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 #462 - And the Rejections Keep Coming

 

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

In not so good news, the rejections keep coming. 

Received this one on Thursday, which was nice but I had already DNR'd the request since I had sent the query in January and they had a six week turn around. So, that took some of the sting out of receiving the official notification five months later:

Dear David,

 

Thank you for your interest in our agency. We have reviewed the material you sent regarding your manuscript and are sorry to report to you that we will not ask to consider the work for representation.

 

Please understand that we are a small agency and take on very few new clients. With limited time and personnel, we've learned to trust our instincts about whether there would be a good fit between a particular writer and us. We certainly recognize that we might well be passing up a good opportunity.

 

We wish you the best of luck in placing this with another agent and ultimately, a publisher.

 

Sincerely,

While I was at it, I decided to DNR another one that I had sent on 3/30. It had apparently gone past their response time, too, so I took it as a pass. But maybe it a few months I'll hear it officially.

On the subject of rejections, I mean queries, I sent another out on Thuirsday. This one was interesting as the agent want page, synopsis and then the query letter, in that order. I sort of had to try, since that was so different. So far, no rejection yet.

My review of The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. The Wednesday Game Day review as Trevor's for Katamari Damacy Reroll (PS4). I'm currently working on a review of Bombshell (1933), the Jean Harlow starrer.

It's sort of been quiet on the Powers Squared  front. Our artist had a family crisis and has been pulled away for the time being, so new pages for our new colorist to work on. Hopefully, the pages are coming soon but family does come first.

I decided to make some updates to the website and especially the page on SRCC (San Romero Community College). I'm trying to update the class list on the page, so it's a WIP as they say. I'll be sure to let you know when it's safe to look.

I also worked on the newsletter for next Sunday, today. Not hard work but there is stuff to do to get it ready.

Our latest podcast was our comic book club, our 9th meeting, discussing the Bernie Krigstein book, Master Race. It supposed to be a very influential comic book and if you watch the video, there's a link to where you can read it for free. It goes up on Wednesday on YouTube.

In the meantime, we put up the fifth and final taste test video on Sunday, Multiflavor Blowout | Taste Test #5. It was recorded in February but with summer approaching, I thought it might be  helpful on what to drink and which ones to avoid.

This might be a good place to come clean about something I did. When we put up the video OAPS #195 Issue #17 Preview I paid someone to boost it. I have boosted previous videos on Facebook but my hope was that since it was basically a commercial for the issue boosting it might lead to more readers. I don't believe there were necessarily bots involved but we hit an abnormally high views (1K). I didn't clear this with the others involved, especially my son Paul, who is my co-host on the podcast. In the long run, I don't think there was any real harm done but I don't think it necessarily led to more readers. I want to apologize here for my actions. My intentions might have good but it was not a good thing to have done.

More writing on Skylar but I'm sort of in limbo at the moment. I did have the opening idea for the next book, so I've written about 2300 words since Friday.

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

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 #457 - What's a Week Without a Rejection?

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

What else is new but another rejection. This is a query I sent on March 23rd with a 4-6 week window to hear back. I kept it active until, of course, I received the rejection:

Thank you so much for your query! I have had an opportunity to review your query, and although intriguing, I'm afraid it's not quite right for the list I'm building at this time. Since it is so vital for an agent to be just as passionate about your story as you are, I feel it best that I bow out at this time.

I welcome future queries on exciting new projects from those who have submitted to me previously, so please keep me in mind. Otherwise, I definitely encourage you to continue submitting to others, as what may not work for one person may work perfectly for another. Out of all the wonderful agents you could submit to, I thank you so much for trusting me to look at your work, and thinking of me for representation. I wish you the best of luck in placing this with another agent.

Kindly,

Is it just me, or do all rejections sort of sound the same. "Thank you for your submission", "not right for my list", "best of luck" I feel like I've read those before. There is never anything deeper than that. I've had a few in the past that I was close on and they gave more feedback but lately they sound pretty much the same. But maybe I'm just thinking about the bad news aspect. And I do want to give this agent credit for actually writing back. Most just sort of ghost you with their rejection.

I did send a new one out, so fingers crossed and all that.

My review of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. Spoiler, I've played the game a couple of times but I really enjoyed the movie. I'm working on a review of What! No Beer? but I had hoped to do one on Too Many Kisses, a film I had caught on TCM but somehow the recording got erased before I could.

It seems like every week I'm having some new internet calamity; the website has had issues, etc. Well, this week, the entire internet became a problem as my laptop stopped connecting, at least through wi-fi. I had two virtual visits with Geek Squad but the issue wasn't resolved. Now I'm using a 50-foot ethernet cable while waiting for an in-house visit later in the week. I'm not sure what caused it to stop working and I don't know what the agents fixed or didn't fix, as they tend to disappear into the ether after the computer reboots.

