A Week in Writing #365 - A Little Bit of Everything

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

It was a busy week, with a little of everything going on. I'd like to say everything was humming along on all cylinders, but that's not really the case (I'll get to the details later).

Let's start with querying. I managed, on Thursday, to send out my second one in a row. I know that's nothing remarkable, but it's something I hate doing. I'm pretty sure I'm not good at it, considering the results I've been getting with this round of queries, which is none. But I try to be positive and hopeful. I'm not sure if that's a sign of insanity or not.

I'm still going with agents who want email queries, which is this one. For those keeping score, I have two live queries out there now. There was a third, but it's been 12 weeks, which is what the website said was when I'd hear back if they were interested. If I hear something later from them, I'll consider it a bonus, though the last time I heard late from an agent it was to just reaffirm the rejection.

I did work on Skylar again this week, though I haven't worked on it since Wednesday.

When it comes right down to it, I'm only writing 5 to 6 nights a week, including query Thursday night. If you're curious as to my schedule, Friday nights after we do OAPS, more on that later, we eat pizza and watch a movie, so no new actual writing gets done. It's not like I'm not working, but the actual writing is rare on that night.

Speaking of Friday, we did our 101st On the Air with Powers Squared with our creative team on the show for our monthly roundtable. I'll admit I was in a bit of a bad mood going into the show. Maybe I'm being impatient, but sometimes it doesn't seem like the artwork (plain and colored) are coming in fast enough. I know I'm not the only sole support for either artist, but I thought we had agreed to a certain number of pages a month and that's not always happening. I think I made the issue clear and we managed to have a good show, especially when we got off topic and started talking about bird stories.

Saturday was Free Comic Book Day, the second anniversary of our first signing at the local comic book store. We decided to do reviews on next week's show about the comic books we pick up, so we did a "What's in My Bag?" video, ala Amoeba records. While they have celebrities tell you what they purchased, or what they're trying to hype at the moment, we discussed the five comic books we picked up, as a preview for next week's OAPS. You can watch the video (it's short) here.

One of my unofficial positions on the podcast is playing producer, so I'm in contact with the next people we plan to have on the show. Now it seems their appearance may be shifting since it's supposed to be when their Artithmeric Kickstarter starts and we have been told different dates, so we'll see.

We're still working on ours. Trevor is about done with the remastering work he's been doing on the lettering and our artist just finished, at least inks of, the cover and some thumbnails for the back. I had hoped we'd be done by the end of the month but I fear it will go into September, which is why I set the deadline early to cover that contingency.

Wrote a new review this weekend, Private Detective 62 (1933), publishing date unknown. However, my review of Yankee Doodle in Berlin (1919) went up as the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. Wednesday's review was Paul's about Papers, Please, a puzzle simulation video game from 2013 for Microsoft Windows and OS X.

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

A Week in Writing #304 - New Content

I want to wish all the fathers out there a Happy Fathers Day.

I think I hit all areas this past week, though, of course, there is always more to be done. But let's start with Powers Squared. On Friday, Paul and I shot four videos that we're hoping to put out over the next month or so. Two of them are unboxing videos, one of which went up today and you can watch it here.

We also had two individual Google Hangouts with our artist, Rachel Wells, and our colorist Julia Canon. We had previously done a few with Rachel and our then colorist, Nina Gaillard, but that was almost two years ago now. It was about time that we do a new one and it was pretty cool to talk to them. I, for one, had never actually spoken with Julia before, so it was nice to have that opportunity.

We also arranged this week to have two people narrate Character Profiles for us. I can't go further into the whos just yet, but we're pretty excited about it.

We spent some time this week reviewing pencils from Rachel for issue #15. We had her make a couple of minor changes on a couple of animals. I like how we can ask for reasonable changes and she seems very willing to do them with a very quick turnaround. Now we're on to the inks for those pages.

For Trophy Unlocked, I managed to write two new reviews this weekend, one for Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry, which we watched from a VHS tape I had, and one for He Was Her Man (1934), which we watched as part of our Clean the DVR Saturday Nights. I had recently read Allen's autobiography, Apropos of Nothing, and was in the mood for one of his films. I don't know if you've tried to buy any of his movies lately on DVD or Blu-Ray but they're getting to be really hard to find unless you import one from Poland or France. I ended up ordering what I could on Saturday morning.

So to answer your questions, yes I still have VHS tapes, though very few and we do have a VCR machine, two actually, that both work. And, no I don't believe the allegations against Woody Allen. Two investigations have shown nothing happened. I would recommend his book, however.

