A Week in Writing #602 - But Who's Counting?

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

If you're a regular reader or only occassionally look at my posts, you might be wondering why the number is so much higher than say two weeks ago. Well, that's because, much to my chagrin, I noticed last Sunday, as I was posting, that I had made a mistake in numbering, having gone from 570-something to 550-something many weeks back. Looking back I see that I had skipped numbers twice before as well as misnumbered the last half year or so of posts. I decided not to go back to the 100s where the first skip happened and just renumbered the last 21 to bring in closer to the right number. My apologies, but no one else had caught it either (that's what comments are for).

Something that we haven't misnumbered is our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared. For our 340th podcast, our guest this week was Jamal Anansi, a comic book writer who tabled next to us at Pasadena. He's the writer on a couple of books, both out soon through Studio Skye-Tiger Comics, Ebony and the Hall of Dragons, and Sincere American Nightmare. You can still watch this for a few more days on our twitch channel, listen to it here or wait until Wednesday at 2:30 pm to watch it on our YouTube channel. And while you're there, please subscribe and follow. To accomodate Jamal's schedule, we recorded on Tuesday night.

This week also saw the release of the final issue of  Trevor's The Blade of Miracles, issue #12 "Farewell Britton". This release did not go smoothly. We had a bit of an issue with the primary printer, which wasn't their fault, but it's still not available on their website just yet. Also, The Bark, which goes out to subscribers, got botched and went out way later than I would have wanted. Mailchimp apparently added another step in the sending process, which I must have overlooked.

Work continues on the next issue of Powers Squared with our artist turning in pages multiple times during the week. That in and of itself is great, but each page has to be reviewed and comments written up and sent, which is time-consuming but necessary.

I've also been working this week on rewrites on the next story arc, "Aroma Therapy". I actually went through a few rewrites this week, tweaking and editing. I'm sure there will be more editing before it's ready.

This was also newsletter week. I'm happy to report the latest Hound Dogs' Howl went out this morning. Again, it's not a hard project, just time consuming. You're invited to join the mailing list, which is "enrolling" at San Romero Community College. It's FREE and there are no further obligations. It's different content than these posts. The school is "celebrating" it's 70th anniversary this year, having been founded in 1956. (It's a make believe school, but it's where some of the action takes place in the Powers Squared books.)

The Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked was Paul's review of Mission: Impossible 2. I'm working on a review of That'll Be the Day (1973). Rather than cleansing the DVR, this was from a blu-ray. As always, not sure when this review will appear on the site.

All this mentioning of time-consuming projects is my way of telling you I didn't work on Blackmail at all this week. Not for a lack of desire, but rather the lack of hours in the day. I'm close to finishing and then, of course, there are rewrites and editing to follow. Finishing it will be my project for the week.

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

A Week in Writing #470 - Just Add Water and Stir

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

This post comes during a very weird time in Los Angeles, where I live. Not only are we having a tropical storm roll through here for the first time in over 80 years, but we also felt the earth roll as we had an earthquake as well. As someone said on the news, L.A. is the country's disaster theme park. I know you want to know but except for some minor flooding in our garage, we're doing just fine. We sort of thought we had until winter before we had to worry about rain and the flooding but who knew we'd have rain in August?

Well, I know you're not reading this for the weather.

I'll save you some time, no new queries this week, no overt rejections either and very little writing, except for the idea I had for the comic book. I managed to do four drafts of a two part script, 5295 words. It started with one idea and ended a different way. I gave it to Paul to look at today. Even if it doesn't become a comic book, I still enjoyed writing it. It's been a long time, it seems, since anything I've written has been made into comic book form.

It wasn't my plan to spend the week on it but it started to roll and I just went with it.

Because of the pending storm and the possibility of a power outage, I didn't want to be working on a new review this week. So, instead, we watched the first episode of the MST3K season 13, a Kickstarter we backed in 2021 but for which, after paying for shipment on top of the Kickstarter, just received this week. One of the more botched Kickstarters I've been a part of and probably the last one I'll do for MST3K. The episode wasn't very funny and seemed sort of high budget cheap, if that makes sense. The original was made on a shoe string but it was way better than this version. The short we watched was funny, but that doesn't make up for everything else.

Because of the possible power outages, I also moved some of my normal Sunday morning social media stuff to Saturday night, including uploading our Friday On the Air with Powers Squared up to YouTube and scheduling posts for later in the week. This past Friday's podcast was mostly Paul talking about Metalocalypse and Dethklok, the fictional but still real band featured in the series. That goes up on Wednesday or you can listen to it here.

Even though I didn't write a new review this week, my review of  Nancy Drew. . . Trouble Shooter (1939) was Trophy Unlocked's Saturday morning review. We decided the review was our salute to the waning days of summer. The Wednesday Game Day review was Paul's for Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach – Ruin (DLC).

Just to give everyone a head's up, next weekend gets sort of discombobulated with Metallica coming to town for two shows, Friday and Sunday night. OAPS will be hosted by Julia Canon and will be another Artists Takeover, which I encourage everyone to support. It should be Live at 6 pm PT, so please watch. And, because the concert is also on Sunday night, this missive won't come out until Monday.

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

A Week in Writing #438 - New Year Old Routines

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

Starting over with the new year is sometimes harder than you think it will. I don't know about you but going back to the full time gig is more tiring than you might think it will be. It's sort of like using muscles that you haven't in awhile.

It also means I'm back to trying to squeeze in whatever writing I'm trying to do in a couple of hours every night. So, back to the old routine as it were.

Routines for the most part are good when it comes to writing but at the same time, they are very limiting. And getting back to them is sometimes hard. All this as a prelude to explaining my output for the week.

I do want to say I worked on aka Skylar but like last week, I'm sort of going through and making changes to what I've already written so far and not making progress on completing the story. So, if you're keeping track at home, I'm up to 57,652 words with at least another 30,000, I'm guesing, to go.

For Trophy Unlocked, I completed a new review, this time for Three Strangers, a 1946 film noir crime drama starring Sydney Greenstreet, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Peter Lorre. As always, this was a film I had seen playing on TCM and decided to record and was part of our Saturday night DVR cleaning; see it's all routine. And, as always, I don't know when it will see the light of day.

The Saturday Morning Review this week was Paul's for Weathering With You, a 2019 animated film from Makoto Shinkai, the same director behind Your Name (2017). This film was one we watched on Movie Day, which in my family is the day after Christmas. The British have Boxing Day, in my house we have Movie Day.

On the topic of Powers Squared, and you knew we were getting here, we agreed on the premise, so now it's on to the outline.

We had our new artist, Julia Canon on our podcast On the Air with Powers Squared. With all of the other changes going on this year with the book, it's nice to have her stay with us. It's a bit of continuity, even though there will be differences in her style versus Rachel Wells' had been.

