A Week in Writing #242

If it feels like these are becoming Powers Squared-centric the last few weeks, there is a reason for that. My work on Powers Squared has seemed to have taken over my writing time because it has.

To begin with, we received pages from Rachel and from Nina this week. Rachel sent us four penciled pages from Issue #11 and Nina sent us four pages from Issue #10. Both are doing their usual really good work and Paul and I have been happy with what they've sent us.

There is a bigger and bigger share of the work that I would refer to as the business of a comic book. We're scheduled to do a signing on May 4th, Free Comic Book Day, at our local store, so there is a lot of work involved in getting ready for that. Chief amongst them is having books to sell. I'm pretty sure we'll have them but in order to make sure, I had to expedite the shipment for the first two issues. With shipping, the prices are such that even if we sell out, we'll lose money on the deal. I put some of it down to poor planning on my part, but I'm trying to look at the upside. Hopefully, we'll have more fans afterward, which should make doing things like the Kickstarter easier.

Also, we decided to buy a banner for the event, which I know is more money, but again we're hoping it is something we can use more than once. Not sure if you've ever tried to buy a banner on the weekend, but it's rather hard, as most print shops are closed on Saturday and Sunday. There are in fact two places in our neighborhood, but they never seem to be open at all. We went to FedEx/Kinkos and while they were very helpful and informative, their prices were too high for us, again considering we're losing money on the signing to start with. We ended up buying one online which comes with a stand for about $80. When it arrives, of course, there will be video and photos to share.

We managed to squeeze in our weekly vlog which you can catch on our YouTube channel and on Pinterest, Tumblr, and Linkedin. So really, when you think about it, there is no excuse for not watching it. Paul and I had some constructive discussions after our taping about future vlogs. We both know we can and will do better, so please keep watching.

This weekend, we also bought a selfie stick for our Instagram videos as my arms are only so long. We'll hopefully start using it next week.

We also sent out our first newsletter to the people on our mailing list. I was a little disappointed that it ended up in my junk mail, but I think that's probably par for the course. You, too, can sign up for that by going to https://mailchi.mp/dc302d04a252/powerssquared and signing up. Be sure to add info@powerssquaredcomicbook.com to your contacts to avoid the junk mail issue. If you received it, I would really like to hear what you thought. Always want to make it better.

Next week, I/we are going to go through a ComixLaunch 5 day training on Kickstarter. Hopefully, it won't be all time-consuming, but you never know. The mailing list and newsletter were just steps in a longer process.

Not all the writing time was about Powers Squared. I did manage to complete a review of Life of Pi, which should be up next Saturday on Trophy Unlocked. Trevor published a review of Smallfoot mid-week and Paul published his review of Venom this past Saturday.

Sad to say, no novel writing worth mentioning and no new queries but also no new rejections, so I'm still two out and one rejected. I'm going to have to follow up on the first query soon, so I'm girding for disappointment. (I know, such a positive attitude.)

Well, that's about it for this week. Next week, no doubt, more Powers Squared. In the meantime, keep writing.

A Week in Writing #233

Okay, I'm writing this and I am a little nervous. Not because of this blog but I finally sent my first query letter off regarding Broken People. I know it's something that I've been talking about for weeks but I finally pulled the plug and sent one off. And I know I need and will do more but sending off query letters is a little like riding a horse, when you get bucked off (or rejected as might be the case) you have to get back on and send out more query letters.

The agent I sent mine to is one that I had met or rather heard at the Writer's Digest Novel Writing Conference last October. I really had the book pretty much completed then but had to hem and haw my way to sending it out. There is always a good reason not to send a query but I knew this day would come. I will, of course, update here as the process continues. I don't and won't name names, as that's not the way we roll at 1000 Words a Day, but this would be my dream agent at this point. But then again, any agent that would take me on as a client would be my dream agent, let's be real.