I did publish a new review as Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review, The Most Dangerous Game (1932). We're doing a Pre-Code June so to speak on Saturdays. So far, Wednesdays have been for videogames. This week it was Paul's review of The Last of Us Remastered + Left Behind. Next week, starting Monday, it will be a week-long look at older Transformer video games, but more on that next time.

For my other writing, I did more work on The Runaway, including finishing that chapter which had sort of stalled for whatever reason. I also continued my rewrites on the other chapters. I'm finding that even with these modest edits, I've got a bigger one coming to pull everything together. As I'm going, I see where a revelation I may have made earlier would play well in another spot. I'm sure you've had the same experience. I still want to see how much more I can add to the word count before delving into what will no doubt be a fairly healthy rewrite. As far as I'm concerned, nothing is golden.

I did not start the query process on Broken People. That was one hill that I didn't climb this week, though I know I should. I will try to have at least a good query letter by this time next week.

So that seems like a good place to end it. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #290 - Coronavirus, Working from Home and other issues

First off, I hope that this finds you safe and healthy. Things are really getting crazy out there and I hope you're able to maintain your good health during the coming weeks and months. Like many of you, I've opted to work from home for the duration and I'm fortunate that there is a way I can do that. While these are terrible times, I'm trying to look on the bright side: no commute means about two to three hours a day that I get back, which I'm hoping to put to good use. I figure I can transition from writing to work in a matter of seconds rather than an hour or more each way.

This all started for me on Friday, when I was volunteered to work from home as an experiment, which turned out to be permanent, at least for the upcoming week. I received notice today that next week they want everyone to work from home. While other companies are saying to work from home for the duration, mine appears to be taking a more conservative approach. Even then, things have changed quickly. On Thursday, as I wrote, I was part of an experiment. On Friday it was voluntary to work from home and on Sunday, it became work from home.

On the downside, and there are many, our signing at Golden Apple Comics was postponed indefinitely as they stopped all in-store events. Unluckily, we were the first to be affected. While we have to agree with the decision, it is still disappointing. One of the things we wanted to do more of in 2020 was in-store signings and conventions. Now, it appears, those plans are put off as everything is being canceled or postponed.

It will be interesting to see how things play out in the near future as we all have to get used to what will no doubt be a new reality, at least for a few weeks, if not longer.

With the coming chaos, it hasn't been a great week for me as far as writing goes. I did some work on The Runaway this week, but only about 1000 words, which I know is pitiful. I know there will be more rewrites in all of this over time, so the important thing is to finish this draft.

Since Paul and I took a class recently at UCLA about pitching, I decided to try my hands at writing the pilot script. I think I'm through the first act and I know there will be edits to come but it's kind of cool to be doing something different.

Paul and I also managed to get our twitch stream to work though it took two tries. Apparently, the connection dropped, which is why we don't live-stream anymore on our YouTube Channel. We've decided to twitch stream the recording of our podcast, On the Air With Powers Squared, which is still available on PodBean and Apple Podcasts. I hope you'll take a listen or watch.

No new reviews from me, though I am trying to wrap up one on Song of the South. I think one of my reviews will go up next week but in the meantime, the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked was Darksiders Genesis by Paul. With studios postponing releases, it's playing havoc with some month-long celebrations we're trying to do, like Bond month. We'll have to play it by ear until the dust settles.

Hope you are healthy and safe. So keep writing and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #232

I'm sitting down to write this while watching the Super Bowl since I don't have a pony in the race to mix my sports metaphors and thinking back on the past week.

Still making some progress on The Runaway though I didn't have the burst I had last week. Still, I got about 5600 words further into the book, which surprises even me. Some of the writing is rewriting I will admit that. I'm trying to use as much as I can from the previous version. There is nothing better to find a passage or chapter that can be placed somewhere else and with some tweaks can be reused elsewhere in the story.

I'm finding that I'm making a lot of changes in the story, killing off a character sooner than I had previously. I think it's making it a better story but we'll see. I mean, I'm a little prejudiced but if I don't like it there's no point in writing it.

For Trophy Unlocked, published a review of Tit for Tat (1935) as part of our salute to Shorts during February, the shortest month. Managed to also write one for Buster Keaton's The Balloonatic (1923) which should appear next week.

This week in Powers Squared, there was a lot of progress on Issue #10. Rachel sent us the first 8 pages inked just before the end of January as well as thumbnails for the next 8 pages. Nina has the first 8 pages for this month.

Started to work on a final review of Issue #9. There are a couple of changes we need to make to some of the dialogue but it's really nothing major. At least, that's what I've found, Paul still needs to give it a once over before we give it to Trevor for any fixes.