Based on this idea, the peek-of-the-week is a comparison between the three artists we've had, Sika Murti, Rachel and Julia, and their character designs for the main characters. This week it's Marty.

I also made some changes with the website and the merchandise. We decided to take down some of the t-shirts and make available ones with the new logo on them. If curious, you can check out The Campus Store.

I had a bit of hiccup with my usual routine, since we're on that topic. On Sunday mornings, I post the peek-of-the-week and upload the OAPS video on YouTube. And then, I do some future social media posts for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using Go Daddy, the platform the website resides on. Only today, the links with Facebook and Instagram didn't work and I couldn't reconnect them. After spending about an hour on it, I finally found out it's more system wide than just me. When you only have so much time, spending it chatting with a service rep is not the best use of it. And, now I have to go back and redo them later this week, yay!

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

A Week in Writing #406 - Where Did the Week Go?

Hope everyone is well, enjoying the long weekend and, of course, writing.

Have you ever had a week where it doesn't feel like you've got anything done? I mean, despite sitting at the computer and ready to go, nothing seems to get finished. This was the week for me. I kept getting a late start and despite best intentions, I don't feel like much got accomplished.

On the plus side, I did send out a new query for Broken People, the thing I detest most doing. No word yet, so you know, fingers crossed. It only takes one, as they say, to believe in you. I was going to DNR another query because it was coming up on their time period for responding. I didn't when I saw on Query Tracker that the agent got back to someone, a rejection, after that time frame, so I thought I'd wait around to see if I hear back. Of course, not hoping for a rejection.

Other than that, I was spending most of my "wake" time working on a script for a possible issue for Powers Squared. Even if we don't use it, I felt like I had to write it. It's about Jennifer Perry and trying to delve into her backstory a bit more. As I believe I mentioned, she was not a favorite character by the person who reviewed our Pitch Packet and we wanted to give her something more and have it still fit in with our story. I think we did that and this script was sort of introducing that side. Trying to make her a "real" character, which I believe was the knock against her.

I did write a new review for Trophy Unlocked for the film Downton Abbey: A New Era, which went up this morning. We saw it in a theater on Saturday morning, hoping the hour and a week's delay from the opening would mean sparse attendance and it was only about 20% full. We watched it in a theater that used to be part of the Arclight Cinemas, here in Los Angeles. I really miss that chain.

I also had another review up on Saturday morning, Top Gun, the original film, not the higher-flying Maverick sequel. My guess is we're probably going to see that film next weekend. Not sure how early we'd have to go to avoid a crowd for that one. That may be our pattern for the rest of the summer, go a week late to avoid the crowds but not too late to hear spoilers.

The Wednesday Game Day review was Trevor's for Kao the Kangaroo: Mystery of the Volcano.

Speaking of films, we had Lucas Scheffel, a creator we know from Australia, on our podcast on Friday. Not only does he work a remote job, for a company in Austin, Texas, but he and his family are living in a caravan while driving around the country. Lucas, the creator of Angry Fred, is also a big Elvis Presley fan, so we talked about the upcoming Elvis movie. You can listen to the conversation on our website: https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/oaps or wait until this coming Wednesday to watch it on YouTube on our channel. Your choice.

No work this week on fka Skylar, sorry about that. I think that's the real reason I don't feel like I got anything done.

Well, that's about all from me. Keep writing, and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #405 - Hitting a Wall

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

Monday started off with a rejection, a query I made back at the end of March, so I was figuring it was about out of code anyway. Decided to take the opportunity to DNR the three previous ones I hadn't heard from that pre-dated that query. One had a day to go before their two-month lead time. Was I too hasty? Somehow I doubt it; just taking care of the inevitable early. So, is the going rate 1 in 4 actually send rejections? Down now to just three "live" ones.

Make that four, as I did squeeze out a new query on Thursday night. I think I'm selling myself short and I might, dare I say it, try to query another book simultaneously. I'm also thinking that maybe I need to rewrite the first chapter since maybe it comes off too soft for a thriller. I don't know, really, I'm floundering here. I don't know what agents are necessarily looking for or I would have one by now. But the rewrite has some merit as I need to get into the story right away; previous advice from an agent who didn't sign me regarding another book.

I've been hitting a wall recently with my writing and I'm not talking about being bereft of ideas, it's time. I've been crashing, physically, at about ten or ten-thirty and I have to force myself to get back to work. Doing that, of course, throws off my sleep and I end up crashing the next night as a result. Vicious circle.

That's been cutting into my writing time quite a bit of late. I don't know about you but sleep for me is a sometimes thing and there are times when everything is running smoothly and then there are times when it's not and it throws everything else off. My problem to deal with.

Spent some time working on a script idea for a one-off about Jennifer Perry. Trying to give her some more background and make her a more interesting character. This is based, in part, on some feedback we received on our Pitch Packet a while back.

Writing that and my review of The Killer is Loose were just about all I got through this week. My review of Our Town was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked. We decided to go one and two with that and Paul's review of Wonder for obvious reasons if you've seen that movie. Trevor's review of Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2 was the Wednesday Game Day Review.

No new review from me this week. We went to Amoeba Records in Hollywood on Saturday and purchased a copy of MST3K Season 11. Ended up watching the first episode of that instead of draining the DVR (good thing we don't review TV). To make up for it, I posted, as a draft, a review I had done for Chaplin. You gotta do something, right?

Sadly, nothing new on fka Skylar. Blame the lack of sleep and the script.

Speaking of, Trevor wrote one for Powers Squared that's pretty good with the Eli character fighting a Gashadokuro. Paul and I need to write a companion piece for Marty. We're thinking of sliding it in after our next story arc.

I'm also reading Paul's fourth draft of his book; so much writing going on. I'm a little more than three chapters in. I reserve critique for him when I'm done. And no, I won't give away any of the plot.

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

A Week in Writing #404 - Plowing Forward

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

I'm sure you get tired of hearing this, but a lot of the week was taken up with Powers Squared. To begin with, there was new artwork for Issue #21 from our artist, Rachel Wells, to be reviewed. Maybe that wasn't the first thing but it is the most important thing to review. We had some back and forth on the cover earlier but that seems to have been worked out. We're going for a Metal Gear vibe with the cover.

We had two shows this weekend, one with the entire creative team, our monthly team meeting. If you didn't catch it live (and I'm betting you didn't) it'll go up on YouTube on Wednesday at https://youtu.be/fGZ8_vs0wWg. We sort of had a discussion about what to do if Twitter goes weird (weirder?) after Musk's proposed takeover (Is it back on or still on hold?). I was on it before and still am, but I'm concerned about what could happen to it in the future. Is there an alternative?