That said, we did do a podcast on Friday, a comic book club meeting to discuss Made in Abyss by Akihito Tsukushi. You can listen to it here or wait for the video on Wednesday.

Next week will be a Team Meeting and things seem to be back on track with Powers Squared. After some discussion, our new artist, Julia Canon, decided that she couldn't handle both the art and the coloring, so we're looking for a new colorist. She suggested three people who were interested, so we sent them a little test page to color.

Paul and I sat down this week and submitted issues #17 and 18 to Kindle. In their infinite wisdom, 18, which comes out in September was the first to get cleared. Haven't heard yet about 17, which comes out in June. If you're curious, you can see a preview here. If you do look, and you should, you'll see that the cover is four thumbnails. That goes along with the new peek-of-the-week.

When I can, I've been working on Skylar, the little project that gets no respect. There's always a time crunch and that book gets the short shrift.

Well, I guess that about does it for me. 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 #451 - No Queries, Just Rejections

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

For me, this past week was not really condusive to getting a lot of writing done. I was out of town from Monday to Friday back in Dallas, Texas, where I'm originally from, visiting my mother on her birthday. I did manage to get some writing done on Skylar and deal with some things related to Powers Squared but I did not send any queries this past week.

But even though I might not have sent any, that doesn't mean rejections stopped. After not hearing back for so long, I, in fact, got two in the same week.

In early December, one agent had asked me for additional pages, which I sent him. I had been considering asking what was the appropriate time to wait to nudge on a partial but I guess I don't need to. While I was in flight, I received the agent's rejection:

Dear David,

Thank you for your query and interest in representation. I regret to inform you that Martin Literary Management is unable to take you on as a client at this time. As I am sure you are quite aware, we receive hundreds of queries a week and, as such, we must turn down many projects that might have great commercial potential.

Please know that I personally read each and every query and that some of these rejections are based strictly on the subject material, which may not be an appropriate fit for my interests. Some rejections, however, are based on writers not having a good understanding of how to prepare and pitch their work as a query to an agent.

If you are at all disheartened by this rejection, I encourage you to seek out the anecdotes of writers who have garnered a fair amount of success for themselves after enduring what can be, at times, a very grueling process.

This rejection is by no means an assessment of your writing abilities, your creative voice, or to "rain on your parade." I sincerely hope that you will find a way to continue on this journey until you achieve the desired result.

I wish you all the best.

Sincerely,

I don't know if it's just me, but this seems like a form letter based on a query, not one based on a partial submission. Don't get me wrong, a rejection is a rejection, but I might have expected a different form letter since he had requested pages (three chapters) four months ago. Based on that, it's hard not to take it as "an assessment of" my "writing abilities". However, his is not the final word and I'm not done trying.

But wait, the rejections kept coming. On Wednesday, I received this from an agent that I had sent the first chapter of the book. It didn't sting too much since I had already DNRed the the query since it had been two months.

Dear David,

Thank you for submitting your book, Broken People, to me and I am very sorry for the delay in responding.

I am afraid that it is not quite right for my list at this point. Due to the volume of submissions I receive, unfortunately I am unable to offer more thorough feedback, much as I would like to!

If you would like to know what we recommend after receiving a rejection, you might find this page useful.

I appreciate you taking the time to submit your work.

Kind Regards,

Curious, I followed the link noted in the email above to What Happens When You Receive A Rejection? I guess this is supposed to make you feel better about being rejected and "help" you improve your writing and your outlook.

But there was this passage:

Think about the types of passes you’re getting from agents. Are they all form rejections or are any of them personalised? If an agent has taken the time to personalise then you’re possibly very close and it might just mean you haven’t found the right agent at the right time (there’s a lot of luck involved in publishing) and you should keep trying. But, if all you’re getting is form rejections then it might be time to take a deeper dive into your submission package and the book itself in order to help you achieve your goals.

So, now I'm left wondering is what I received a form letter? It came back with my original email attached and seemed to be personalized but is that just a fancy form letter? It also makes me wonder do agents really spend time giving useful feedback to writers they're not interested in representing? Given how busy they all are/claim to be, I would be surprised if they do.

As mentioned before, I did manage to squeeze in some time on Skylar, mostly late at night or in the morning waiting for others to get ready. I don't have a word count for you on how much I did but I am making some progress; we're up to 63,801 words so far.