Paul and I finished our next A Week in Powers Squared video just before the Super Bowl. This week we went over a little bit of Issue #2 as well as discussed the progress that's been made since our last video. You can watch it here. While you're there, please feel free to subscribe and ring the bell.

Last week, we posted a video to Instagram about making the video. This week, we actually added it to our story, so we'll see if that gets as many views as our video did last week.

Big shout out to our best fans, who happen to live in Singapore, who actually heard the call and answered our poll question on the website. Maybe those votes help spur others on since when I last checked, we had 6 votes. I'm not a mathematician but that's a whole lot more than the zeroes we've been getting the last few weeks.

We're still working out some of the details for our Kickstarter tiers. Hopefully, we'll get those ironed out this week, hopefully being the key word there.

Going to be reaching out to some of the websites that helped us with our last release to see if they're interested in doing something with the new releases.

Whatever happens, I'll be letting you know here next week.

A Week in Writing #206

Well, the week started out fairly normal and I'd have to say quiet. I was trying to get back into the swing of things. I was making some final edits to a script of a future Powers Squared issue and posting some images from the comic book on Instagram, you know like you're supposed to.

On Tuesday, saw a tweet from AMAfeed for an article they published on boredpanda.com titled 11 Non-DC/ Marvel Comics You Should Read Before This Year Ends (Part 1). The cool thing and the reason I received the tweet was that Powers Squared was mentioned as #4. I was pretty excited and sent the link to Paul, Trevor and my wife.

While all of the other comic books had images of their covers, our mention had the same out of focus one of me from our AMAfeed last July. I would have picked a better image if I wasn't in a hurry (I was painting a bathroom at the time) and had known I couldn't ever change it. But there it was a few weeks later staring back at me from the article. Not a good showing.

Paul noticed that the brief write up also listed Marty and Eli Powers as the creators of their own comic book. Strange, I didn't remember them being there at the time. I wasn't miffed that I was omitted, even though I had lead the AMAfeed earlier in the month, but it didn't look good to have fictional characters listed as the creators.

After a couple of messages with AMAfeed through twitter, to their credit, they picked another image from our website and corrected the creators to be Paul and Trevor. Two out of three ain't bad, as they say and it wasn't worth going back a third time. At least now we have a better listing as you can see above.

I mention the incident not only to point out a bit of recognition but also to point out that under the right circumstances you can get "bad" press turned around. Now, if only the article said where you could buy the comic book.

On Friday, Paul and I had a delightful Google Hangout with Nina Gaillard our colorist, which was also posted on our You Tube channel. We also picked up our first subscriber, so that was nice.

Our colorist, Nina Gaillard during our Google Hangout.

Watched and wrote a review for She Had to Say Yes (1933), a Pre-Code drama directed by Busby Berkeley and George Amy and starring Loretta Young, which was published as Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review. Need to work on one for Game Night, a recent film that I only recently watched from a Digital download.

Still in a bit of a holding pattern with J.D. Barrister stories. Still no word from my editor on Familiar Stranger and I haven't had the will to re-edit the ending of Paperback Detective, yet. I made some brief notes for another story but I really think I should re-edit another of the "unfinished" books before I venture into uncharted territory.

I'll make the decision this week and let you know here as usual.

A Week in Writing #205

Well, as sort of predicted, this was a low energy low creativity week for me. I really don't know why but the week post SDCC is always hard. I've read other writers, who attended, complain about the same thing so I guess I'm in good company.

Sadly, did very little writing this week, finally towards the end picking up the script to a future Powers Squared issue. It occurred to me, sort of out of the blue, that no one is ever held accountable for some people dying in the story arc and that just didn't seem right for a superhero story. When I went back in to fix that, I started rereading and rewriting from the start. I'm sure what I do isn't unique but when I read something I've written I try to read it not so much as it is on the page, but as how it should sound. That leads to other changes and I'm still going through that process.

One of the things I was looking at, was trying to improve my panel descriptions, because of the panel I took last week. I'm trying to do some work on them but when we talked this week to our artist Rachel Wells, she indicated that she likes the descriptions to be somewhat vague because it gives her more leeway. So I guess I'm trying to find a balance since I find I'm using "Continuation of Action" too much.

While we want to continue to have an active YouTube presence, we still want to do a similar video with our colorist, Nina Gaillard, Paul wants to do something different from them all being interviews. It's a good idea, it's just how to do that we're discussing. Perhaps some sort of trailer for the comic book. Stay tuned.

