A Week in Writing #573 - Another Down Week

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

I seem to be racking up disappointing weeks here. I'm not sure what the issue is, but I'm pretty sure it's time, or lack thereof.

On the accomplishment-side of the equation, I did rewatch Brother Orchid and write the review. As always, I don't know when it will see the light of day. That doesn't mean things haven't been busy on Trophy Unlocked. My review of the new Superman movie went up on Wednesday. Saturday saw Trevor's review of Freaky Friday, and then today, his review of Bad Guys 2 went up. Soon, there will be his review of Freakier Friday, which we watched this morning. I also started working on one for The Gangster, another recording from the last Summer of Darkness on TCM.

We also discussed movies on our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared. Paul and I reviewed the summer movies, or the few we wanted to talk about, as there were like 139 films that will have come out between the beginning of May and the end of August. There are several which we think are better to wait for streaming. You can listen to the podcast here, watch it for a couple of days here or wait until Wednesday at 2:30 pm to watch it here.

In the meantime, another video went up today on our YouTube channel, Paul's SDCC 2025 Vlog. After about 20 years of SDCC, we got to experience it from the other side of the table. Paul talks about how that went from his perspective. You can watch it now here.

One of the outgrowths of Comic-Con is that we might have found a distributor. However, I'm going through the .pdfs of our remastered first five issues and there are a lot of changes as far as placement that I need to go through. By that, I mean the margins, which for some reason are really off. I'm going back and trying to correct them before moving on with pursuing the distributor, as they want .pdfs. I've done one issue this afternoon and will keep working on that.

We also registered the next two issues of Powers Squared, #26 and 27, for copyright, so I have to update them as well before getting test printings done. It never seems to stop.

No queries again this week, as we spent some of that time inviting people we met at Comic-Con to be guests on the podcast. So far, the only one to come back to us is David Petersen, the creator of Mouse Guard. This would be his second time on the show. Stay tuned. We're also trying to line up a Comic Book Club session as well.

I did some work on Blackmail this week. Still editing. I'm not really happy with one chapter, so I'm going to work some more on it before moving on with the book. I'm a couple of hundred words south of 51,000 with 80,000 a minimum.

This week, I've got pages to realign, as well as a review to work on. I'm sort of promising to do a new query and to work more on Blackmail.

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

A Week in Writing #571 - Report From the Front: San Diego Comic-Con 2025

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

I know this is a day late but we didn't get home from San Diego Comic-Con until about 10:30 on Sunday night and I was in no shape to be doing much other than eating, unloading and sleeping.

For the first time ever, SRCC Press (Powers Squared and The Book of Miracles) tabled at San Diego Comic-Con. As I believe I mentioned in an earlier post, we didn't know we would be tabling until July 3rd at 6:30 pm, so it gave a little less that three weeks to pull everything together. If we had had more time, we might have ordered different things, like a table runner for SRCC Press and maybe a banner for The Blade of Miracles. But we had to make do with what we had, though we did order some more trades and copies of issues to have on hand.

We went down on Tuesday to set up at the Convention Center. Things went surprisingly easy as far as that went. While Paul and I were officially the exhibitors, we were able to have my wife, and Trevor, help us set up the table.

Doing that then, freed up Wednesday, so we could wander around the Gaslamp District and see the installation of the installations. I guess I never realized they were ready so close to the start of the Con. Preview Night is a different experience when you're behind a table. As soon as the doors open, there is a mad dash for exclusives. Since we had no exclusives, business was slow, though we did sell one copy of Issue One.

I won't go through each day, but it was safe to say, even though this wasn't a money-maker, we did far better than LA Comic-Con and Wonder Con combined. We were hindered by the short lead time (we didn't make the printed program) and by a neighboring table, which not only partially blocked us from view, but also attracted enough of a crowd that further blocked us. However, some people did find us.

We sold about 8 times as much as we did at WonderCon, which is a nice trajectory to see. We had one customer come by and after hearing my spiel, bought the first five issues, and then she came back later that evening to buy the other 20 issues. That was 25 issues in one day, which is definitely a record for us. Also a record, 17 new names signed up for our mailing list.

On another day, someone bought the run for The Blade of Miracles, which currently has five issues out. Our overall take, which is paltry, was still about 3.5 times what we made at WonderCon.

You can see photos from SDCC 2025 on our website at https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/events.

Since we were gone on Friday, artist Julia Canon took over as host of the podcast, On the Air With Powers Squared, and one of her guests is me, live from the floor. She also shows how she colors Power Squared. You can watch it at twitch.tv/powerssquared. You can listen to it on our website here or watch it on Wednesday after 2:30 pm here.

And just because we were away, that doesn't mean things came to a stop on Trophy Unlocked. With the new Fantastic Four opening on Friday, we went old school with a review (a second look) at the last version of the story, Fantastic Four (2015).

This was nearly a week without any writing from me. I did manage a little work on Blackmail, so I'm at about 50,160 words, which is good, but I'm far from through with the story.

And, it should go without saying, no new queries from me.

This coming week will involve adding all the names on our sign up sheet, writing the newsletter and getting everything put away.

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

A Week in Writing #569 - Going to the Show

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

The big news is that SRCC Press (Powers Squared and The Blade of Mircales) is going to be tabling at San Diego Comic-Con. And we're pretty much ready, though I wish things were moving a little faster. By that, I mean working with Comic-Con International. I am not a patient man, but I don't see why it took 7 days to go from we have an opening, are you interested to here is your table number. And, while I've paid for the table, I'm still waiting to buy the badges, because they haven't approved a form I sent them on Friday.

So, if you are going, look for us:

If all goes right, we should be M-11 in Small Press. It's going to be a bit of a grind, but it should be fun but in a different way. Looking forward to going and I hope we not only make some sales, but also get more people interested in our books.

We did a mock set up today. We're going to incorporate video into our booth, so we're having to buy a monitor for the occasion. And there are still some odds and ends we still need to buy. Nothing like having a three-week lead time for the biggest event in your creative career.

A fair warning, this post will be late a couple of weeks from now, because of SDCC, but that's getting ahead of ourselves.

We had a come to Jesus moment with our artist on Saturday. I'm not sure what's going on sometimes, but I'm hopeful she'll turn it around and get us pages. Otherwise, we're standing still and like a shark, that's deadly for a comic book.

I got to a "refueling point" with Blackmail. By that, I mean I came to a spot where I needed to sort of rethink things and get a running start. For me, that's going back through the book to sort of refamiliarize myself with it and then when I get to the end of what I've written, keep going. I don't think my word count has really shot up as a result. I'm now at 49,726 words and I don't see that number really changing too much either way until I get back to where I left off.

One new query this week. Trying to get back on the horse after missing it for a couple of weeks. All quiet on the agent front.

As far as reviews, I'm currently working on one for 3 Bad Men (1926), a John Ford western. I got interested in it since I'm reading Joy Girl: A Novel of Olive Borden (Forgotten Actresses) by Laini Giles. I've really enjoyed her series of books about silent film stars that are mostly forgotten today. Borden was one of the romantic leads in 3 Bad Men.

Trophy Unlocked doesn't wait for me. The Wednesday Game Day review was Trevor's for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x and the Saturday Morning Review was his as well for Fantastic Four (2005) + Extended Edition. The latter is our look at the previous films leading up to this year's reboot.

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