A Week in Writing #534 - WonderCon and BlueSky

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

Big things are afoot for Powers Squared. The biggest news is that we will be tabling at WonderCon in 2025 (March 28-30). This is a big step for us, but I think we're up for it, especially after tabling at LA Comic Con. I've already added it to Events on our webpage. Much more to come in later posts.

Secondly, Powers Squared and I are both leaving Twitter (X). It's not so much what happened Tuesday, though that does contribute, but it's their AI policy. I don't want to post images that will train AI. If you're following me, it's @lionsroar91406.bsky.social and if you've been following Powers Squared  @MartyandEli, it's going to be Powers Squared at @powerssquaredcomic.bsky.social. I hope you'll follow both of this on this new platform.

On the subject of Powers Squared, Paul and I discussed issue #23, only as it relates to unboxing proofs of issues #23. A couple of weeks ago, I found a mistake that probably should have been caught earlier. A glass that was supposed to be refilled, was full. I know it's minor, but you want it to be right. As it turns out, both proofs, one for Ka-Blam and the other Artithmeric, each arrived a day or so apart, and we didn't have a guest lined up, so it seemed like something new we could do. This issue comes out on December 4 and will be available in post physical and digital and links will be available in The Campus Store on our website. If you're curious to hear our latest podcast, OAPS #269, here or watch it on Wednesday after 2:30 pm PST here.

The peek-of-the-week, and yes, we do it weekly on the website, is a pencil of the cover. You can look at it here.

Yesterday was the first Neurodiversity Comic Con. I heard it went well. I've added some photos on our website on the Events page; to see them scroll down below WonderCon. Powers Squared was one of the sponsors.

Finished two reviews this week: one for The Thirteenth Chair (1929) and the other for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving; the latter should be up on or before the upcoming holiday. No new review this week, as we rewatched Chicken Run this weekend. As I write that, I realize we've never reviewed that title before, hmm.

My review of The Cat's Meow (2002) was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked this past week. But that wasn't the only review on the blog; Trevor's review of Epic Mickey: Rebrushed was the Wednesday Game Day review.

Did some work on Skylar and actually wrote some on it, but it is far from finished.

While I haven't launched query season, I did sign up to get a link to a video seminar about query letters. If and when I look at it, I'll let you know what I learn.

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

A Week in Writing #508 - Fun with Podcasts

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

You've probably read here before that we do a weekly podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared, and that we've devoted May to the 40th Anniversary of Transformers. My sons and co-creators of Powers Squared are big fans of the franchise and have lined up some great interview subjects. You can listen here to our latest podcast with Bob Budiansky, the man behind much of what we know of as Transformers, as he helped name over 200 characters and wrote bios for them while he was at Marvel.

While the interview went well, after I blew the intro and mispronounced his name, I'm human, the actual mechanics sort of failed us. We had sent him a Google Meet link, which has worked well for us in the past. Well, he couldn't open it, for whatever reason. We discovered this only when we were a few minutes from go-time.

When that didn't work, we opted to try Zoom, which took some time to get us all connected and recording, so we didn't go off on time. But oh, that wasn't the end of it. Since we didn't have an account, the Zoom call came to an end after 30 minutes, but we decided before time ran out to have him set up the Zoom meeting, since he has an account and we continued with Part 2 after that for another half hour. Paul managed to edit the audio together and then the videos, which took about 2 hours to render. The video has been loaded and will be available on YouTube on Wednesday, 2:30 pm PDT. Judging by the reaction via PodBean, counting downloads, it may very well be the most popular one we've ever done.

Bur wait, that wasn't the only podcast we did this weekend, The next day, we had arranged for our former artist, Rachel Wells to join us as a Part 2 of "What's in My Bag?", the video we did last weekend with her about Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) and the books we had picked up. Well, on Saturday night we were to discuss what we thought of after reading them. While that would normally go off without a hitch, it did not.

It seemed to take forever, a relative term, for us to connect using our Discord group. When we finally did, we couldn't hear Rachel. Well, after rebooting a couple of times, we got everything working (the royal We as Paul did all the work) and recorded the video. That too can be watched on YouTube now.

We're coming up on the next release of Powers Squared in about a month on June 12. With that it mind, the first version of the cover, a thumbnail was this week's peek-of-the-week. When we get to that, I start publishing similar images from the book, so if you want to get a look at it go to https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/peek-of-the-week and there is a link there to the issues page.

Shook up the week a little bit, watching the movie Let it Be for the first time in 50 years on Disney+ and then writing a review of it for Trophy Unlocked. That will appear on Monday, which is the 54th anniversary of it's actual release.

Speaking of that blog, my review of Smart Woman (1931). It was literally the oldest one that I had put up on the blog that hadn't been posted, something like three years old. The review is so old that I don't remember the film, but my opinion is there for you to read. I'm currently finishing up one for X-Men: Apacolypse and starting one for American Grafitti, which we watched on Saturday night after the podcast.

As per the usual, Skylar got short shrift. I did work on it one night, and I know you've heard this before, but I have a new idea to incorporate into it, bringing back an FBI character from previous tomes on J.D. Barrister, private investigator.

Well, that's about it for me. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week.

A Week in Writing #461 - Quick Turn Around

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing. And, hey Happy Father's Day to everyone that applies to.

Well, I got one of the quickest turn arounds on a query this week. This was an agency that just wants a letter, so I sent one on Thursday night at 10:32 pm PT. And less that 14 hours later, I received this following rejection at 12:10 pm the next day:

Dear David . . . Thank you for your query for BROKEN PEOPLE. Unfortunately, I'm unable at this time to consider representation, but I wish you the best with your project.

Short and not so sweet from my perspective but at least it's definitive. I will say I've had one rejection sent even quicker like first thing the next morning but this is pretty quick. Of course, nothing to be learned from the experience except the agent is quick.