On the creative-side, Nina delivered the last four pages of Issue #7 as well as the cover. Those were forwarded to Trevor for lettering. Rachel delivered inks for the first eight pages of Issue #8, gulp, so that's moving forward as well. Really appreciate all of their hard work on the book.

No new reviews from me this week. Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review went to Trevor's re-review of M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender. It's a good thing to have multiple reviewers sharing the responsibilities.

Still, no word from my editor on Familiar Stranger and I've been derelict lately on re-reading the ending of Paperback Detective. I have been playing with an idea for a new J.D. Barrister story, though I think there are older ones that still need work. I don't know yet where I'm going but I will, of course, update you here.

On the subject of writing, I had lunch on Friday with a couple of women who used to work for me at Sony Pictures. It was something that was long overdue and I'm glad we were able to reconnect. One of them, like me, is a writer, though she writes in a different genre, YA. We briefly touched on the unpleasant side of writing, the query process. Like me, she doesn't want to self-publish so we have to go the traditional route and get an agent who will represent us to a publisher. It is a very tricky and, more times than not, unfulfilling activity. Everyone has their own war stories, so to speak, and it was nice to commiserate a little bit about that with another writer.

Whenever Familiar Stranger gets worked out, I'll be going through that process myself. I view it as a necessary evil thing you have to go through if you want to make it. And we all want to make it.

Well, I'm hoping to get back on track this next week. Until then, keep writing.

A Week in Writing #203

This was sort of down week for me, energy-wise and creatively. I'm not sure if it was going back to work after nine days off but it was really tiring and I had low energy at night. That means less of everything, including a week off of Instagram, etc.

Most of the work on Powers Squared seemed to revolve around the AMAfeed we were doing. It ended this past Friday after a week. We had, if my counting is correct, 32 questions. Some of the questions weren't directed at me, which was fine and how it should be, though I had to make sure every question got answered. Hopefully, this will be something people will continue to look at and that it will drive interest in the book. You can read the Q & A here.

I opened the questions to our artist and colorist, though only Rachel wrote any answers. There were some directed towards the artists or related to their work as much as ours. I really want to see them get involved in publicizing Powers Squared, too. Up until now, the issues that have been published have been mostly the work of others but from Issue 6 on the visuals are theirs.

To that end, we did a Google Hangout with Rachel, which was almost the first time we'd ever spoke with her. That was supposed to be the plan, but we had issues with getting it going so I had to call her before, a couple of times, as a matter of fact, to try to work through it. The process is not intuitive despite what we'd been told. Rachel had to put us in her "circle", whatever that is, to get the video feed to work.

The camera is only on her throughout, I'm guessing people have tired of seeing me or the boys talking. I think I monologue too much this time and don't let Paul talk but we're working on the bugs. The most important thing was to get Rachel involved. You can see her speak here on the Powers Squared Channel on YouTube.

We really appreciate her work on the comic book and her taking the time to talk to us. I would also like to do something similar with Nina in the near future.

There was progress made on the artwork this week. Rachel did pencils for the first four pages and made some minor changes Paul and I wanted her to make. It's always exciting to see things taking shape.

Trevor made the updates to Issue #6 that Paul and I requested. Really looks good. Now we can take the issue with us to Comic-Con next week. There are a few people we can show it down there. There are also some panels I'm looking forward to taking while I'm there, including one about writing better panel descriptions, which is something I can improve on. I will be writing more about Comic-Con next week. As a reminder, the next post will take place on Monday, rather than Sunday.

As far as other writing goes, I did work on two reviews this past week and completed one for Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, which will be going up next Saturday. I think its kind of fitting for the occasion. The other one, Dumbo, still needs some finishing touches.

Big week for Trophy Unlocked and Trevor as we published three of his posts this week. On Saturday we published Trevor's review of G.I. Joe: Resolute, a telefilm compiled from short episodes of a television series. The day before, he published a Review Hub in honor of the Metal Gear video games on the anniversary of the first game's release. And the day before that, his review of Moss, a VR game.

No word yet from my editor on Familiar Stranger and I did manage to work through the ending of Paperback Detective, though it's still pencil edits. I'm hoping to finish it up before we head south.

Hope next week goes smoothly for us and for you as well.

A Week in Writing #200

This week was mostly, though not entirely, about Powers Squared. As confirmation, the next three issues, the story arc With Great Powers Comes Something, Something, Something..., will be published on Wednesday, June 27 on comiXology.com. To that end, we spent part of this past weekend answering some questions for an interview on Freaksugar that should appear on Wednesday. We also edited and posted a video to our YouTube channel and shot another one we'll put up later of Paul, Trevor and I answering Freaksugar's questions. We're also planning to do a Google hangout with our artist, Rachel Wells. So much still to come.

