I don't really need them to be that big, it's the potential they provide. Maybe I should be a little disappointed that all my writing, outside of Powers Squared, amounts to just shy of 5 GB of data. The Powers Squared files, amount to closer to 400 GB of data. It is the latter replacement that seems to be taking forever to transfer the data. It flucuates from 6 and a half hours to over a day depending when I look at the progress bar. Even then I had to skip a section when I accidentally jarred the drive while it was copying and had to start again picking up where it left off.

I've been trying to write more this past week, alternating on two projects. Every night, Monday through Thursday, I tried to get through a chapter or two of what I'm going to start calling aka Skylar. Making some progress every day helps keep me engaged. 58022 words if you're keeping score at home.

I've also been working on the outline for the pilot script for the animated Powers Squared show we want to pitch.

I spent a good portion of the weekend resizing every page for the next four issues of the comic book, about 92 pages including covers, and saving tiffs and jpegs for each. Not the most fun I can say I've had but I at least got through it and made pdfs to review before we apply for copyrights.

On the subject of Powers Squared, I'm still having fun with the website and the social media posts I can do from it. Instagram came back on it's own but Facebook, even though it's owned by the same people, is still not connecting; I get the Blue Circle of Death everytime I try, even incognito, which they keep asking me to use. Since what they're suggesting isn't working, the Go Daddy people want me to record my steps, etc but I think, once the above backup is done, I'm going to try to clear the cache to see if that makes it work. I know they mean well but I only have so much time and I don't really want to spend it recording my steps on my laptop and then figuring out how to get them to my phone so I can text it to them. They even said, after I asked, that clearing the cache might work but they still wanted me to do the incognito/record method. I may be recording but I want to try my way first.

We had our fourth Comic Book Club meeting this week, with Rachel Wells, Julia Canon and Trevor joining Paul and me to discuss Joe Hill's Locke and Key. You can listen here or wait until Wednesday and watch it on YouTube. If you're itching to watch something now, there is our Holiday Soda review that Paul hosts.

No queries this week, but I'm committed to starting up that process next week. No word, read that as no rejections, so far this year, though I'm sure I'll have more than a few DNRs. But that fun will have to wait.

No new reviews for me so far this week. We're watching movies worked on by our next guest on our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared. We record on Monday for uploading later so I consider it prep. Besides, Paul and Trevor are writing the reviews for the two movies we've watched so far.

The reviews this week on Trophy Unlocked  have been Trevor's; Codename: Kids Next Door - Operation: V.I.D.E.O.G.A.M.E. for GameDay Wednesday, and Shaun the Sheep Movie for the Saturday Morning Review.

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

A Week in Writing #438 - New Year Old Routines

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

Starting over with the new year is sometimes harder than you think it will. I don't know about you but going back to the full time gig is more tiring than you might think it will be. It's sort of like using muscles that you haven't in awhile.

It also means I'm back to trying to squeeze in whatever writing I'm trying to do in a couple of hours every night. So, back to the old routine as it were.

Routines for the most part are good when it comes to writing but at the same time, they are very limiting. And getting back to them is sometimes hard. All this as a prelude to explaining my output for the week.

I do want to say I worked on aka Skylar but like last week, I'm sort of going through and making changes to what I've already written so far and not making progress on completing the story. So, if you're keeping track at home, I'm up to 57,652 words with at least another 30,000, I'm guesing, to go.

For Trophy Unlocked, I completed a new review, this time for Three Strangers, a 1946 film noir crime drama starring Sydney Greenstreet, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Peter Lorre. As always, this was a film I had seen playing on TCM and decided to record and was part of our Saturday night DVR cleaning; see it's all routine. And, as always, I don't know when it will see the light of day.

The Saturday Morning Review this week was Paul's for Weathering With You, a 2019 animated film from Makoto Shinkai, the same director behind Your Name (2017). This film was one we watched on Movie Day, which in my family is the day after Christmas. The British have Boxing Day, in my house we have Movie Day.

On the topic of Powers Squared, and you knew we were getting here, we agreed on the premise, so now it's on to the outline.

We had our new artist, Julia Canon on our podcast On the Air with Powers Squared. With all of the other changes going on this year with the book, it's nice to have her stay with us. It's a bit of continuity, even though there will be differences in her style versus Rachel Wells' had been.

Based on this idea, the peek-of-the-week is a comparison between the three artists we've had, Sika Murti, Rachel and Julia, and their character designs for the main characters. This week it's Marty.

I also made some changes with the website and the merchandise. We decided to take down some of the t-shirts and make available ones with the new logo on them. If curious, you can check out The Campus Store.