Already got a response, though it's a form email. I've had it be where I've spent hours to hone the query letter to a particular agent only to have them reject me in a matter of minutes so my first thought was not a positive one when I got the email so quickly. Rejection is never far from my thoughts when it comes to query writing.

Did a little more work on The Runaway as well. I wrote myself into a possible corner but managed to think of a solution before the trail got stale. I'm a little short of 35,500 words into the rewrite. I have a general idea where this is all going it's the getting there that still needs to be worked out.

No new word on Familiar Stranger and I truly doubt the editor reads this blog but we're coming up on almost a year now. I don't know if he's immortal but I'm not and time's a-wasting. I'd like to get this done sooner than later. I will have to follow up and I will let you know what, if anything, I hear back.

Published a review of the short The Balloonatic on Saturday on Trophy Unlocked. Part of our salute to shorts during the shortest month of the year. I've watched and written a review for next week of Making a Living (1914), Chaplin's first short for Mack Sennett's Keystone studio. Look for that next week.

There is also a review I wanted to point you to on that blog, The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part was reviewed by Trevor after we all went to see it on Saturday afternoon. He was the best one to review it as the rest of us sort of blipped out from time to time if that's any indication on how good the movie really is.

This week in Powers Squared, we finished Issue #9 which is pretty exciting. Since we've just submitted Issues 6 and 7 to Comixology it may be quite a while before 8 and 9 are published.

Speaking of 6 and 7, I've reached out to the websites that had provided us with reviews, interviews, and previews for issues 3-5 and only one, First Comic News, has responded. We're hoping their reviewer will do one for the new issues. I sent them to him this morning after emailing the editor-in-chief. Hopefully, we'll get a positive response.

Our poll questions have taken an uptick in the past few weeks and I have to thank our fans in Singapore and San Mateo for getting those numbers up. 11 responses last week and 9 this week is nice. It makes you feel that you're not just writing in a void. I've asked them to perhaps watch the videos as well.

Paul and I do a Vlog every Sunday with whatever is new with the comic book. The last several, despite pushing them on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Pinterest have garnered zero views. We keep hoping that trend will reverse itself. It hurts, people, it hurts.

We're still working out the details for the Kickstarter that I want desperately to do. Trying to see if our artist is willing to do something by hand that could be used as a tier reward and maybe be used as well on t-shirts and maybe even an alternative cover.

A fellow comic book creator is trying to start an Instagram Pod to support each other. I'm all for it but he wants me to do more than just publicize the videos which I need to do. I went through the last two issues and pulled out all of the sound effects so I might be posting them for a while.

Well, that about wraps up another Week in Writing. Please check back next week and I'll update you on queries and reviews. Until then, keep writing, cause you know, you gotta.

A Week in Writing #228

Writing is a business, even though sometimes it feels like a non-profit. Nearly everyone who sits down at a computer to write poetry, screenplays, novels or whatever wants to do it for a living. I'm no different than anyone else when it comes to that. For many, like myself, the first step is to find an agent and that's what I'm in the process of doing for Broken People.

Of course, the first step is to finish the novel, which I've done. For fiction, I cannot emphasize enough how important that is. I have a friend who writes mostly non-fiction, who shared with me his desire to write a fiction novel. He talked about knowing some agents and thought he could write a few chapters and see if they would represent him. I tried to tell him then, and I'm saying it here again, that you need to complete the work first and not only complete it but rewrite/edit/tighten, etc., before he submits it. It may seem like an arduous undertaking, but it's something you have to do to be taken seriously.

I know there are other steps like writing a good query letter and a synopsis but I wanted to put together the agent list, which I felt would be a time-consuming activity. If you decide to go this route, I would suggest a spreadsheet to track your submissions. I've done this in the past, so I was already planning on doing one this time as well. An advantage I found was that I could use the VLookUp function in Excel to see if I had already queried a particular agent or agency about Killer Blog, which you may remember is another version of the story.