We did another show with Rachel on Saturday morning (LA time), wherein we discussed the books we had all picked up on Free Comic Book Day, which was last week. We did that live, as well, on twitch.tv/powerssquared and also posted it that day on YouTube at https://youtu.be/1SEHw-o8adA. That's available now.

Next the fun of submitting proofs. Ordinarily not a hard process. We use two on-demand printers: Artithmeric (our partners in the Kickstarter) and Ka-Blam in Florida to provide a domestic source. Both have different processes for submitting and neither is as easy as you'd want.

We're still waiting for the fine art prints to sign. I've been told they've been sent but I don't know when to expect them or how to send them back once we receive and sign. I did receive my share of the cut from the Kickstarter, which wasn't really all that much. However, I'm prepared to move forward on the translations.

We did a table read of the pilot script, a real family affair with my sons, my wife, and I each taking parts. Read pretty well and with a few minor changes, we should be good to go with it.

Had one of those going to sleep thoughts about the next scripts for the comic book. I had written one with Marty and Eli's parents coming for a visit. In the first few versions, it was coming for a Parent's Day at the school but I didn't really like that. I set it at Christmas and we were going with that version when last night it hit me that the prior issues (20 and 21: "Mission: Istanistan") take place at Spring Break and I didn't like the time skip implied.

Did a rewrite today taking out the Christmas references and I think it still works. The holiday wasn't so important to the plot as a nice backdrop and a chance to get some Christmas stuff for the comic book. I guess that'll have to wait.

I also tried my hand at a script explaining Jennifer Perry's past. For those of you unfamiliar, Jennifer is Eli's girlfriend in the comic book. When we did the first go-round of the Pitch Packet, we got surprisingly negative reviews on Jennifer, which we tried to fix by giving her a backstory that still fits with the book but gives her more depth. That was the script I was working on. I haven't given up but it seems to be harder than I thought to make an issue out of it.

No new reviews from me this week, though I will be working on one for The Killer is Loose, which I saw on Saturday night after watching the Amphibia finale (and no, I won't spoil it).

Only one new review on Trophy Unlocked this week. Paul's Saturday morning review of Wonder. My review of Our Town will follow next Saturday. If you've seen Wonder, it makes sense.

More writing on fka Skylar but never enough to take note about.

And I did manage one new query for Broken People on Thursday. So far nothing back on any of the others, which in this day and age means an eventual rejection when the clock runs out.

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

A Week in Writing #390 - Not Wanting to Crush the Dream

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

We got political for I think the first time on our podcast this past week. I'm sure by now you've heard that Art Spiegelman's Maus graphic novel was removed from some classrooms in Tennessee. The excuse was pretty picky, nudity (a female mouse), and curse words (they said "damn" several times) but on the heels of the Krause list in Texas, that wants 850 books removed from library shelves, we had to say something. Rachel Wells, our artist, who had also read Maus, joined our podcast, along with Trevor, to discuss. Next week, we'll get back to the comic book, but sometimes you have to speak up. You're invited to listen to it and would welcome your thoughts.

While we're on the subject of Powers Squared, we did receive work on the final pages of Issue #20, while we're still waiting to release Issue #13. Part of our hold-up is the coming Kickstarter, which is now scheduled for March 24th. We don't want to put out too much too close together. So, we're going to wait for that to complete and then start putting out new books. More details as they become available. I would appreciate it if you at least give it a hard look.

We're supposed to have a meeting this week about our Pitch Deck. We haven't pitched it yet but we're hoping to get some feedback on it from someone in the industry familiar with these kinds of shows. I will admit I'm a little nervous about it. I really don't want to crush the dream just yet. Maybe I'm fearing the worst but I'm pretty sure there are ways we can make it better.

I'm still feeling my way through the Pilot script. I think I know what to do but there are some things to do with formatting that I can't seem to get right. It's a learning experience for me.

No new reviews for me this week, blame the Olympics. We spent Saturday night fast-forwarding through the opening ceremonies, so there wasn't time for a movie afterward. I get the feeling it might be a couple of weeks before we get back to that. The Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked was Trevor's review of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, a film we had fairly recently re-watched. The Wednesday Game Day review was Paul's of Shantae and the Seven Sirens for the PS4.

I spent a good deal of time on Thursday night on queries. After I sent out my fourth query this year, the third with the new format I wrote about a couple of posts back, I researched another 30 agents from my list and the results were not all that encouraging. Of the 30, only 4 seemed to handle Crime Fiction and were accepting queries. Four were closed to Queries at this time and one was closed permanently. A good chunk didn't show they handle crime fiction on their websites, even though they had shown up in a prior search. I still have about 172 more agents to research. As I find out more, I'll share it here.

That brings me to fka Skylar on which progress is slow. I spent my time on the book this week sort of circling the drain. By that, I went through the last bit of work and rethought some of it. The actual word count didn't really change all that much; 25,878 is the current count for what it's worth.

Well, on that lackluster stat, I'll bring this week's post to a close. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #389 - Meeting Other Creatives

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

One of my favorite things about doing our weekly podcast is when we can engage other comic book creators and share stories and ideas. We had that opportunity this past Friday, when we interviewed Don Nguyen, a comic book artist and creator that we had met several years ago. I think it was through Instagram but he was pretty sure that it was as far back as one of the Comic Creator Connections we had attended at San Diego Comic-Con before finding our first artist. You, of course, are invited to give the show a listen at https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/oaps.

While we're on the subject of Powers Squared, still in the dark on some things regarding our pending Kickstarter. It's supposed to be at the end of February but I'm not sure what exactly we need to deliver as part of it. As I learn more, I will, of course, relate it here.

We did receive thumbnails for the final pages and the cover of  Issue #20 this week from our artist this week but that's about the extent of the activity of the actual book. These things come in waves, so there's nothing out of the ordinary.

I did do some work on the pilot script for Powers Squared, finally using the correct format in Final Draft. Making progress, but it is sort of slow going for me as this is sort of uncharted territory for my writing. I did take scriptwriting in college and grad school but it isn't something I've done for quite a while. When I did study it, there was nothing like Final Draft out there, just tabs on the typewriter.

Wrote a new review this week for Trophy Unlocked, The Egg and I (1947). As always, not sure when it will appear. This past Saturday Morning Review was Paul's review of Encanto and the short film that accompanied it, Far From the Tree. Our Game Day review was also Paul's Shantae: Half-Genie Hero.

With my new query letter, I was able to more easily send a new one out this past week. So now I have three out there this year with the clock, of course, running on them. I'll keep at it and will let you know if anything ever pops.

Writing on fka Skylar continues, though it seems like it's more like a thousand words a week, as the count is currently up to 25,814 with this draft. I know I need to do better.

Well, that seems to be about all from me. Keep writing and I'll see you again next week.

A Week in Writing #356 - End of a Crazy Week

Hope everyone is well and writing.