Also, Adventures in Poor Taste is confirmed to run an exclusive preview of issue #3 tentatively on Monday, 6/25 and our good friends at First Comics News is confirmed for review coverage to tentatively run on Wednesday, 6/27.

Okay, now that the shilling has stopped, there was also work done on Powers Squared the project as well. Our artist completed her inks for Issue #7 and we're now moving on to Issue #8, which starts a new story arc, Mathemagical. We're bringing back Dr. Atlas and introducing a new villain, Professor Theorem. Rachel has done some preliminary character design work on her already. We're basing her on alternative rock musician K.Flay, for whom I'm a big fan, as an homage.

We've written the scripts for this story arc and the one to follow, What's In a Name?. I haven't yet started to make revisions on The Imposter, the arc to follow that based on feedback from Paul and Trevor. It's been more a matter of time than any disagreement on making them. In fact, their suggestions should make it better, which as a writer I'm always after.

Rachel has also come back with some comments and suggestions on Mathemagical, all of which are welcomed. We've always meant for the creation of the book to be an interactive process.

On Thursday night, Paul, Trevor and I attended a local gathering, Koffee and Komics at a cafe on Tujunga near Universal City. I had been a member of the group for a couple of years but had never attended one of the functions. It was a small group and the Hankins men do what we do best, sit on the side and talk to one person at a time. We're not great socializers. We did come away with a few ideas, including looking into Printing on Demand for Powers Squared.

We only stayed about an hour and a half as there was work to be done. When I got home I also registered the script for Mathemagical with the WGA, made some updates to files to keep my thumb drive and hard drive in sync.

I also continued editing on Paperback Detective. I've edited through page 436. The next section requires some rewrites, which is why I originally put it aside to finish later.

No new reviews from me this week, though Trophy Unlocked did post Paul's Batman Ninja as our Saturday Morning Review. We are going to work on new ones, including one for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which we saw this afternoon at the Cinerama Dome, so look for that coming soon.

Next week, in addition to seeing our comic book get published, there will be other writing involved, including more rewrites and reviews.

A Week in Writing #199

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that a lot of what goes on revolves around Powers Squared, the comic book my sons and I created several years ago. And I know I've been begging, yes begging, for you to check out us out on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. It's all part of trying to grow our brand and its been a struggle all the way. Organic growth is best, but it is slow and all that work doesn't necessarily end up with increased sales. To that end, we received an accounting update from comiXology this week and we've sold exactly 1 issue in the past two months.

But hopefully, that will change in the very near future. Don't know the details, but we're hopeful that our next release, on June 27th, will be getting more of a push and hopefully, more people will hear about Powers Squared. We're supposed to find out more next week and I will be certain to fill you in here, as well as the other social media outlets I've listed above.

Work continues on the book, as Issue #7 is nearing the end of the art phase and its fairly far along with coloring as well. I'd like to think we'd have the issue ready to go in a couple of months. We've worked out the scripts for the next two issues and we'll probably start working on them next month with the artist.

I'm still giving serious consideration to kickstarting or some other crowdfunding method to help with some of the expenses of the production. Nothing concrete, yet but I'll be sure to let you know if it ever comes to fruition. It's not a make or break issue for the comic book, but it would be a big financial relief to not have to carry it all on my biweekly paychecks.

We posted another video this past week on our YouTube channel, one featuring Paul and Trevor, the co-creators and the basis for Marty and Eli Powers in the comic book. We have more footage, so hopefully, there will be more forthcoming, as well as a chat with our current artist, Rachel Wells, yet to be scheduled.

Finished a review this week for Conflict (1945) and published one on Trophy Unlocked for Buster Keaton's Seven Chances (1925), the latter in honor of Saturday being Buster Keaton Day in Los Angeles. Besides the proclamation, I don't think there was really much else done to commemorate one of the greats of silent film comedies.

Still no word from my editor on Familiar Stranger. Not wanting to let the grass grow under my feet, I decided to re-edit another in the yet to be published J.D. Barrister series of private investigator mysteries. This one is called Paperback Detective. I started working on it on Friday and I'm about 134 pages into editing it. I know there will be needed work at the end of the book, as I decided to change the location, but right now I'm enjoying the work. I'm printing out forty pages at a time and working on it in odd moments during the day.

A Week in Writing #197

It's been a productive week but without any real breakthrough moments. Most of the time has been spent on various aspects of Powers Squared.

We received eight new pages from our artist for Issue #7 and thumbnails for the last four pages of the issue and the cover. Things seem to be moving forward on those. There were some lighting concerns which she diagramed and which we sent to our colorist.

