A Week in Writing #626 - New Issue Preview

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

Powers Squared is coming out with a new issue on August 26th. To celebrate, our most recent podcast was devoted to a very brief preview of the issue, "Agnes: Wreckage, Part 1", the 28th issue of the book series. Colorist Julia Canon joined Trevor, Paul and myself to talk about it. Normally, we would invite the artist to join us, but we had a parting of ways after the lineart was completed.

In the issue, Agnes Miller, the boys' former science instructor at San Romero Community College, tried to help her paramour Dr. Atlas in his experiments. But an overdose gives her powers that she cannot control. In need of help, Dr. Atlas turns to Marty and Eli Powers for help. The issue will be available in print and digital through The Campus Store on our website.

The podcast can be watched on our twitch channel for the next few days, or be listened to here, or you can wait and watch it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday the 19th at 2:30 pm.

We've also noticed some sound issues with the podcast, and we're going to bring in some new audio equipment, hoping to rectify the situation.

We showed up officially as guests on the LA Comic-Con website, only some of the information is really old, like they have us with a Twitter account and we, Powers Squared, or myself, haven't had one for several years. I've asked them to correct. But it's still cool to see yourself on the website. Hope to see you there at the Con.

Speaking of social media, I'm hearing that Facebook is going to start requiring users to pay to post more than two posts with links a month, starting in December. For those of you who find this from Facebook, please know I won't be paying. You are free to follow me on Bluesky (@lionsroar91406bluesky.social), where I'll post the links, or on Facebook, where I'll post the links to this blogsite in my profile.

My plan was to work on Blackmail this week, and I did work on it most nights, though some nights is less than others. I've got less than 100 pages to go and I'm at 90,043 words at the moment. After this exercise, I want to go through it looking for certain subjects to be sure I'm not repeating the same thought too many times.

I'm currently working on a review of 99 River Street, a film noir from 1953. As always, no idea when it will be published, though I have heard that my Second Screening review of Citizen Kane may be getting a prominent publication on Trophy Unlocked. In the meantime, the Saturday Morning Review was Paul's for Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender.

Next week, more work on Blackmail and prep for the next release of Powers Squared.

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

A Week in Writing #614 - It's My Fault

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

Well, I won't keep you in suspense any longer. I finally did hear back from PaddyPost about the issues I ranted about last week. Apparently, with my issue with Linkedin, their instructions were to remove the links and try again. I did that and sent a sample text and it made it to Linkedin. Why it took weeks to get that advice, I don't know.

As far as my problem with losing the connection to BlueSky, they put that on BlueSky, which I guess is sort of finicky, so until BlueSky gets right, the losing connection is going to continue. Actually, I don't know if it's BlueSky or PaddyPost to blame, but it's a continuing problem. I reconnected today as a matter of fact, and it disconnected again while I was writing this.

My week sort of got waylaid by a trade I was prepping for the printers. When I got the proof back, all the pages seemed too close to the edge. This printer has a template that I violated, so I was going to redo all the pages and spent a couple of nights working on that before I realized that most of the pages could more easily redone to conform, so that went faster than I feared.

Attended a potluck over the weekend that included other comic book creators. And I discovered that I'm rather horrible at starting conversations. I had never met the host before and I managed to introduce myself, and my family, but until someone showed up that I knew, we huddled together. We did end up having a rather lengthy discussion with another writer at the party but only after he started the conversation. After that we made a hasty retreat.

My review of A Farewell to Arms (1932) went up as the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. Paul's review of Super Mario Galaxy 2 was the Wednesday Game Day review. I'm currently working on a review of The Wind (1928). I seem to be stuck in the silent era lately. Not that I mind that really, as these are films I wanted to see.

Work on Powers Squared continues at a good pace. I did get some rather unexpected news from the U.S. Copyright Office. I had submitted registrations back in August of last year, for two publications that were being released, but because two different people were the writers, we couldn't submit them together. This, of course, dates back to August of last year and I just got that notification this past Thursday. What's 9+ months? I'm going to try to register them individually then, but I think that's a long time to take.

Our podcast this week was about Summer Movies. Paul and I went through the release schedule through the end of August and discussed films we were wanting to see. You can listen here, watch it for a few more days on our Twitch channel, or wait and watch in on YouTube after 2:30 pm on Wednesday.