This was certainly a unique week for me in that the days were cut up with a graduation on Monday, two days of work, and two days off at the end of the week, one a vacation day and one a holiday.

I had low expectations for Monday since the big focus was Paul's graduation from UCLA's Writing Certificate Program. He wasn't exactly thrilled with what he had learned about his chosen field in college and wanted to learn more and this program certainly gave him a lot of experience and exposure to different types of writing, from novel to television animation writing. My wife and I got to play proud parents and be there, sort of.

We were actually in one outdoor stadium watching the procession that was going on in another outdoor stadium. It went pretty well, except it started about a half-hour late and we got sunburned. This was a day or so before California opened up completely, so I imagine it would have been a different experience any other time.

While we were waiting to leave, I did manage to complete the script I had been working on for a possible Powers Squared story arc and complete questions for our guest on our Friday On the Air with Powers Squared.

As I mentioned last week, we had planned to go to Disney's California Adventure Park on Thursday, ostensively in search of Oswald t-shirts. For those of you unfamiliar, Oswald was the pre-Mickey Mouse character that Disney worked on and lost to Universal Pictures. My son, Trevor, has developed quite an affinity for the character and we wanted to go to the park to shop in Oswald's, a store just inside the entrance. Surprisingly for a namesake, very little merch was to be had.

We did have a good time and spent longer than we thought we would at the park. I think the universal favorite was the Disney Animation Academy where you learn to draw characters. We went twice and drew Donald Duck and Stitch. Trevor's were the best and his Stitch actually got positive comments from other attendees.

We also walked and walked. To begin with, there was no Tram service so you have to hike to and fro to the parking garage. In all, including that trek, walking around the park, and walking to Downtown Disney for dinner, my fit clocked in at over 20,000 steps and over 10 miles. Given that and the heat, we sort of laid low on Friday, getting up enough energy to do OAPS.

This week, we had Nina Gaillard, a former colorist on Powers Squared, on the show. You can listen to the conversation here if you'd like.

In other Powers Squared news, besides the script I finished, we started to work out some very preliminary ideas for the Graphic Novel cover. I finally got some feedback from Artithmeric, which I wanted. And now our artist, Rachel Wells, is working on some possible thumbnails.

Despite the comings and goings, it was a busy week on Trophy Unlocked, with five reviews going up. The week started with Trevor's review of Cars, followed on Wednesday by his second look at Cars 2, followed on Friday by Paul's review of Cars 3; see a pattern? The Saturday morning review was Paul's review of FF7R Episode INTERmission, new DLC for Final Fantasy VII Remake. And today, Paul's review of Luca, the new Pixar feature that debuted on Friday on Disney+.

Even though I'm once again shut out, I did complete a new review of The Kiss (1930), the last silent film from MGM and star Greta Garbo. Not sure, as always, when that will come out. If we're counting words, that was 1836 worth.

I also had some time on Saturday to get back to Skylar and am starting over on the story. Since it takes place post-COVID re-opening, I had sort of a burst of thoughts. I'm up to about 3639 words since I started and hope to get more done later today/tonight.

If you're keeping track, no new queries this week, sorry no time. I promise to do better.

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

A Week in Writing #350 - Does it Feel Like Summer Yet?

Happy Mother's Day to all the writing mothers out there! Hope everyone is staying safe and, of course, writing.

Doesn't it feel like it should be summer already? I know it does for me. But there is still so much to be done before those days get here. Not sure, really, what difference there is going to be between this summer and last but I'm hopeful it will be better.

It seems like more and more time I spend on the business of writing. Not that I'm making any money at it, at least not yet, but it seems there are still things that have to be done. One of those is querying to get an agent. When last I wrote about this, I had five and no rejections. However, I think the time ran out on two of them, so I CNR'ed them. I saw this abbreviation in the comments on QueryTracker so I'm using them here. It means Closed No Response. Not even a doesn't fit my list email, just the gut feeling that the vague deadline they set on their websites has come and gone.

I did send out a new one on Thursday for Broken People, again using an online form. This form was just a space for me to enter the letter, a synopsis, and the first three chapters, as requested by the agency. Formatting be damned! It seems like the agency wants to get away from emails but hasn't quite made the leap to hire a third-party site like most of them seem to use. I do like the fact that I don't have to go into great details about marketing for the book or comparing mine to other books on the market. So, I guess there was a plus-side to it. I'll go through the same exercise on Thursday; my least favorite thing to do.

On to Powers Squared where it was a jumble of a week. ComiXology sent us a rejection (tentatively accepted) email on Tuesday, not so much for the content of the book but the formatting. They require a .pdf and said it had Aliasing issues. No, I had never heard of it before either. Their solution was for us to recreate the .pdfs and click on the "anti-alias" checkbox we had apparently "overlooked". I don't know about you but my version of Acrobat does not have an "anti-alias" checkbox and searching through the help only proved that my version, which is a standalone version, was no longer supported. Since we had never had the issue before and our process hadn't changed, I decided that perhaps we had submitted a reduced .pdf, so I sent them a full-bore version instead. Waiting to hear back on that one.

Paul and I had a meeting this week with the powers that be at Artithmeric, the British publish-on-demand/publisher for Powers Squared. We wanted to see what they had in mind for us in the future, as they have started doing Artithmeric Editions, and I mean they're still Kickstarting the first one for Dirk Brodey and we wanted to know if we were going to be a part of it.

Turns out we are, maybe sooner than later. Paul and I decided that, while we can't afford to go back through the first five issues and re-do the artwork, we might be able to take a second pass at the dialogue and maybe tone down some of the wordiness and perhaps sneak in some details that might be handy later on, meaning issues we've done since. Turns out that's about 108 pages of script, which I started going through this weekend. More to do. Not sure what copyright issues there will be but at least I know enough to ask about that.

Anyway, the idea would be to do a new Artithmeric Edition of the trade hardback using money raised on Kickstarter. What they really want to do is move into the European market with translated versions in Spanish, Italian, and French. Apparently, BDs, as they're called, are big sellers and who doesn't want to make money off their work? So with the English version they would use a French equivalent of Kickstarter to raise money for a French version, then use that money to crowdfund an Italian version and then Spanish, or some combination of those. Of course, we want in.

Paul and I discussed all of this on our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared, which you can listen to by clicking the link. It's all of 10 minutes this week.

Speaking of week's it was May the Fourth Be with You all week on Trophy Unlocked, starting with Paul's review of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace; Trevor's review of Star Wars Episode I: Racer (PS4) on Tuesday; Trevor's review of Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones on Wednesday. Thursday it was Trevor's Second Look - Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003); and on Friday, it was Paul's review of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith.

To really change things up, on Saturday, we posted my review of Straight Shooting, a silent Western. Made in 1917, it was John Ford's first film to direct.  I also started, and nearly finished, one for Two Seconds (1932). No date set for that one.