Most of the writing has been on the last two issues of the story arc we're hopefully starting in July. These issues are called The Imposter and come after two other story arcs, Mathmagical and What's in a Name? which are two and three issue arcs respectively.

Just trying to be prepared. It's sometimes hard to keep everything straight. We're trying to do some planning for the upcoming release of With Great Powers Comes Something, Something, Something... which is supposed to be published later this month. BTW, we released the second of our videos about the creation of the comic book. You could be a real hero and take a look at it, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRntK-uJYZA&feature=youtu.be

And by hero, I mean you could be the first one on your block or any block, for that matter, to take a look. We have one more of me to go, which will probably be next Friday, if you want to wait and binge watch them all.

I think I finally got my cellphone fixed, so I should be getting back to more Instagram as well. I'm having a bit of an issue though, with multiple versions of those posts showing up on the @MartyandEli twitter feed. Hopefully, I've got the right setting on IFTTT, so that doesn't happen again.

Also, as part of the process, we also wrote a press release. We're supposed to have communications with Comixology this week, perhaps Monday, about what they might have prepped, but I thought we should be ready with our own just in case. You might have watched, as we did, their big announcement about Comixology Originals on Twitch on Friday. Big, I meant Epic.

Didn't write any new reviews this week, though we did watch Valerian on Friday night, so there may be something a-coming about that in the near future. Published Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review of Sky High. You can be a real hero and read that one as well.

No word, so far, from my editor on Familiar Stranger but I'm not worried, at least not yet. Haven't decided what to work on next, sort of dragging my feet until the writing is done on Powers Squared and there is some time.

A Week in Writing #195

Time this week, like the last few weeks, was mostly spent working on Powers Squared with time for a future review for Trophy Unlocked.

Most of the writing was working on Part 2 of a future story arc and the beginnings of combining Parts 3 and 4 into one for the same story arc, What's in a Name? While it's not the final draft, I feel I got it to at least draft worthy of sharing for feedback. I'm about halfway through with the scripts for the next three story arcs that we've planned out after we finish with Kirby Good and Evil.

On that front, our artist submitted pencils for pages 9 through 12 for Issue #7, the colorist sent the first four pages for the same issue and our letterer, Trevor, submitted 8 lettered pages for Issue #6. Paul and I ran out of time today to review everything, so my apologies if any of our creative team is waiting for us. We'll get to them tomorrow, I promise.

This afternoon got away from us. We went as a family to see Deadpool 2 and after that, the boys shot interviews to be edited down for a future video(s) on Google. Time just got away from us for anything else.

Over the weekend, added some images of locations from various issues of the comic book, including future ones. You can see them at https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/places and they will be distributed on Instagram in the days ahead.

We also heard back this week from Comixology and we'll be talking to them again the first week in June about the publication of the next batch of comic books. After I finish the next script, I'm going to work on a press release since I'm not sure what to expect. The problem will be after writing it, who to send it to, but that's getting ahead of ourselves.

The review I wrote was for Seven Chances and that will appear soon, but this past week was given to the other writers on Trophy Unlocked. Trevor wrote a review for Shrek, which we published on the anniversary of its release this past Friday. Paul wrote what became our Saturday Morning Review of Shrek 2, which was also published on its anniversary.

This next week, I hope to finish the script I'm working on, start work on the Press Release, review all artwork submitted in a timely manner, contact my editor about Familiar Stranger, post the first of the Powers Squared videos on YouTube; and start working on a review for Crime Wave, a film noir I watched on Saturday night.

A Week in Writing #194

Another week working on the next scripts for Powers Squared and writing reviews for Trophy Unlocked. I've put the mystery writing on hold until I get through the comic book scripts. At that point, we should be good for a year or more and I can get back to more in the series I've been writing. If my editor sends back revisions, I'll address those, but in the meantime, that series is on hold for new material.

Spent Saturday night at the Soraya at CSUN listening to one of the more successful writers, David Sedaris, perform. I think that's the right word for it. He read pretty much new things, ones written after he submitted his manuscript for his new book Calypso as well as a commencement speech he's giving at Oberlin College and Conservatory. He also read some excerpts from his current book, Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002) and the follow-up diary book due out in 2020, I believe.

One of the nice things about his "concerts" is that he signs books before and after. I've heard that the after sessions can go on until 1 am, which is frankly later than I would want to stay unless there were refreshments. We were earlier enough to meet him before, which allowed time to autograph the six books I had brought. My favorite of his is "Thanks for making me rich." Am I the only one he wrote that to?