The Powers Squared work was related to pages from our colorist, Julia Canon, which arrived on Monday and which Paul and I managed to look at that night. I also had some communications with our former artist, Rachel Wells, who is doing some work on the mascot for me, which she had originally designed.

We landed back in L.A. on Friday afternoon and made it home in time to do our podcast On the Air with Powers Squared. This time it was a Comic Book Club meeting with Rachel, Julia and Trevor joining Paul and me to discuss Stray Dogs by Trish Forstner and Tony Fleecs. You can listen to it now at https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/oaps or watch it on Wednesday on YouTube at https://youtu.be/JcAx6Lwc9MU.

Since we've been home, I've managed to write one review for a documentary I watched on the plane The Real Charlie Chaplin and start another one for Clash of the Wolves (1925) starring Rin Tin Tin. I'm hoping The Real Charlie Chaplin can go up before his birthday next week.

The reviews kept coming on Trophy Unlocked. The Wednesday Game Day review was The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog and Saturday's Morning Review was Puss in Boots (2011), both written by Paul.

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

A Week in Writing #448 - New Release

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

Okay, the big news of the week, at least for me, was the release of Issue #16 of Powers Squared; "Mocha and Raven Part 1". Not that it set the world on fire, at least not yet, but I always hope the new one will somehow get noticed.

The review that came out this week on First Comics News was positive. You can read it here. For the first time, in quite awhile, I tried running ads for the release on both Facebook and Instagram. Not sure that really made a difference. But in case you're wondering, here it is:

And, yes, even at this size the QR Code works. Go ahead, try it, you know you want to.

On the subject of querying, I had managed to send one new query on Thursday and on Sunday morning, received my first out-and-out rejection of the year; what a great way to start the day:

"Thank you for thinking to query me with your project. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like a good fit for my list at this time. Again, thank you, and best of luck finding an agent.

Best, "

I won't name the agent, since that's what this blog is about but I wouldn't really consider that more than a form letter. With this agent, I did send the first ten pages of the book but I don't know what didn't work for them (and I'm using the royal them). I will probably never know.

That said, I did not, again this week, branch out and query for Past Present. Again, my sticking point has been the paragraph or two in the query letter describing the book. I think I managed to get past that this weekend. It's probably still a little long but I think it could work for me this week. We'll see and I will report back.

We completed Steven E. Gordon week on Trophy Unlocked this weekend with our fourth review of a film he's associated with. Trevor's review of Anastasia (1997) was the Saturday Morning Review. Prior to that on Monday, we started with my review of The Lord of the Rings (1978), followed by Paul's review of The Black Cauldron on Wednesday and Paul's review of Oliver & Company on Friday. The capper of the week was our interview with Mr. Gordon on Friday night. We had actually recorded the interview in the middle of January when it was convenient for him. You can listen to it here or wait until Wednesday and watch it on YouTube here. Either way, it's about an hour long and covers his career as an animator and director.

And if that wasn't enough, today we posted a review of Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which we actually saw in a theater, our second such film this year, the first being Casablanca.

I also wrote a review this week for Talk About a Stranger (1952), a rather short film that I recorded several years ago, I believe the last time it was on TCM's Summer of Darkness. As always, a review for the future.

I'm still getting used to Daylight Savings Time, so the output this week on Skylar was maybe less than I would have desired. Still working through it though.

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

A Week in Writing #431 - Not a Good Week for Queries

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

I try every week to query at least one agent about Broken People, which again this week, I did. Usually, I never hear back. Well, this week, that changed. Actually heard back from two agents this week. Unfortunately, both were rejections:

The first came in early in the week, and was a bit of a form:

Hello:

Thank you for the opportunity to read your submission, which we have carefully considered but decided to decline. Unfortunately, due to the volume of queries we receive, we are unable to reply with individual feedback.

We hope you will not be discouraged by this reply, as this is a subjective business, and other agents will likely feel differently. We wish you the best in finding the right match for your work. If, however, you end up querying a new project in the future, we would of course be happy to consider it.

With warm regards,

The second was from the agent I queried on Thursday night, I received that on Friday afternoon:

Thanks for writing me. This sounds like a viable idea, but a bit too ‘genre. For my small list which means a bit more to the literary rather than the commercial.since you’re thinking down the road for series potential, I think you’d be better served working with an agent who’s a better March - best of luck in your continuing search.

I'm presenting as the agents sent it, without edits. I think the agent meant "March" to be "match" but it does seem to indicate that this wasn't a form, which I do appreciate, despite the rejection.

To top things off, I also DNRed another one after the time period to hear back, if I was going to, had expired. If you're counting, I have four out there for Broken People.

What do they say, that you have to keep pitching but sometimes it seems futile.