That gets us back to Skylar and, yes, there was some progress made on that and more to come I assure you. I am to a part that I will actually be doing more re-write/writing as opposed to editing so I am excited about that.

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

A Week in Writing #339 - Grammar Check Woes

I hope everyone is staying safe and writing.

When I say I love editing, I guess I should qualify that. I'm not big on grammar checking, which I'm in the middle of doing with Broken People. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I'm using an online grammar program that only checks online writing. I'm using it by copying up to 50 pages at a time into Outlook Mail and then seeing what issues the program finds and updating the manuscript accordingly.

It's a somewhat tedious process and I still have about 200 pages to go. If it hasn't been obvious to this point, grammar is not my strong suit. In fact, my son Paul, who along with his brother is really good at it, goes through this post every Sunday before it gets published. I really couldn't do this without his support.

This program I'm using finds errors that are not there, which only adds to my frustration with the process. It will tell me that something like "The document" needs a "the" in front of the word "document". It's not something I look forward to, though I know it's a necessary step in the process.

So here's an update on the queries I do have pending. The agent that said they would get back in three weeks if interested hasn't after five weeks, so I'm pretty sure it's a silent "no". There is still one that has another week to go before I pull the plug on that.

I did do some sporadic work on Skylar this week but nothing to write home about, so I won't bother to get into word count here.

On Powers Squared, a lot of artwork from our artist this week, all good. I got feedback from Paul on the Parents' Day script so I think, at least for the moment, it's done. We have about five issues to go before we get to it, so it'll stay on the virtual shelf for a while.

This coming Monday, Paul and I are virtually sitting down with an expert to discuss marketing Powers Squared. It's an hour's worth of his time so I'm hoping we get some good information out of it. We know there are things that we need to do to get the book in front of more eyes, so I'm hopeful something will come of this.

Onto reviews, I finished one new one this week, The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), which we watched on YouTube on Friday night. And before you think it was a pirated copy it was authorized by Netflix. I also started a new one for Illicit (1931), another pre-code film.

A couple of new videogame reviews on Trophy Unlocked. On Wednesday, Trevor's review of New Super Lucky's Tale for the Xbox One and then on Saturday his review of Little Nightmares II.

So in the coming week, after the big Marketing meeting, I'll see where we go from there. Most likely more work on Broken People and Skylar.

In the meantime, keep writing and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #338 - Happy Valentine's Day

Hope everyone had a Happy Valentine's Day, are staying safe, and, of course, writing.

I set out this week with certain goals and I think I made most of them, however, I failed in one. I was hoping to finish my review of Spider-Man 3 and I have not done so. I know it may seem like small potatoes but I'm still working through it. The film is my least favorite of the Sam Raimi trilogy but I don't want to give too much of my review away now.

I did finish writing another one, though. I've been reading the TCM book Forbidden Hollywood about Pre-Code films and have been on a bit of a pre-code kick. A film that got mentioned, almost in passing, in the book was on recently, so I recorded it and we watched it as part of our drain the DVR Saturdays. The film was Beauty and The Boss (1932) starring Marian Marsh and Warren William. That review I completed and as usual not sure when it will appear on Trophy Unlocked.

I did get published again this past Saturday. Since today in Valentine's Day, what seemed more appropriate than The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967)? Well, probably some romantic film but the title fit the day so it went up. Previously in the week, the Wednesday review was Trevor's review of Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS5).

The bulk of what writing I did accomplish was working on Broken People. I managed to go through the entire book and am currently doing about 50 pages at a time through the online grammar program. I'm up to about page 165. It is interesting that the program will sometimes call out things that are correct, like asking me to add "the" in front of a word that already has the determiner in front of it. And sometimes, it would sacrifice flavor for correct grammar, if that makes sense, wanting me to make a change that is not in line with what I'm writing.

I also finally finished my draft of a new script for Powers Squared called Parents' Day, in which Marty and Eli's parents make their first appearance in the comic book. Like my reviews, I'm not sure when this will make it into the book, as we have others in line ahead of it. It took several edits to get to this point and I'm sure there will be others after Paul has had a chance to weigh in on it.

We had a fascinating conversation with other creators this past Friday on our On the Air with Powers Squared. Bin Lee and Tina Cesa Ward, the creators and writers of Delegates were our guests. I'm enjoying meeting other creators and talking shop with them. One always wants to find their peers and I think we're learning something from them as well. You can always listen in on our website https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/oaps. There are also links there to other platforms if you prefer them as well.

A busy week in Powers Squared as well, with our artist delivering four new pages, as well as four new character designs for our Pitch packet project. There is always some back and forth with these but nothing out of the ordinary.

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

A Week in Writing #331 - The Holidays are Upon Us

Hope everyone is well, enjoying the holidays and, of course, writing.

Well, the holidays are upon us, and all thoughts and time turn to family. The one thing that seems to go by the wayside, at least for me, is writing. Not that I didn't do any but writing was not the top priority.

As I wrote last week, I did manage to squeeze in that review of We're No Angels, a movie I've wanted to rewatch for a long time. This is one of those to be published in the future reviews, which may be next Christmas season. I look at Christmas/Holiday movies the same way I do Holiday music. Once December 25th rolls around, that day is done. Reviews are the same way.

On the subject of reviews, this past Wednesday Paul published a review of Bridge Constructor Portal, a video game for the Xbox One. On Saturday was our last holiday review, The Thin Man (1934), in which Christmas plays a prominent role. And while that might seem like plenty, Trophy Unlocked wasn't done. On Christmas Day, we watched Soul on Disney+ and Trevor's review, which includes Burrow, the short that accompanied it, went up on Sunday morning.

But that's not the end of it. The day after Christmas at our house is unofficially Movie Day. We watched several movies that day, including Wonder Woman 1984. Today, I reviewed the movie and it should go up tomorrow. If you don't catch it, there'll be a link in next week's post.

Later in the week, we will be posting an Actual End of the Decade list, looking back at films and videogames from 2011 to 2020, the official years of this decade. We're sticklers for that sort of stuff; this millennium didn't start until 2001 either.

Not much new on the Powers Squared front, though Paul and I did review some new coloring work from Julia sent earlier.

We did something new this week for our OAPS. Since Friday was Christmas we used an interview we had pre-recorded. Paul figured out how to use OBS to show it on Twitch. Apparently, Twitch likes things live and you have to be an affiliate to easily upload to the site. But if there's a will, there's a way. You can watch it here if you're curious, and I hope you are.

I'm still fiddling with a time-travel idea for the comic book, though it's not really coming together, at least, not yet.