He sort of drove the conversation, asking me if I had any doctors in my family. I happen to have two brothers who are surgeons, which prompted him to ask me if I thought I could operate on someone. "No," was my answer which prompted his question, "What if it was someone you hated?" "If I wanted to kill them."

He did get around to asking about the people I was with, and I introduced my sons and my wife. He asked them what they did and when Paul told him he was working at UCLA Extension's Writing Program, he offered the advice, through the question, "Do you write every day?" to which the answer should be "Yes", which is my roundabout way of sharing this advice with you. During a Q & A session at the end, mostly with the house lights down, someone asked him about writer's block. His advice here was that he had never found a writer who had writer's block and that there was always something to work on, even if it didn't pan out in the end. He said he never thought that it would ever be easy and mentioned that he rewrites some of his essays many times, so don't think you're alone in that process.

As far as my writing goes, I've spent a good deal of time working on the first twenty pages of the next Powers Squared story arc, What's In a Name? Originally this was mapped out at 4 issues so there will be some slogging ahead. After that, is another story arc, The Imposter, so I'll be at this for the foreseeable future.

Our artist delivered pencils for the second set of 8 pages for Issue #7, but we haven't heard anything from her for a few days.

In related news, we finished editing the third of the interview videos I did for Powers Squared, though I'd like to have a release from the interviewer before we put them out, as well as get on with interviewing the boys. Scheduling is always hard with him so hopefully, we can get to it next week. Again, I think I've threatened to let you know when these finally start popping up on YouTube.

Finished the review of Sky High and am about 2800 words into a review of Seven Chances (1925), a Buster Keaton silent comedy, for Trophy Unlocked. On Mother's Day, we went to see Sunset Boulevard (1950) and used that as an excuse to watch Seven Chances, as Keaton does have a small bit in the film, on Friday night. Both reviews should be up in the next few weeks, but this weekend the Saturday Morning Review went to a review of the latest God of War video game. Check it out!

So, the following week is pretty well set, more on What's in a Name? and finishing my review for Seven Chances. Maybe more videos as well. At least that's the plan.

A Week in Writing #190

Let's start someplace different this week. The rewrites on Familiar Stranger are going well. I'm up to about page 305, which is pretty good though not great progress. I do find myself occasionally questioning some of the changes but having read the book, or should I say manuscript, again I did get some new ideas about how to say something that I hadn't thought of before.

Still, on that front, I made contact this past week with the editor who had helped me with previous books. It had easily been over a year since I'd written him since I hadn't had anything to show him in several years. Good news for me, he's willing, when I'm done, to edit this book again. As good as I can make it, I know he can make it even better so I'm looking forward to that stage in the process, though it might be awhile before we get into those rewrites.

Back to familiar ground, Powers Squared. Earlier this week, our second issue was reviewed by First Comics News, this time a 4 out of 5. Very encouraging. We also heard back from our man at comiXology and there might actually be something happening there as far as promotion. He's twice requested that I send him the five completed issues so he could consult with an outside PR agency. I have no idea what's in the offing, though I would imagine it has something to do with twins doing a comic book about twins. That is a total guess on my part but that would make some sense.

We did do some reshoots last Sunday and had hoped to do more shooting this weekend as well but our interviewer notified us that he's not going to be available for this Sunday and next; something about getting hitched. You would have thought a major life event, like a wedding, would have come up when we were planning all this but hey that's how life is sometimes. I'm hoping in two weeks we can get back to it with the boys in front of the camera as well.

I hate to say it but I haven't yet looked at the footage we shot a week ago. That's on my to-do list this week I guess.

As far as the issues go, the colorist has finished her work on Issue #6. Now it's up to our letterer to play catch up. The artist, meanwhile, has moved on Issue #7. Paul and I reviewed the first four pages that she penciled over the weekend and gave her some feedback. For the most part, it looks really good, there are just a few minor things we asked her to look at again. The fact that she wrote us back the next day is such an improvement over our last artist that I'm still amazed.

Now, as promised, the Twitter pitch. I'm trying to get better about Powers Squared there but it would be nice if there were more than two followers; one of them is my twitter account. The handle is @MartyandEli and would appreciate it if someone would follow it as well. See, that wasn't such a hard sell after all.

We did pick up three new followers on Instagram this week, though we can always use more. (Hint, this means you.) Where else would you see such images as this:

Steve for Issues # 6 - 

Well, you could see them here but that's not the point.

Got back into writing reviews, publishing Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review: Clueless (1995). 

I also started a more extensive review of Hell's Angels (1930), the World War I melodrama that made a star out of Jean Harlow. Look for that in the coming weeks.