No new review this week for me. I had intended to write one for Out Yonder, a silent film starring Olive Thomas. I had read Laini Giles' The Forgotten Flapper: A Novel of Olive Thomas which I enjoyed and I was looking to actually seeing the actress at work. When I saw that TCM was showing it, I set it to record. The time frame given was 45 minutes and that was what was recorded. I had read that the film was over an hour but I figured that maybe it was a shortened "all we could find" version. Too bad for me, the film is 20 minutes longer. Imagine my surprise in the middle of a dramatic scene it cut off. I'll admit that I hadn't tried to HBOMax but this wasn't one of the films I could watch on TCM as Catchup and the only viewable version was the Dutch one from which TCM's version had been restored with new interstitials in English. Since I didn't see how it ended, I put it down to a lost cause, at least for now.

I did have two reviews this week on Trophy Unlocked. The Saturday Morning review was Elvis, as the blog plays catch up for the year. I also had a review up on Monday, as last week was Pinocchio week. We started off with my review of the original Disney film, followed on Wednesday by Trevor's review of the 2022 Disney live-action remake, and Paul reviewed the new Guillermo del Toro version, also 2022, which we saw in the theater prior to its Netflix premiere, for Friday. Busy week on the blog.

On Powers Squared news, we're getting ready for our panel at L.A. Comic-Con on December 4th. The below graphic, done by Don Nguyen gives you the details of the time and place. If you're going to be at LA Comic-Con, I hope you'll come by and see us.

More pages from our artist on her last issue, #23, for us.

On this week's On the Air with Powers Squared, we had our third Comic Book Club meeting on Friday, discussing Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe. You can listen here, if you're interested. Next January, we're going to discuss Locke and Key.

Some more work on fka Skylar but not really enough to mention. Sorry about that but some weeks are harder than others.

Speaking of hard weeks, with Thanksgiving next week, I don't know how much I'll get done. But I will be trying. More on that next Sunday.

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

A Week in Writing #423 - But It's My Birthday!

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

Yes, it is my birthday today just so we get that out of the way.

I know that I've complained here a lot about sending off queries and never hearing back. Well, I had the exact opposite of that this week with my rejection coming back within 8 hours. I sent my query for Broken People  at 10:38 pm on Thursday night and at 6:49 am, received the following:

Thank you, but this doesn't sound right for me.

I wish you the best,

I'm both impressed and disappointed but in record time. Not that I'm counting, but 8 hours and 11 minutes has to be some sort of record for rejection. Fortunately, it was only based on my standard query letter and not on the writing itself. My guess is there's a certain amount of churn going on. So, I'll say I am grateful to find out so soon.

If you were listening on Friday night, you no doubt know that we announced release dates for the next two issues of Powers Squared: October 19th for Issue #14, The Imposter Part 2; and December 7th for Issue #15 How They Met. Oh, what, you didn't listen? Well, now you know. Your patronage would be greatly appreciated. If you care to watch, we do an unboxing as well, it will be up on Wednesday at 2:30 pm on our YouTube channel.

Minor progress this week on pretty much everything. For some reason, schedules being what they are, I'm only getting about an hour to an hour and a half of writing time in. And I'm finding that I'm pretty useless by the end of them. I know sleep is important but it really interferes with getting things done. And the fun part is that no matter how tired I am while sitting at my computer, getting to sleep in a bed can take up to an hour.

I don't normally talk about what I'm reading but it's an interesting and entertaining history of Chateau Marmont, The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont by Shawn Levy. I've been aware of, but have never gone inside, the Chateau and, given the nightly rate of over $1300, I don't think I will be anytime soon. My fascination with the place started when I used it as a location in a book I've written, and which is still unpublished, Public and Private. At the time, I was just looking for a floorplan of one of the rooms to use. 

The Chateau came up again on The Offer, which we watched on Paramount+. Supposedly, Al Ruddy's wife was the owner. Even though the book was written in 2019, it dispelled that. Her former husband did own it but it appears he sold it before he married her. She's only a footnote in the book. When I saw the book at Barnes and Noble, finding that out was one of my reasons for wanting to read it.

Finished a review of Men Are Such Fools, a romantic comedy from 1938. The reason I wanted to watch it was for Humphrey Bogart, who is third-billed but really not a factor. I would suggest reading the review when it's published rather than watching the movie.

Batman Month concluded on Trophy Unlocked on Saturday with Trevor's review of The Batman vs. Dracula. The Wednesday Game Day review was Paul's for Hitman GO: Definitive Edition.

Final pages for Powers Squared Issue #22 are being worked on as you read this but that's about all there is to report on that.

And again, minimal progress on fka Skylar see above for my explanation.

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