I started with a list off of Query Tracker, which I've used in the past. I remember scrapping the data to have been easier in the past, and it might be easier if I was a paid or premium member of the site. So, I began by filtering on agents that handle the mystery genre, copying and pasting what I could from that list into Excel and going from there. Something that I couldn't stop from copying, which I decided to keep, was the country of the agent, which is represented by a flag. While I don't have anything against Canada or the UK, I imagine agencies in those countries are more interested in helping writers from those countries, so I didn't delete them but put them into a different ranking.

So my list started with 327 agents. I'm in the process of ranking them from 1 to 6. Since there may be more than one agent at an agency, I figured I might have 1 through 3 that I might consider querying. I'm thinking in the case of an agent who is also the head of the agency I might consider querying another agent there. This sorting is still in progress. For the those who might be a good fit but are in other countries, I'd rank 4. Now there are 17 who are either in the UK or Canada.

If I've previously queried an agent I ranked them as 5. I'm thinking of also including those who only accept mailed queries. These would be second-tiered as they are sort of behind the times.

Those ranked 6 would be those who are not currently open to queries or who don't list mysteries in their online bios or in the genres that the agent/agency accepts. For 6, there are 175 agents so you can see the original list is quickly decreasing. I did add in one agent from the Writer's Digest Novel Writing Conference who wasn't in the Query Tracker's list but handles Mysteries, so that's one going the other way.

I'll continue with this list and update you as I do but I think I'm going to have a final starting list of between 80 and 90 agents/agencies. Then there'll be the harder work of coming up with a good query letter and a good synopsis. I'm thinking some of that can be used from the Killer Blog querying.

As far as actual writing, I did some more work on revising The Runaway. I'm up to page 100 and about 17,459 words. A little less than a 1000 words a day, but not too bad really.

This week in Powers Squared, there was more progress on Issues #9 and 10. Our artist sent us some more character sketches as well as thumbnails for pages 1-8. Rachel had some good ideas that we hadn't thought about. That's one thing that I enjoy about the collaboration is the sharing of ideas from both her and Nina. The goal is to make the comic book better so we're open to any ideas.

Nina sent us pages 13-16 from Issue #9 and Trevor sent us some updates for Issue #8, though I think we might not be done. Again we're all going back and forth to make sure we're happy with the end result.

Paul and I did our weekly vlog on our now rechristened YouTube page, Powers Squared Comic. This week, we talked about all the above as well as the origins of villains Dr. Horatio Atlas and Instructor Agnes Miller, who were first introduced in the first two issues. You can watch our latest post here. While you're there, please feel free to subscribe and ring the bell; your support is always appreciated.

This past week's poll on Powers Squared received its most votes, four. That might not seem like much but it is a huge improvement over 0 and 1 which have been more of the norm. This week's question, "Who would you rather be friends with Kirby, Steve or Don?" has received three votes, but the week is still early. You can vote, too, on the website.

All of the other things I wrote last week that I wanted to work on didn't happen so that's what goals are for.

With the end of the Christmas season, I went through all the social media platforms and updated the avatars and homepage images that had once been adorned with Marty and Eli in Santa Hats back to just Marty and Eli. For some reason, I had issues with changing Tumblr and went around and around trying to update the image. I followed all the steps but when I hit Save, the image would revert back to Santa Hats. I even wrote to Tumblr help to find out what I was doing wrong. After that, I asked Paul if he would let me show him what I was doing. Same steps but this time the image updated, so in case Tumblr is seeing this, I no longer need your help, but thanks.

Last, but not forgotten, completed and posted a review for Way Out West for Trophy Unlocked. We watched this film a week ago in prep for watching Stan & Ollie, which came out late last year. We saw the film just this morning so there will most likely be a review next week.

So plenty to work on in the week of writing ahead. See you next week.

A Week in Writing #226

Well, the holidays are practically upon us and as I suspected prep has taken its toll on output.