Well, that about does it for this week. Hopefully, next week will see more work on everything, but time will tell.

A Week in Writing #189

So a couple of things to get to right away. First, last week, we sat down to record some videos to put up on YouTube about Powers Squared. We spent a couple of hours on Sunday, at Galaxy of Comics and came away with several minutes of footage. While the conversation is good, there are some technical issues, such as its very dark and I'm sort of out of focus as a result. We can argue back and forth if I'm better looking blurry or not, but I think if I'm the subject of the shot, I should be in focus.

Long story short, we're hoping to do some reshoots today, Sunday.

And, I did finish just last night with my edits on Familiar Stranger, which means the next week or so, I'll be going through the manuscript and making those changes. I'm pretty happy with the process. It's sort of like reading some of it for the first time since some writing/rewriting is months old by now. But it feels good to be on this side and feel like I'm getting ready to close out this book, at least for now. I'm not sure if I should rewrite another old book, the one that started me on this series, Simple Sins, or go onto something new. I'm sort of torn. If anyone has any ideas, please leave a comment. (Those are welcomed by the way.)

Trying to be diligent about making uploads to Instagram, it would be awesome if you followed the account for Powers Squared. I'm sort of churning through characters at the moment but would like to spice it up with some photos from the video shoot and possibly with thumbnails for Issues 6 and 7. Its sort of awkward to be trying to promote old and new but that's sort of where we are with Powers Squared.

I did post a couple of photos last weekend, however, the one I'm in I'm very much chopped off. It's all about layout and positioning, a lesson I'm only learning after the fact. I was also surprised that the photos I took ended up backward, so I had to upload them to my computer, reverse them, loaded them back to my phone and then upload them to Instagram. Sort of takes the Insta-part away. If you follow us, you'll get to see all of these great missteps as we go along, so a splendid time is guaranteed for all. (Next week, *Spoiler Alert* we'll push Twitter @MartyandEli.)

On the creative side of Powers Squared, we've received and reviewed thumbnails for the first eight pages of Issue #7. Our artist sends us two sets and we go through each and select the panels we like from each. She then sent us the combined version. There were a few more adjustments we asked for but she's moving on now to pencils.

Our colorist finished her work on the cover for Issue #6 and is working on the last four pages of that issue.

Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review was a look at the video game The Silver Case for PS4. Once again, written by another writer for the blog. I am, however, finally getting back into writing them. On Friday night, we watched Clueless (1995), a film recommended by one of Paul's teachers at the UCLA Extension program for Writers, which he is currently in. The academic-side is about the inciting incident in the story, while the review will take more of a holistic approach. I've written about 600 + words so far but will be something else I can work on this week.

And, as every week, I'll be back here to discuss everything that has happened to me relating to my writing. Hope you'll be back to take a look.

A Week in Writing #188

A really exciting week in writing. Powers Squared not only launched our own Twitter account: @martyandeli but we also received our first review at First Comic News: https://t.co/WxA8D2RoiL. While that might not seem like much, it is a big accomplishment for us and was for the most part positive; not bad for our first effort at making a comic book. It's a first step in what we hope will be a big year for Powers Squared.

In other news, it seems like comiXology might be planning something. I was asked on Friday to send them all five issues, which, I, of course, did. So, hopefully, something good will come of that.

As much as I think I do, I know there's more that can be done. But I only have so many hours in the day to devote to it. I was encouraged to learn, at the panel at WonderCon, that if you spend more than an hour a day doing social media, then you're spending too much time on it. Even an hour a day is more time then I have to spend on it. Sadly, there are only so many hours in the day.

The artists are continuing their work on Powers Squared. Our colorist has now finished up through page 16 and has done a first pass on the cover. Our inker is already ready to get to work on Issue #7, which seems like a real difference than what we were used to.

Some of the images we posted this week on Instagram:

Mocha

Uncle Brian

Jennifer Perry

Tonight, we're going to shoot some videos to use to promote the comic book. As a basic introverted writer, this will be a new experience for yours truly. I'll write more about that experience next week and, of course, let you know where and when the videos are posted.

Co-writers Paul and David Hankins getting ready to shoot some videos.

No new reviews from me this week, again, but we did publish two on Trophy Unlocked. Instead of our usual Saturday morning review, we published a primer for the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War, coming next month.

And on Sunday, April Fool's Day, we published a review of Half-Life 3, make of that what you will.

Also, still rereading and editing Familiar Stranger. I'm up to page 329 so it's possible I'll get through it all by the end of next week. Then one more round of editing on the computer. It seems like a never ending cycle, but I do enjoy the part of making it better.