To update on the Copyright issue, I received the paperwork ahead of schedule but it turns out it was for only one of the two issues. I have been writing to them that the issue I was having involved two issues of the comic book, not just the one. Not sure why both weren't included. Trust me I did write, when I got the registration, to the agent I had been working with there but with the holiday I'm not surprised I hadn't heard anything. And now that the government won't be shut down I'm hoping to hear back sooner than later but trust me, I'm not letting this go.

On other writing, I did find some time to work on my Skylar manuscript but, of course, never enough. I'm up to 28,760 words, so I'm not hitting the blog's 1000 words a day when it comes to that alone.

As I mentioned last week, no new queries and I'm playing Schrodinger's cat with the ones that I haven't heard back on yet. Until I look, they're still live and being considered. Reality can wait until the start of the new year when I promise I will be getting back to the queries.

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

A Week in Writing #317 - Venting Some Frustrations

Hope everyone is staying safe.

I'm going to do something I rarely do and vent a little on my frustration with someone I had counted on as a friend. I will not name names, as that is not my style, but I do want to make it clear that I don't appreciate the treatment.

As anyone who regularly reads this blog, my sons and I have a comic book, Powers Squared that we've been putting out for several years. To hopefully publicize it, my son Paul and I do a podcast On the Air with Powers Squared, sorry if this old news to some, which we record while live-streaming on Twitch.TV. For the last few weeks, we've been trying to have guests on the show. We've had the artist, Rachel Wells, our colorist, Julia Canon, and our letterer, Trevor Hankins, on the show. To complete the sequence, we thought it would be a great idea to have someone on the show that has supported the book, at least through the Kickstarter, and had read all the issues, including up through #12 (again part of the Kickstarter).

He was someone I had known for about five years now and had championed to my son as a good guest. There were things he had worked on that we could ask him about, etc. He couldn't make it the first week but said he could this Friday. We had been communicating via Linkedin messenger and had done so as late as Tuesday since we needed an icon for the "ad" we put up on Instagram, which feeds Twitter and Facebook. Got his okay and that was the last thing we heard from him since. Friday comes, we send him the Google Hangout invite and nothing and as I'm writing this nearly two days later, since. I've messaged him a couple of times on Linkedin, but no response.

Now, I'll regret saying this if indeed there was some unexpected family emergency, but it would have been nice to have gotten some sort of heads up that he couldn't make it or at least something since saying he was sorry he forgot or something, anything. Again, I won't name him and I'm pretty sure he doesn't read this blog, but I'm very disappointed.

We were left a little flat-footed at 6 pm on Friday but we managed to pull a preview of Issue #10 out of nowhere at the last minute. You can watch it and/or listen to it. To find the outlets, go to https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/join. We managed to add a new outlet this past week or so: Amazon Music, so we're now on five podcast outlets. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

Other progress was made on the comic book this week, as both Rachel and Julia turned in pages, though for different issues. With Trevor, we're working on Issues 14 (lettering),15 (coloring) and 16 (pencils).

For the future, Paul and I are both working on separate story arcs. I completed my rewrites on Mission Istanistan, which is a three-issue arc and Paul is writing one tentatively called Kamaitachi Story. We'll hopefully get to these next year if all goes well.

We're currently waiting on some proofs to come back on Issue #10. We got one, but there is another one pending. So, hopefully soon.

No update on the copyright issue. I didn't have a chance to call. I feel like I've given them a chance to respond via email, so I will have to find the time this week. Can't let this fester too long.

In other writing, I'm finishing up a review for two films, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 and 2. Saturday was Batman Day, so we watched part one on Friday night and part two on Saturday. I've gotten through most of the review, but not quite done yet.

To celebrate Batman Day, Trophy Unlocked put up Paul's review of Batman: Year One (2011). And just when you think there were no more Tony Hawk game reviews left, we had at least one more, which came out on Wednesday, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD.

Made some more progress on Skylar, though I think I only got about 1000 more words done. I'm up to about 13599 words and counting. I'll try to keep you abreast of my progress here.

And, to round off the week, no queries. I know, I'm bad. Still need to research like-books. I tried but didn't find any results when I googled it. Sadly, there is only so much time in a week.

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

A Week in Writing #294 - Stay at Home Week 4

Am I the only one who doesn't see an end in sight for this? Not that I really miss most of the workday experience but it's the rest of it that sort of gets to me.

I feel like I've lost the little bit of private space I have in the house, which has never been very much to begin with. I usually write either at the end of the dining room table or on a tray in the living room. I also work from home from the dining room table, which means there is no mental separation. To make it a little harder is that my wife is also working from home and the laptop she's using is also on the dining room table, so while I'm trying to write, she's also on her computer, doing what I don't know. What matters is that the time and place I used to call my own is now a shared space. It's a little thing but it does sort of inhibit me a little. I really wish I had a private place I could go but that's not in the cards.

This week, I did manage to do a little more writing on The Runaway, finishing one chapter and starting another. I think things are progressing but never as fast as I want them to.

I did write a couple of reviews for Trophy Unlocked, Gulliver's Travels (1939) and Little Big Man. I'm not sure when these will appear. My co-writers on the blog have a large backlog of reviews and theirs have been featured much more of late. This Saturday Morning's Review was the recent video game Doom Eternal. And I know they've planned out special months for part of the year so I'm not sure where I am in line.

We tried to upload the next issue of Powers Squared (#9) onto the ComiXology site but ran into a potential issue. When we uploaded Issue #8 earlier this year, it ended up as a different series than the rest of them. For whatever reason, there were two Powers Squared series listed and only one of them is good. I was able to get the renegade issue put back with the pack and was told the other series had been or would be deleted. However, it was back on Saturday night. I've also found out that the person that had helped me is no longer with the company so we're still up in a little limbo at the moment. I'm pretty sure which one to use but I was also pretty sure last time and you can see where that got me.

More rewrites on the Pilot script but they're mostly format issues. Paul has taken a course in animation writing and, I believe, has a flair for it so I'm counting on him to point out the error in my ways. Hopefully, we're coming to the end of that and I'll be able to work on the pitch deck. All these new talents I have to develop on the fly.

We sort of cut corners this week. We decided to do a different sort of Podcast this week, which we also simul-stream on Twitch. For this week's installment of On the Air with Powers Squared, we read the first issue, which I know is great for an audio podcast but we did our best to describe the artwork. Well, we liked the video so well that we also used it for our A Week in Powers Squared video. Hey, it's Easter, so come on. For anyone counting, we've done 31 podcasts and 80 weekly videos and this is the first time we've crossed the streams so to speak. I've also posted the video on our website, so no reason not to watch.