I had a bit of hiccup with my usual routine, since we're on that topic. On Sunday mornings, I post the peek-of-the-week and upload the OAPS video on YouTube. And then, I do some future social media posts for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using Go Daddy, the platform the website resides on. Only today, the links with Facebook and Instagram didn't work and I couldn't reconnect them. After spending about an hour on it, I finally found out it's more system wide than just me. When you only have so much time, spending it chatting with a service rep is not the best use of it. And, now I have to go back and redo them later this week, yay!

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

A Week in Writing #437 - New Year's Day 2023

Hope everyone is staying safe, had a happy new year, and is, of course, writing.

I finally had a chance a couple of days ago to sit down and actually write on fka Skylar. I was going back through some of the work I had already done and made changes. Always trying to make it better. I need to move it forward but sometimes after I've been away from a project, I need a running start to get back into it.

Even on my own, I'm finding that I'm only good for about three hours of work and then I get sort of physically tired.

I'm also thinking of changing the name to aka Skylar, since that seems to fit in better with the story. The book has two storylines. The main character is a private detective, J.D. Barrister. He's just reopened his office after Covid using his old apartment. He finds that he has a new neighbor, Skylar, who is a stripper by trade. She needs help with an overbearing ex-lover, a Russian drug dealer, who is free using her to pay back an over-inflated debt. Meanwhile, Leanne's, J.D.'s girlfriend's, father Ken comes to town and hires J.D. to help find surviving signatories to a tontine her grandfather had been a part of. If this were a sitcom I'd say hilarity ensues, but it's not like that.

No new queries and no word on any outstanding either. I put it down to the holidays and I'm not expecting to launch any new queries until a couple of weeks into the new year.

Busy week on Trophy Unlocked, with the holidays and the end of the year. Saturday being New Year's Eve, all three of us who write reviews did our highlights of the year posts. Since we all saw pretty much the same movies, the choices are similar but different. You can read Paul's, Trevor's and mine; theirs include video games as well.

And as if that we're enough, we posted my review of Repeat Performance at 11:59 pm on December 31st since the movie's story has New Year's Eve as bookends. I finished my review of Beat the Devil and am currently working on one for Sin Takes a Holiday. No TBA for when either will appear.

The new year was on our minds on our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared. Paul and I talked about the coming year: new issues, a new logo and a new artist for Powers Squared. There really wasn't much doubt, but the artist will be our current colorist, Julia Canon. She's been with us for a couple of years and will bring a different look to the book.

We're planning to release three to four books next year, a three-issue story arc, Mocha and Raven, and perhaps the one-shot Paul wrote, Kamiatachi. More to come on that front.

A new logo and the changes in the creative team gave me a reason to explore the current bios for our former and current members and the joy of figuring out how to update logos on all of the social media platforms we're on. Not as easy or as much fun as you might think. Still, I think I got to all but one banner today, which was the goal.

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

Paul and I are closer but not copasetic on the premise for the pilot script. We'll get there, hopefully, soon.

A Week in Writing #436 - So This is Christmas

Hope everyone is safe, and, of course, writing. And, while we're at it, Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays, if you prefer).

I don't know if it shows dedication or stupidity, but here I am writing out this post on Christmas evening. All the presents have been unwrapped, a couple of returns, and we're waiting on dinner but for the most part, the "fun" part of the holiday is over. If you're curious, the big gift for me this year was the Remastered Revolver set, which I held back on until Christmas. Items like that with a healthy price tag seem better suited to Christmas. But enough about me, well, the personal me, well, the really personal me; I mean this blog is pretty much about me, isn't it?

Writing, as it always does, tends to be harder, somehow, during the holidays. I think it has to do with the routine being thrown out the window. Big chunks of time and so many other things to do. As an example, I spent three hours getting a tire replaced this past week. While I really enjoyed walking around to shops and a bookstore, I had planned on doing something else during that time.

So, what have I done so far this week? Well, I did complete a 3000+ word review for Trophy Unlocked for the film O. Henry Full House. I've seen bits and pieces of the film for years and one night it was on, so I watched it. And when I watch, I review. As always, not sure when it will appear, but it's another one under the belt, so to speak.

There was a review from each one of us this week on the blog. Trevor started things off with his Wednesday (Game Day) review of Little Inferno: Ho Ho Holiday (DLC). My review of the short Star in the Night (1945) went up as the Saturday Morning Review on Christmas Eve. Today, Paul posted a review of  the TV Special Adult Swim Yule Log. I'm pretty sure you caught on to a general theme surrounding the reviews.