For the most part, I'm rethinking The Runaway. I got to the point where I'm not sure where to go next. My premise needs more attention that I can give it at the moment. I need to figure out how my PI can find someone with little or no information provided by his client. It will take some thinking and perhaps research so it moved to back burner for now.

This week in Powers Squared has been fairly active as everyone involved gets ready for Christmas and family. Our colorist, Nina, has notified us that she won't be able to finish the next four pages until after the New Year. That should be fine since there won't be more than four pages and a cover for her to do in January, so I don't anticipate us getting behind schedule.

Rachel sent us the final pages for Issue #9 and the cover both based on a little feedback we gave her. I really like how the last panel got worked out.

We finished a rather last minute rewrite on the script for the next story arc, Issues 10-12, currently called What's In a Name? It started with my taking a final look which led to some rewrites and then more edits from Trevor and Paul. Some of the changes were grammatical (apparently I don't know a question when I write one) and word choice. We had pretty much worked it all out prior but this is the 12th and hopefully last rewrite.

Rachel has, in the past, made some artistic changes but we're also curious about how she likes the story since we're all going to be living with it for most of the coming year. She seemed anxious to get to work on it but I'm not expecting anything from her until after the holidays.

Still trying to Direct Message Powers Squared followers to also follow us on other social media sites. Once again, I did five and then Twitter won't let me do any more than that at one sitting. Not sure what's up with that but it does make sure I'm not spending too much time on social media. So far, the results haven't been overwhelming, no new followers on Tumblr or YouTube, as a result, this week. I know its supposed to be an uphill march but I never realized it would be this slow.

Our poll question, "Who is your favorite supporting character in Powers Squared?" has gotten our usual one vote so far. Somehow the saying, if you can reach just one person, seems a little hollow when you only ever reach is one. If I knew who the person is who responds to the poll question every week I'd point them out for praise. Again, thank you for paying attention.

New video up on YouTube, A Week in Powers Squared #13. You can watch it here. Paul and I discuss the origins of the characters: Uncle Brian, Mocha, and Jennifer Perry.

As far as Trophy Unlocked goes, we've completed our annual look at Christmas films with the comedy The Santa Clause. But wait that's not all, Paul reviewed Once Upon a Deadpool, which is a PG-13 version of the R-rated hit Deadpool 2, which came out much earlier this year. A bit of a box office grab for Fox/Disney, but really worth the trouble if you managed to see a screening during its limited run. I'm sure it will see the light of day on home video next year if you missed it.

I did finish two more reviews, one for next week, What Price Hollywood? and one for next Christmas, Cover Up, so you're going to have to wait for that one for about a year. With the year coming to a close, please look out for our annual lists of Highlights from the past year, with each of the reviewers weighing in with their own lists. Those should be out early next week which means you'll have to wait a few days for those.

So until next week, hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

A Week in Writing #225

With the holidays upon us, some writing has been spent on Christmas cards rather than rewrites. Couple that with general fatigue (am I still getting over it being dark at 5pm?), a dental appointment, shopping, and a neighbor who suddenly had to discuss replacing our common fence and this wasn't my most productive week. That doesn't mean nothing happened, but when there are so few hours in the day to write in a day, every hour is precious and not to be wasted. That's not to say that all there is to life is writing, but I hate it when I haven't done any during the day.

This week in Powers Squared, sort of quiet for most of the week. We did receive four pages from Nina, pages 9 through 12 of Issue #9. They came in at 11 pm our time on Saturday night, so Paul and I haven't at the time I'm writing this, which is Sunday morning, had a chance to look at them. Had a bit of a scare when I got a notification that Dropbox could no longer synch with my computer so I couldn't see her pages. Turned out to be a pretty easy fix, literally pointing the Dropbox to the E drive instead but it was a momentary concern.