Moving on -

This past week saw the release of Issue #17 of Powers Squared: Mocha and Raven, Part 2. If you've never done a comic book, there is a lot of work that goes into one and you really want people to read it. Still waiting for it all to someday pay off. We' re half way through with our releases for this year with the next one, which ends the story arc comes out in September.

This morning marked a new round of peek-of-the-weeks for that issue. It's a weekly feature on the website, Instagram and Pinterest. I try to spotlight one panel or image and show its progression from thumbnail to finished work.

I would say we introduced our new colorist, Jen Moreno, on our Friday podcast, but it was more like we met her for the first time. You can listen here or wait until Wednesday to watch it on YouTube.

Adding her to the group reminded me that the SRCC page on the website needs some updating. We're trying to, in a small way, emulate a college catalog so we need to update courses and professors to go along with our new creative team. I have ideas but I want everyone to agree before I implement anything.

Getting some work in on the books. Trevor finished work on Issue #22 and Julia's turning in pages for Issue #24. Since its Trevor's script, we're giving him final approval over the art.

Finished another draft of the Pilot script outline and waiting for feedback. I'd like to work on this project this summer.

Wrote a new review for Trophy Unlocked, this time about The Flash. We squeezed in a showing of it at 2 o'clock on Friday afternoon and I wrote the review that night with some more wide-eyed edits the next morning. It was my idea to go so I thought I should write the review. The post went up on Sunday. 

I was all set to write another one, this time for Armored Car Robbery, part of the drain the DVR, but the recording ended before the movie was over, so I haven't seen  how it ended, so that's one for a later time.

Busy week on the blog with five reviews coutning mine for The Flash. There were three game reviews by Trevor all from the same series Bluehills County Stories: Parsnip (on Monday), The Testimony of Trixie Glimmer Smith (on Wednesday), and Three Lesbians in a Barrow (on Friday). The Saturday Morning review was Paul's review of Ratatouille; sort of our way to acknowledge that Pixar has put out a new movie, but one we're not planning to see in a theater.

All that and some work in the early part of the week on Skylar; finished a chapter but thinking about where to go next with the story.

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

A Week in Writing #443 - Release Dates Set

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

I don't want to bury the lead, so I'll get to it. Paul and I spent part of Friday applying for copyrights on four issues of Powers Squared, and then setting release dates for those four issues. We announced them on the Friday podcast but in case you're not up to listening, here they are:

Issues 16-18 make up the "Mocha and Raven" story arc which reintroduces Billy O'Shea who made a brief appearance in a flashback in Issue #1 (and yes, it was planned). You can catch a preview of issue 16, here. We're also introducing another yokai, a yatagarasu, Raven, whom Mocha has some history with. Her yatagarasu form is this week's peek-of-the-week. Issue 19, called "Kamaitachi", has Marty and Eli attacked on the college campus by three weasel-like yokai.

I finished three reviews this week for Trophy Unlocked: Bullets or Ballots; The Banshees of Inisherin; and The Lord of the Rings. Of those three, I think Banshees will probably appear first but no promises of when. I'm working currently on two others, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris and Dick Tracy. A note on the latter, this isn't Warren Beatty's version but rather an RKO film from 1945.

We're getting serious about the Academy Awards, which is why my review of Marcel the Shell With Shoes On was the Saturday Morning Review.

I did send a new query for Broken People and started to put together a new spreadsheet to start querying Past Present. I'm trying to make sure that I don't hit up the same agents I did with the original version of the story and ones that have not responded to Broken People.

In between the reviews, I did manage to get to some work on Skylar. Again, not as much as I should and, as always, I need to do more on it.

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

A Week in Writing #430 - Is Routine a Good Thing?

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

If you're like me, you like a little routine in your writing. I try to hit all the basic food groups so to speak every week: Powers Squared, Trophy Unlocked, fka Skylar, and, a query. It's good to get to everything but is it a good thing? Is it getting me anywhere?

Even writing this blog is part of the routine. It takes about a half hour to 45 minutes to write down what I did during the week. I know that I need this as much as a reminder as anything else.

Routine is good and all but every so often it's good to shake things up. That's coming for me in early December when I moderate the Under the Radar panel but that's several weeks away. And, of course, we have the start of the holidays, and then routine is totally out the window.

But until then, let's go through the routine:

With Powers Squared, our artist delivered pencils for four pages this week. All were good with a couple of changes but overall it's looking good. Nothing else new to report, except that our next issue drops on December 7th.

As part of the release of a new issue, I do a little feature each Sunday, called peek-of-the-week. It goes up every Sunday morning on our website and on Pinterest before sending out messages on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook about it on Tuesday. Again, the looking's free.

This month on Trophy Unlocked, we're playing a little catch-up for the rest of the year, that is movies we've seen, perhaps late, but want to get reviews out before the end of the year. We started that this past Saturday morning with my review of Everything Everywhere All at Once. There will be more to come. Wednesday's Game Day review was Trevor's review of Stray.

I'm currently working on a review for probably next year of Batman & Mr. Freeeze: SubZero. We watched a couple of animated Batman movies on Friday night out of respect for Kevin Conroy, who died. He had been the voice of Batman for many years.

I finished my review of Plymouth Adventure. Maybe this Thanksgiving?

On Saturday night, we went to Santa Monica to see Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. Paul will be writing the review, as we will be doing a Pinocchio week this month as well. The Classic and two of the 2022 entries. Something to look forward to.

As far as writing, I worked on fka Skylar during the early part of the week. I'm up to 54,423 words. A lot of writing for not much progress. There are always so many other factors that get involved.

One new query this week for Broken People. I DNRed several old ones. No response is the new "no" in looking for an agent.

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