By the end of the year, or later this week, I have to write my Year End Wrap Up. All three of us write about the highlights of the year. I'm sort of limited to films, but Paul and Trevor can write about games as well. That's a little out of my wheelhouse. Didn't really see all that many new films this year and I'm pretty sure we've avoided most of what will be nominated for Academy Awards, though not on purpose. Ironically, one of the best films we did see in a theater was It's A Wonderful Life, but that film is 76 years old, so I don't think it will count.

Did a little bit of writing on fka Skylar. Again, nothing to write home about and it's getting about as much mention as it deserves here.

More work on Powers Squared, though not all of it writing. As I believe I've mentioned once or twice, our artist, Rachel Wells, is leaving us at the end of the year and we're "auditioning" Julia Canon, our current colorist, for the gig. We had a productive conversation with her about some character designs. I have high hopes that it will work out. Should get revisions this week.

Wrote my premise for the pilot we've been toying around with rewriting and Paul did his own. I don't think we mesh exactly, but we'll have to work it through.

I also started working on an idea for a spin-off story, Billy and Raven, characters from an upcoming story arc. I'm just in the beginning stages of it now. Don't want to give too much away since the books they're from haven't come out yet.

We were used recently in a promotional video for Artithmeric. I tried to post it here but it didn't seem to work. We're just one of the books highlighted. It's nice to be recognized. You can watch it here, if you're interested in seeing it.

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

A Week in Writing #405 - Hitting a Wall

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

Monday started off with a rejection, a query I made back at the end of March, so I was figuring it was about out of code anyway. Decided to take the opportunity to DNR the three previous ones I hadn't heard from that pre-dated that query. One had a day to go before their two-month lead time. Was I too hasty? Somehow I doubt it; just taking care of the inevitable early. So, is the going rate 1 in 4 actually send rejections? Down now to just three "live" ones.

Make that four, as I did squeeze out a new query on Thursday night. I think I'm selling myself short and I might, dare I say it, try to query another book simultaneously. I'm also thinking that maybe I need to rewrite the first chapter since maybe it comes off too soft for a thriller. I don't know, really, I'm floundering here. I don't know what agents are necessarily looking for or I would have one by now. But the rewrite has some merit as I need to get into the story right away; previous advice from an agent who didn't sign me regarding another book.

I've been hitting a wall recently with my writing and I'm not talking about being bereft of ideas, it's time. I've been crashing, physically, at about ten or ten-thirty and I have to force myself to get back to work. Doing that, of course, throws off my sleep and I end up crashing the next night as a result. Vicious circle.

That's been cutting into my writing time quite a bit of late. I don't know about you but sleep for me is a sometimes thing and there are times when everything is running smoothly and then there are times when it's not and it throws everything else off. My problem to deal with.

Spent some time working on a script idea for a one-off about Jennifer Perry. Trying to give her some more background and make her a more interesting character. This is based, in part, on some feedback we received on our Pitch Packet a while back.

Writing that and my review of The Killer is Loose were just about all I got through this week. My review of Our Town was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. We decided to go one and two with that and Paul's review of Wonder for obvious reasons if you've seen that movie. Trevor's review of Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2 was the Wednesday Game Day Review.

No new review from me this week. We went to Amoeba Records in Hollywood on Saturday and purchased a copy of MST3K Season 11. Ended up watching the first episode of that instead of draining the DVR (good thing we don't review TV). To make up for it, I posted, as a draft, a review I had done for Chaplin. You gotta do something, right?

Sadly, nothing new on fka Skylar. Blame the lack of sleep and the script.

Speaking of, Trevor wrote one for Powers Squared that's pretty good with the Eli character fighting a Gashadokuro. Paul and I need to write a companion piece for Marty. We're thinking of sliding it in after our next story arc.

I'm also reading Paul's fourth draft of his book; so much writing going on. I'm a little more than three chapters in. I reserve critique for him when I'm done. And no, I won't give away any of the plot.

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

A Week in Writing #391 - Not Quite Crushed

Hope everyone is staying safe, has great plans for Valentine's Day, and is, of course, writing.

As I wrote last week, Paul and I had our meeting to discuss our pitch packet for Powers Squared the animated TV series. To be clear, we weren't pitching the show, but getting feedback on the pitch packet itself. While the feedback wasn't overwhelmingly positive, it was also not so bad as to pop our balloon, just deflated it a little. I won't go into specifics but we have some work to do. But it wasn't like the person shredded the deck in front of us and told us to look for fry-cook jobs.