My goal had been to work more, almost exclusively on Blackmail, however, things didn't go as planned. I'm still working through the changes but I'm behind where I wanted to be. So far, the book is a little shorter than it had been, 87,921 words, which is almost entirely due to the edits I'm working on.

Next week, I'm hoping to work more on Blackmail, but we'll see what the week has in store for me.

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

A Week in Writing #613 - Social Media Meltdown

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

I don't know if you're like me, but there is a certain amount of pressure to post regularly on social media platforms. For me, the main ones I use are Facebook (both David Hankins and Powers Squared), Instagram, LinkedIn (both David Hankins and Powers Squared), Threads, amd Bluesky. [This is not a call to follow me on any of them, but I'm just trying to give you an idea of what I'm on. I used to use GoDaddy for this, but they have very limited reach, like Facebook and Instagram. I decided to try another service, PaddyPost, which are usually Powers Squared related.

With PaddyPost, there were always issues with Bluesky, since they have limited space and for PaddyPost to interface, it has to be shorter than their limit, so I try to keep that in mind. But there are problems with PaddyPost, such as my social media connections keep getting lost, pretty much exclusively Bluesky, but it gets worse. My two LinkedIn accounts stopped working several weeks ago and my emails to PaddyPost Support went unanswered for several weeks. They finally acknowledged me but claimed never to have receive my emails, which I attached on my response. But still no response to my issue.

I also post to Threads directly, because when I try through PaddyPost, I get the largest QR Code I've ever seen and this is only the top part, which fills the screen:

Thanks for nothing.

This led me to reconsider GoDaddy, but you don't create your social media posts, their AI slop does it for you and there's no way to opt out. After spending thirty or more minutes with their help chat, the answer was to let AI write them and then edit it to what you want. What a load of BS. So they're out.

As I'm writing this, I've gotten two emails from PaddyPost about losing connection to BlueSky (both accounts), again, again today! WTF?

My postings are pretty simple. I post every morning about anniversaries of titles reviewed in Trophy Unlocked on BlueSky. I do these directly under my name, and I'm editing as I go to ensure they will work again next year. On Saturdays I post on Facebook and BlueSky about the Saturday Morning Review; I also do it on Wednesday if there is a game review and I know about it ahead of time. Again, these are done directly on the plaforms, little to no issues. I also post on Sunday nights regarding this post on both platforms, again with minimal issues.

What I want help with are the two to three Powers Squared posts, which I try to get to as many platforms as possible. Our Wedneday video goes up at 2:30 pm, which happens to be when I supposed to be doing my day job. So I had been trying to use PaddyPost for those, as well as the Tuesday Peek-of-the-Week post about that feature on our Powers Squared website. We also post a video to Instagram and that works. Even afterwards, there are more groups to post it to on Facebook, which again, I do directly. But it's also supposed to go to BlueSky, Instagram, LinkedIn, but it's not going to LinkedIn and BlueSky's connection, as noted above, is lost at the drop of a hat.

So, I feel like I'm spending too much time trying to get PaddyPost to work properly and if they don't respond in short order, I'm apt to give up on them all together. I had high hopes that they would be a reliable partner and they're proving not to be. 

End of Rant.

In other news, I finsished a review of Moana (1926), the Robert Flaherty documentary. My goal is to save it until the new live-action Disney Moana comes out. You're now officially in on the joke. My review of The Sheep Detectives went up as the Saturday Morning review on Trophy Unlocked. Our artist on Powers Squared has been very busy and I'm already behind as I write this with a new page from her. It's great but every night, I have to review what she's sent and give comments. It's more time consuming that you think, though necessary.

Our Friday night On the Air with Powers Squared podcast, which I had tried to use PaddyPost to "advertise", this week was a look at the Steven Universe universe, the original series, the movie and the Steven Universe Future series. You can listen to it now here, watch it on our Twitch channel for the next few days, or watch it on our YouTube channel on Wednesday at 2:30 pm. It will go up even if the social posts don't.

I'm still working on Blackmail, but I've come to a part I plan to rewrite, as the timeline in the story allows me to do that. I'm about 84% through the book at this point and standing at 89,538 words. I'm guessing the latter number will go down with the rewrites, which should tighten the story somewhat. 

So, my next week will be reviewing and rewriting.

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