Decided to get serious with the script for the next issue, currently What's in a Name? I haven't looked at the script for a couple of months and with fresh eyes I am finding some changes that we need to make. Hopefully, I can get that done in the next few days so it's ready for review and for our artist come the beginning of the year.

Still trying to make a social media push. Decided I could direct message those who are following the comic book on Twitter and ask them to follow us on Tumblr, YouTube, and Pinterest. I'm finding that after five DMs in a day, Twitter will no longer let me send messages; not sure what that's about. So far, the only reactions have been from Nina or related to her. Not sure if that's a good percentage, like 20 DMs and 2 responses but it would be nice if someone with no connection to the project would step up. I'm posting our linktree in case there is something you might care to follow us on as it relates to Powers Squared. As I say, any and all support is greatly appreciated.

It's a little disconcerting to try to keep all the balls in the air and realize so few people are watching. Our weekly vlogs are becoming an exercise in frustration as we tend to have few or no views. Last week's at this point has zero views. Our weekly poll on the website gets few hits; week after week, we get one vote. Whoever you are, thank you.

I did do some rewrites on The Runaway. I did have some time to think about it on my hour plus each way daily commute and did find some time to work on it on Saturday afternoon. Sort of interesting experience to writing a murder mystery while listening to Christmas carols but I think the pages I worked on did get better.

On the review front, I've tinkered a little with Song of the South but haven't really make any real progress on getting it done. Published our third Christmas review, this one Babes in Toyland (1934) aks March of the Wooden Soldiers. This version stars the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy.

We attended a somewhat botched preview screening of Aquaman on Saturday. This was a paid screening but the lights were left on through the first ten minutes and for a few seconds towards the end of a scene the sound went out; not the AMC putting its best foot forward. Did write and publish a review this morning.

So looking back, while I'm disappointed I didn't do more, I did get somethings done. It's all about moving the chain every week.

A Week in Writing #224

This week I tried #PitMad on Thursday. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it is a Twitter event, short for Pitch Madness, in which you tweet a 240 or less synopsis of your book in hopes that a participating agent will like your tweet and request pages, etc. You can tweet up to three times during the event which runs from 8AM to 8PM EST and it is recommended that you change up your tweet up, in case one version catches interest. I decided to try Broken People, the novel I had just completed rewriting.

I had three written different tweets but since the event conveniently overlaps with my work hours, I only sent out two tweets during #PitMad. Well, maybe third time would have been the charm since I received zero likes. As with most of my interactions with social media, the results have been less than stellar. And, of course, I'm not too discouraged so this isn't the last post on this blog.

Speaking of Broken People, I'm still making touchups. It's hard to stop polishing. The truth is, that no matter how polished you might think it is when you submit, you will more than likely have to make further edits as part of your road to getting an agent and getting published; or so I've been told.

I'm still thinking about the next project. At this point, I'm leaning toward Runaway, a novel I had started but for reasons I can't remember, stopped writing. Before re-editing Broken People, I had made some edits on Runaway, so that seems like the logical next project. The plot gets a little convoluted and as I'm a pantser (meaning I write without a plan) so I may have lost my way the first time around.

Sort of a light week when it comes to Trophy Unlocked. I'm still working on a review for Song of the South, a film we watched a week or so ago. But other things have gotten in the way of getting further along with the review. We have the four reviews we need for Christmas this season, so there isn't a lot of pressure to come up with one for the rest of the year. Speaking of which, we did publish a review of How The Grinch Stole Christmas, the 1966 TV Special, on which the recent feature film is partially based.

In other Trophy Unlocked news, we went to an advance screening of Bumblebee this past Saturday night. The sixth installment in the live-action Transformers series is really very good. Trevor, our resident Transformers expert, wrote and published his review. He is by far the best choice to do that.

This week in Powers Squared, the week started with thumbnails for the last four pages of Issue #9 from our artist, Rachel Wells. She sends us two versions and Paul and I picked the ones we liked. I don't think we picked one page over another but rather these panels from one version, the layout from one version but the panels from another.