My goal is always to make things better and we got a sense of what we need to do. I'm not sure yet we've decided on how to get there but I believe we have a common goal.

One thing we were asked was if we had a pilot script to go with it, which we are working on, though I know that still needs work.

On the subject of Powers Squared, we had our monthly team meeting this week on our On the Air with Powers Squared podcast. We got updates and new pages from both our artist and our colorist so progress continues on the book. Not really sure I can say the same thing about our Kickstarter. It isn't until late March but I really want to deliver what I have to ahead of time. So far, I'm not sure what else they may want. I sent examples of what else I have but it took over a week and with me following up to find out if they had even looked at what I sent. I'm sure things will come together but it is a little frustrating. I don't deal well with radio silence.

In other writing, my review of Who Framed Roger Rabbit was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. The Wednesday Game Day review was Paul's review of Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate. I'm currently working on a review of Batman Under the Red Hood, a movie we watched on Saturday night. Not quite a drain the DVR, but still fun.

I did make another query this past week, despite everything else. So, now I've got five out there, with one probably coming up on its shelf life, but I'm going to keep plugging away. I'm even thinking of trying to query a second book. The hope is to get someone's attention, isn't it?

Sadly, fka Skylar took a backseat to everything else that happened this past week. Sadly, there are only so many hours in a day and only so many ways I can divide my time. I won't give you a word count but the needle didn't move very far forward this week, to say the least.

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

A Week in Writing #386 - One Week at a Time

Hope everyone is staying safe, has been boosted, and is, of course, writing.

Welcome to the working week, at least for me. With the holidays over, it was back to the 8 to 5 world, and writing gets put on the back burner, that is in the wee hours after dinner and before going to bed. Oh, how I wish the 8 to 5 was spent on writing.

I get a little mad at myself when I don't use all the hours I can to write. Sometimes, like today, there is a feeling of ennui and you look up and most of the afternoon has gone. Oh, I got some things done in the morning, posting a film's anniversary post on Twitter for Trophy Unlocked; picking and posting a new peek-of-the-week for Powers Squared; uploading the next video to YouTube, and setting up some social media posts to run next week, but then not much. But all of this, I look at as the business side of writing, not actual writing itself.

So, what did I do this week?

I continued working on Skylar (no longer the name) finishing a couple of chapters. I like ending chapters on a page-turner, or at least a question that needs to be answered, and I managed that on both of the chapters I finished during the week. We should probably log my word count, currently, this version is up to 22,646. Please don't apply the 1000 words a day and I think I'll be at near 30,000 next week. That would be great, but the 1000 words covers a lot of sins, so to speak.

As an example, after watching The Cat's Meow, I wrote nearly 3000 words on it for Trophy Unlocked. We watched the movie in honor of the director Peter Bogdanovich's passing. It seems this year has gotten off to a bumpy start with so many Hollywood players dying recently. As always, I'm not sure when this will run but I like having gotten it done within 24 hours of watching the film.

On the subject of Trophy Unlocked, the blog is starting a salute to the Shantae game series, with Paul's review of the first game appearing on Wednesday. The Saturday morning review was Paul's of Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie: Rebellion, a rather odd bit of anime (my opinion) that we watched recently.

I also worked this week on an outline for a pilot episode for our proposed Powers Squared animated series. Paul is the family expert in writing animation and I'm trying to learn from him. I finished a version on Thursday night but I'd like to take another look at it before showing it to him.

On the subject of Powers Squared, we made our first podcast of the year with a team meeting, including the creatives we work with; Rachel Wells, Julia Canon, and Trevor joining Paul and me on the show. I really enjoy talking with Rachel and Julia since otherwise the communication is limited to emails, text messages, and DMs on Discord. We also got the skinny on another project Rachel is working on which is currently on Indiegogo, Commander in Chef. She's been rather hush-hush about it up until now. (You are under no obligation to fund it, please wait instead for our Kickstarter coming in a couple of months.) And yes, I will be hyping it here, so no need to worry that you've missed it or anything.

So, for next week it promises to be more of the same. I'll finish my version of the outline, continue to work on fka Skylar and, yes, wait for it, send out the first query of the year. And who knows, maybe one of them will write back this time.

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

A Week in Writing #314 - Still Working It

Hope everyone is staying safe!

Well, another Sunday night and another chance to look back on what I have and haven't done this past week.

Let's start at the beginning, no queries yet. I'm still researching agents, trying to do this round the right way. I'm using QueryTracker to do some of the initial research, having decided that my genre is actually crime (sometimes lumped in with "genre" fiction), which helps narrow the search. But it is still time-consuming to go to every website and read each agent's bio. What I'm looking for is if they mention Crime as something they actually handle.