Well, that is about all for this week. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #293 - Stay at Home Week 3

There is a certain sameness to every week now, some of which is good and some of which is mundane. If I don't have to ever commute or iron a shirt for work again I could be a very happy man.
I feel like I have extra time but I never think I'm using it correctly. There are no little projects around the house that I'm sneaking in while I'm "working", at least none I would admit to on a pubic blog. However, I'm not really finding that extra bit of time that I'm otherwise saving. That time seems to be taken up with sleep and the second walk of the day. By the time I get back to writing, it seems that I'm pretty much getting back to it at the usual time if not even later than I had. I know bitch, bitch, bitch, as my step-father used to say when we complained. I'm lucky to have a job that I can do from home, but I wish there was more.

Powers Squared seems to be taking up most of my writing time again this week. I've been wanting to get us up on Amazon Kindle, which is hopefully another revenue stream. God knows we could use it. Well, everything has to be formatted in a kindle friendly format, mobi, and then uploaded onto the Kindle Direct Publishing Site. It's not hard but repetitive. And all the metadata about the book has to be entered for each one as if it were brand new. With the exception of my name, since it's my account, I had to enter everyone's name anew each time.

Once we had a couple of issues up, when I tried to find them, the input had to be exact or else it couldn't find them. To facilitate that I set up an Author's Page on the Amazon site and at least captured all the issues in one place. If you have a kindle reader or you're just curious, you can find everything at http://amazon.com/author/davidhankins

Then there are pages to review. Every month, our artist sends us two sets of thumbnails for the eight pages she plans to draw that month. Paul and I then have to sit down and go through them. Again, not a hard process but it takes time away from whatever else either one of us might be planning to do. I'm not complaining, just trying to explain where the time goes.

In addition to that, Paul and I do a Podcast  (and a Twitch Stream) each Friday and a YouTube video each Sunday as well as a newsletter. Each takes time and thought. It's not always easy to come up with two to three different topics each week about Powers Squared. We were able to do a Q&A session on Friday and on Sunday talked about our Poll Question: What Do You Miss Most about Comic Books during the Coronavirus Pandemic?

And if that wasn't enough, in this week's Hound Dogs' Howl, we were finally able to feature some creative twins, who had recently had their first table at a convention. Pretty cool stuff but we had promised their father that we would let them review it before we published, so that had to be written ahead of time.

I also did some rewrites this week on the script for Issue 15, How They Met, which will be the next issue Rachel will be working on in a couple of months but we wanted to be ready.

Putting that aside, I did manage to finish two reviews for Chaplin and The Curse of the Cat People. These will appear at some point in the future. This week's Trophy Unlocked Saturday Morning Review was Trevor's review of Ori and the Will of the Wisps, a video game that came out last month.

What got squeezed out this week was The Runaway. No time for that story. I'm hoping next week to be able to get back to it, with all this extra time I have.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #291 - The Influence of COVID-19

Well, a whole week of working from home with the promise of more to come. Personally, I don't mind working from home. No commute every day and no ironing shirts every Sunday. It's not so bad. There are some things I know I could do better. My schedule is off. I'm allowing myself to sleep in which means I don't have as much time in the morning for other things, including walking and social media. My step count is way down from the past month or so. I keep telling myself I'm going to walk everyday at lunch but there is a difference between work lunch, which is going to the gym and then eating, and stay at home lunch, which includes my family. It also doesn't help that it's been rainy most of the week. I mean, I like walking but I don't want to get wet doing it.

So the subject of routine includes writing, which has surprisingly been a little harder now that I'm working from home. I know it may sound weird but some of it has to do with the separation of work from home. I'm used to (don't read that as enjoy) a commute everyday, or a break between one thing and the other. With working from home, I might sign off from Citrix at 5 but I'm still at my "work" desk. I keep thinking I'll use this time to walk but I'm also with family so just getting up and leaving isn't all that easy.

I'm still writing, though this week, I tried to write something very different than I have been. I've made mention of the Pitch class that Paul and I took at UCLA, so I tried my hand at working on the Pilot script for our proposed Powers Squared animated series. Yes, I have dreams. Paul has had more experience with this type of writing but I've taken the first step of trying to turn our comic book into a series.

My first attempt hued very closely to the original text but as I've been working on it, just finished the third draft, I'm finding it somewhat freeing to not stay so strict to the comic book. Oh, don't get me wrong, most of the first issue and a little bit of the second have found their way in but there are other changes, like the teaser Paul thought of, that are not in that issue but it ties really well into the pilot.

There is also other dialogue that I've played with, some at Paul's suggestions but also some new bits, things we didn't see in the comic book between characters who's last name isn't Powers. Not sure how all of it will fly but I think it makes the story better and that's always the first priority.

I did some other writing as well, including working a little bit on The Runaway and some on my oft mentioned review of Song of the South but nothing, pardon the pun, to write home about.

Speaking of reviews, mine of Sabrina finally made it out and was featured as Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review.

Well, the week ahead looms again. I'm hoping to put major work on the Pilot aside for a few days and concentrate on The Runaway for the week's writing. There are parts I'd like to get done You know, those bits that you keep in your head before you put them into the book.

I'm also toying with an idea for a story related to the coronavirus. As a writer, I can't see letting such an event not get into my work. For awhile I've had the idea of a couple being thrown together, you know, a bad date with a natural disaster afterwards. Thinking this virus would make a suitable backdrop. Details to be worked out.

Well, that's it for this week. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #257

The week after Comic-Con is always a bit hard. The conference really takes it out of you physically. There are usually a couple of days during the week back that weariness creeps in during the afternoon. But that passes after a few days.

Something that you don't want to pass is the feeling of belonging. While there are people there who are more successful than the others, many, if not most, are in similar straits. Creatives who have to support themselves through other means, like a day job. For many, the creative outlet is not enough to make a living. In many ways, they make a community and I'm only starting to understand how to work with it and within it. It is that feeling that I think makes me sort of melancholy on the ride home on Sunday night.

But work continues. While we were gone, Rachel sent us pencils for four more pages in Issue #12 of Powers Squared. Paul and I didn't really have a chance to look at them until Tuesday night. But knowing she was working on the last section of the script made me anxious to make sure the next story arc, The Imposter, is ready when she is.

On the night we returned from San Diego, I did some work on the script and I worked on in it some more on Monday and Tuesday night as well before giving it to Paul to take a look at. I don't consider anything I've written to be cut in stone and the goal is always to make the book better.

During the week, Nina sent in four more pages of Issue #11 and Trevor lettered four more pages from that issue as well.

Our Kickstarter plans seem to have taken a backseat for a while; not forgotten, but just delayed a little. I think we're getting close, but there are still a couple of things we need to pull together before we go live. I'd like to get the graphic novel lined up, as well as make sure I understand the pricing of using a print on demand service to fulfill the orders. We're also thinking about a new t-shirt we could offer, but that's just in the preliminary stages.