We also received several cover ideas from her as well and chose one in particular for her to work on. The cover, as you can imagine, is very important. Trevor also finished lettering the first eight pages of Issue #9, so he's caught up for now.

On the subject of social media, Paul and I are still trying to find a following for our weekly vlog on YouTube, A Week in Powers Squared. Even though we have three followers, we can always use more, we're only getting a couple of views, which I wouldn't be surprised are us looking at it.

We're finding it hard to get much traction in social media. Not only do we have few views on YouTube, but we still have no followers on Tumblr, not that we don't publish something there every week. We're similarly unknown on Pinterest, which I just started pinning on, if that's the right term. I have one follower there but I think that's more because I know my follower from another place. If you want to be a hero, follow Powers Squared on one or all three. It won't cost anything and it would be greatly appreciated. Consider it a free gift for the holidays. Always better to give than receive.

A Week in Writing #201

Well as weeks go, this was a big one for us at Powers Squared. Not everything we had thought would happen did, but there was a lot that did. The week started with Adventures in Poor Taste's [EXCLUSIVE] Comixology Preview: Powers Squared #3 on Monday. This was a really nice write up about the three issues that were going to be released on Wednesday.

Then there was the actual publication on Wednesday of the next three issues of the book, a story arc we called WITH GREAT POWERS COME SOMETHING, SOMETHING, SOMETHING... on Comixology. All three issues are available for purchase, time to shill: Issue #3, Issue #4 and Issue #5.

Comixology wrote up a very nice piece about us on Tumblr NEW SERIES Debut Powers Squared, which prompted us to open our own account on Tumblr.

Thursday saw the release of our interview on FreakSugar.com THE CREATORS OF POWERS SQUARED ON FAMILIAL AUTONOMY & TEAMWORK which was our first not self-driven interview. I encourage everyone to read it.

On Friday, we published the third part of the interview of Paul and Trevor talking about their involvement with the development of Powers Squared. You can find that video on our YouTube channel. Next week, we're planning on releasing another video, our answering of FreakSugar's questions before we submitted our final answers. And after that, we're planning on doing a Google hangout with our artist, the Friday after that, so there's something to look forward to.

We're still waiting for some reviews that we were told were in the works. Not really sure what became of them. Our PR contact went radio silent on us, so I don't know if they're still going to happen or not. The contact they were using was also one I had cultivated so I may not wait for them if there is no response on Monday. I hate to make a pest of myself, but I really really hate it when people suddenly stop communicating.

We've also been approached about doing an Ask Me Anything session. Not sure if that will come to fruition but I will let you know if that comes to fruition. It sounds sort of exciting and scary at the same time.

Our Instagram following is growing, which seems to be the best reception we've had on social media. That has been a very accepting place for us to be and it allows us to also update other platforms at the same time. So it's a win-win for us.

Our colorist delivered pages 13-16 for Issue #7 this weekend, so her work on that issue should wrap up in July. Looking forward to seeing what our artist does with Issue #8 as we're now starting on the next story arc. Always trying to stay ahead of ourselves.

On to other writing, still no word from my editor on Familiar Stranger, whom I'll be calling next week to make sure he's still alive. Again, radio silence. I've been working on my other book, Paperback Detective. I'm going through the edits I made in prep for the rewrite of the ending, which sorely needs it. That's not to say its bad, but I think that it takes place at the wrong location in the story, so I'm hoping to fix that.

Worked on a review this weekend, about 2000+ words on the film Captured! (1933), a film that I had recorded from an earlier showing on TCM. That will wait for a future time. This past Saturday, we published a review of the Switch version of Bayonetta written by Paul.

So, besides calling my editor and following up on reviews I'm looking forward, trying to finish the rewrites on Paperback Detective and seeing Ant-Man and The Wasp later in the week.