I'm trying to collect a list and color code the agents from Green as ones I want to query, Yellow as ones I would query and red as ones that I won't at all. The colors are based on a couple of factors: Do they handle Crime or genre fiction? Are they located in the U.S.? What is their position within the agency (if there is more than one agent)? And, of course, are they open to queries?

Red is pretty much reserved for people who don't handle crime or genre fiction at all. An example of a red agent is one that QueryTracker pegged as handing Crime but their agency bio says they are, in fact, "interested in narratives in the areas of business, history, memoir, popular culture and science, books that help us live our best lives, literary, book club, and historical fiction." This agent, who will remain nameless, is marked as red.

Green is pretty easy. The agent handles Crime, they are located in the U.S., they are the only agent at the agency who I would query and they are currently open to new queries.

Yellow is a bit trickier. In this category are agents not located in the U.S., but rather the UK. The reason for this is one that a UK agency listed on their webpage "we require an excellent reason as to why you’re querying a UK agent rather than one in your home country (and ask you to include this reason in your email)." It seems like a hill I don't want to have to climb if I don't have to.

The agent is closed to queries - sort of a no-brainer. Most, though not all, eventually get caught up and are back in the hunt for new writers, so those are yellow for the time being. I say most because there are always those agents who only accept queries from people they've met at writing conferences or are recommended to them by someone they already work with. There is no getting to these agents, so they would be red in my book, rather, my query spreadsheet.

And there is the quandary whenever there are two or more agents at an agency that I could possibly query. It depends on the agency, but I usually shy away from the head/owner of the agency in cases like this. Maybe I'm wrong but I figure they're probably harder to attract seeing as they've got employees and business to attend to, in addition to looking for new talent. Someone on staff is probably more accessible.

It differs by the agency but some want you to only query one agent only. The idea is that if internally they think another agent at the firm would be a better fit, they'll send your query to them. My gut feeling, based on no insights, is that if one agent passes, even if another agent might be a better fit,  the query probably ends up in the round file rather than in the other agent's inbox. I would make one agent green and the others yellow. You never know, there will be other books and I might be trying the same agency but a different agent next time.

There are a few that welcome you to send it to another agent if one declines, so in that case, both agents would be coded as green.

Am I making it sound too complicated?

As they say, it only takes one to believe in you, they just never guarantee there is one out there who does.

So much for queries. The research has taken up a good portion of my "writing time" this week and probably the week or two ahead as well, as there are only so many bios and websites I can get through at once. And believe it or not, while doing my day job I'm not dreaming of researching agents. That's not what I live for.

I did work sporadically on the next J.D. Barrister book, currently titled Skylar. I'm about 9000 words into the first draft but I think I only did about 500 words this week. (I know, the blog is called 1000 Words a Day but that's a goal, not a hard and fast rule.) I'm still feeling my way through this one.

This past week, I did complete a new review for Trophy Unlocked, The Great O'Malley (1937), part of our drain the DVR Saturdays. As always, not sure when this one will appear on the blog. This past week had been Phineas and Ferb Week, with six reviews about various IPs related to the series: Phineas and Ferb (Game), Phineas and Ferb Ride Again, Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension, Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension (PS3), Phineas and Ferb: Quest for Cool Stuff (360), and culminating on Saturday Morning with Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candace Against the Universe. (And, yes, we signed up for Disney+ to see this on Friday, twice as a matter-of-fact.

The next two weeks will be devoted to Tony Hawk games, so get out your skateboards and game controllers and join the fun.

That takes us to Powers Squared. The end of the month means everyone turns in their pages and, of course, their invoices if they hadn't already. Our artist has wrapped up Issue 15, our colorist is about 12 pages behind her and our letterer is on the final pages for Issue #14. Everything needs to be reviewed and approved. The next storyline is a three-part arc, Mocha and Raven. The story idea is from about 2014 but rewrites were done this year to knock it into form.

As I wrote earlier I was working on it, my second episode script was "finished" enough that I felt free to show it to Paul. I seem to have a blindspot for formatting. I'm not going about these the right way, I'll be the first to admit. Since these are based on already written stories, I'm not doing the springboards, premises and outlines the way you're supposed to. I just wanted to get some more experience writing one and finishing up the storyline from the pilot seemed the right way to go.

If and when I attempt another script, I will try to write something that is not based on a published story and go through the proper process, letting Paul be the showrunner in that case. But I really think we need to work on our Pitch Packet now before any other scripts for the proposed series.

Well, I think that's a good place to stop for this post. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.