On Tuesday night, I also listened to another of the List Launch podcasts, this one about building your list through family, friends, and colleagues, you know, low hanging fruit. We're still about 24 subscribers short of the magical threshold of 100, so if you're reading this and you're someone I know, be prepared to get some sort of communication from me about signing up. And if you're reading this, and we don't already know each other, I will invite you to join here. It will only cost you an email address and you'll get a free copy of Issue #1. And you can then read all the Powers Squared nonsense on our newsletter, The Hound Dogs' Howl, rather than reading it here, though this does have a different slant.

Paul took over an hours' worth of video that we both shot at Comic-Con and edited down to a half an hour, which we put up as this week's YouTube video. It's our longest video to date and is more about our life behind the scenes as attendees. One of the problems with me watching it is that I had to look at myself repeatedly over the 30 minutes. It's sort of one thing to shoot a vlog live and then move on, but to have to watch yourself in action is a different experience. You may not learn the secrets of the galaxy, but you will get to see Paul and I (and Trevor) standing in lines, coming out of restaurants and even sitting in the occasional panel. A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

One of the things I think I've learned from watching the List Launch videos is the concept of an avatar or your ideal subscriber. Your avatar is supposed to be the hypothetical person you're aiming at with your newsletter/marketing, etc. I'd also like to think of the avatar as the person you're trying to impress. I'm trying to apply some of that to not only this blog but also to my other writing as well. If I want to be a writer, then I need to do things writers do besides blogging about them.

I know that I talk, or, as is the case, write, a lot about querying, but I don't do it. I was telling someone recently that I find the whole process mildly time-consuming but also soul-sucking as well. But to prove it to myself, I did it last night, sending a query regarding Broken People through an agency's online submission form. I had to provide not only basic information about the book, but a query letter, a short synopsis, and the first three chapters. Luckily, I had been working on the short synopsis. Rather than worry about rejection letters, they provided me a link I can look at to see when they reject me. So far, none of the queries I've sent out have gotten as much as a response, which is the soul-sucking part, but I want to do well by my avatar, so I'm going to continue. Of course, I'll recount here how many I do and if I ever hear back anything.

Worked most evenings on The Runaway and I'm not at the place where I left off, which is about 237 pages in. Now it gets down to more original writing, which is harder but not impossible. I will, of course, write about that here as well.

A little bit of news on Familiar Stranger. Called the editor on Friday afternoon and, of course, once again got his voicemail. This time, though, I decided not to leave a message, I mean what's the point. However, after I hung up, I received a text from him, which I couldn't answer in the car while driving, but did later when I got home. Now, the polite thing would have been for him to reply back to my text, which of course he didn't, but it's sort of a positive baby step, I guess.

Sadly, no new reviews from me this week for Trophy Unlocked. Trevor, however, did come through with a review of a 22-year-old video game, Spy Fox in "Dry Cereal", so there was still a Saturday Morning Review on the blog.

Well, that's it from here for now. Until next week, keep writing.

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 #227

This is supposed to be one of those weeks when you take a look back at what you've done and look forward to what you want to get accomplished. I'm going to resist the temptation to look back at 52 weekly posts to come up with this year-end post.

Let's begin with Powers Squared. So much has happened and there is still so much to do. We began the year with a new creative team. Paul and I wanted to take the comic book in a new direction and we were happy to start working with Rachel Wells and Nina Gaillard on the comic book. Because of them, this has been a very productive year, which we will begin releasing in 2019. We've completed three issues and are about a month or so away from completing a fourth. (It previously took us two full years to get five done.)

The last three of the first five issues came out this year and despite some nice publicity, including an interview with FreakSugar, reviews in First Comic News, a nice write-up in Adventures in Poor Taste and an Ask Me Anything, I don't think we broke any sales records. In fact, I don't think we've sold enough to warrant getting paid by comiXology. (In fact, I think the lack of sales caused them to sort of turn their backs on us, so to speak.) It would be easy to give up, but I think the best stories are still to come.

I don't talk about the cost to produce the comic book (and I won't here, either) but let's just say it takes just about every extra penny we have and preventing us, as a family, from doing things like taking vacations, doing things to the house, to buying a new car. I'm hoping to change some of that by doing some crowdfunding in the coming year. I don't want you to cry for me Argentina, but we're hoping to get some help and, hopefully, more exposure for the comic.

We've tried to grow our social media presence with a website, a Facebook page, an Instagram account, Tumblr account, Twitter account, a YouTube Channel, and, lastly, a Pinterest account. That's not to say we've been successful on all fronts. You have to keep feeding these platforms and sometimes that's very difficult. I don't want to get too far ahead with revealing too much about future issues so that when they come out we have new images to share. At the same time, I wanted to promote the issues that came out last year, which sort of left our current Creative Team on the sidelines while we did that.

Now, we can concentrate on our new issues. I plan to submit Issues 6 and 7 early in the new year to comiXology but would also like to see if we can get some support from some of the media outlets that had supported us last time out.

Would also like to look into printing on demand. To that end, I spent some time this week coming up with back covers, both inside and out, for the issues. Now to get those reviewed and then we'll see where to go from there.

Work has already begun on Issue #10. We've submitted the script to Rachel, who has already begun to do some sketches for a new character we're introducing. She also seemed to really like the script which is a good thing as we're going to be living with this story arc for most of the coming year. This story arc is called What's in a Name? and will continue for three issues.

Trophy Unlocked celebrated its eighth anniversary and the 900th review post this past year. We're getting our end of the year posts ready and those will be out tomorrow, the 31st. This past week, we posted three new reviews. In addition to our usual Saturday Morning Review, What Price Hollywood?, we also published a review of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which Trevor wrote. We also published one more from Paul for Ready Player One.

Every year, we spend the day after Christmas watching movies, which we call Movie Day (I know, really clever). As a result, we have a couple of reviews, including Ready Player One and one I wrote for Wonder Wheel. Not sure if we'll be writing reviews of the other films we watched that day or not. One of them, Incredibles 2, we've already written about.

While I wasn't sure last week about the rewrite for The Runaway, I did some work on Christmas Day and a couple of other days this past week. The stumbling block I thought I had sort of disappeared when I got back to it. So I'm about 12,000 words into that rewrite.

Still no word from my editor on Familiar Stranger. Despite his promises to the contrary, it has been radio-silence for most of this year. I did receive about 50 pages but that was literally months ago. I wish I didn't feel the pressure to get the work done but I do. And frankly, I have a hard time when other people don't feel the same urgency. But there isn't much I can do to light a fire under him.

I need to spend some time putting together a list of potential agents to try and sell Broken People. I've kept spreadsheets in the past but I think I'm going to start the process from scratch. There are a few agents from the Writer's Digest Novel Writing Conference that I'd like to query to as well.

So next year, I hope it's a breakout year for Powers Squared, with more eyes on Trophy Unlocked and I find an agent for my books. Tall order, but that's what dreams are made of.