A Week in Writing #299 - New Issue Released

Big week for us at Powers Squared in that a new issue was released on Wednesday, which is traditionally New Comic Book Day. It was our 9th issue and the conclusion of the Mathemagical story arc. I mention this, since as a writer, this is something I've worked on which could (the keyword here is could) earn me money. Everything else is either free (Trophy Unlocked) or more theoretical in nature, the books I'm writing such as The Runaway.

I would appreciate it if, as a reader of this blog, you would buy the book and/or recommend the series to someone. Should you decide to, I don't know, buy the book, you could look here if you're so inclined.

On the subject of Powers Squared, Paul and I attended a Zoom call with the staff and some of the creatives from the Artithmeric platform. They are our primary print-on-demand and Merch providers. It was kind of cool to be part of a community. We were there to discuss how we and Artithemeric can grow. I'm hopeful that Powers Squared will be prominent in that growth.

On the theoretical side, I got an update this week on a query I submitted back in August for Broken People. That's right, August, as in nine months ago. And was it worth the wait? Unfortunately, no, a form rejection letter:

"Dear David,
Thank you for sharing your query with me, which I’ve now had the chance to review. After careful consideration, I’m afraid I didn’t respond with the intense enthusiasm which I feel is necessary for me to take on a new project. But this is just one person’s subjective opinion, so please accept my best wishes in your search for representation!"

I'm not surprised. If it took them nine months to read my query, then I'd be shocked if they were enthusiastic about it.

Quite frankly, it had been so long that I had forgotten I had queried them but I made sure to note it on the big agent spreadsheet I keep, so as not to bother them again. I will give them credit, they actually wrote back, which is more than I can say for most of the agents I've queried recently. I can't remember if there was some note on their website, which other agencies have, which states something to the effect that if you don't hear back from us consider it a pass. I mean it took nine months to get a "no", how long are you supposed to wait to hear back if it's a yes?

It's possible that this could have been a "yes". It could have read:

"Dear David,
Thank you for sharing your query with me, which I’ve now had the chance to review. My sincere apologies for taking so long to get back to you. I was about to write you back when I caught COVID-19 which put me out of commission for the last couple of months. I'm just getting my life back in order and am very enthusiastic about your book. If you haven't already found representation, I would really like to read more. Please send me the next 100 pages of Broken People and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible."

I'm not wishing COVID-19 on anyone, but that would have been an acceptable excuse for taking nine months.

The kicker is, I've got more of that to look forward to. I'd say in the near future but if they're all the same as this one, it may be next year before I hear back from everyone.

Speaking of writing, I am getting closer to the end of this draft of The Runaway. I've written the conclusion of the story and I'm writing a final follow up chapter. I've been thinking about what I've written and may need to do some editing on the ending before I put the book down and get on with query hell.

Wrote another future review for Trophy Unlocked this weekend. In our Saturday night clear off the DVR night, we watched THX 1138, the first George Lucas film. I don't recall really loving it, but I thought my sons should see it. You'll have to wait for the review to be published to see what I thought of it.

You can find out what I thought of Scoob!, which came out on Friday. Paul, Trevor and I discuss the film on our A Week in Powers Squared video on our YouTube channel. You can also read Paul's review of it on Trophy Unlocked. There's been a lot of Scooby-Doo lately, as the Saturday Morning Review on the blog was Paul's Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur.

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

A Week in Writing #298 - The New Reality

I don't know how you're doing with the COVID stay at home orders and the partial-lifting thereof. I hope that everyone reading this is listening to the medical advice coming from the CDC or your own personal physician.

Public Service Announcement over with, let's get into the writing this week.

It probably won't come as a surprise to anyone that reads this that this past week has been spent primarily on Power Squared. Work sort of intensified as we're getting ready to launch Issue #9 on Wednesday the 13th. (You can order it here, BTW.)

I'm finding the more platforms you're on, the harder it is to coordinate not only the same product but release dates as well. We've been letting comiXology dictate the release date, more out of loyalty than anything else. They, in turn, give you a week's heads up on the date, which means you then need to scramble to get other platforms ready. For me, this included a new pdf for Artithmeric, our first Print-on-Demand platform to use, which they put up a week too soon.

Then there is the usual work, looking at thumbnails and cover art for the issue we're working on. Our artist, Rachel Wells, made a couple of suggestions which Paul and I agreed were beneficial to the story. I really like that part of working with her. I never felt the script was written in cement and the goal is always to make it better.

Did a little more work on the Pitch Packet, but that's still not ready for primetime, as they used to say.

I did manage to work some more on The Runaway. I don't know if this ever happens to you, but one night I was planning on working on it when the whole Issue #9 thing happened and I had to make and send a new .pdf. That somehow delayed me enough that I didn't really work on The Runaway that night.

Well, it turns out to have been one of those nights of sleep, when you don't. That used to happen to me all the time but it hasn't happened recently, or at least more infrequently than it used to. Well, that morning around 2 I got up and came out to my computer and wrote about 500 words, that I have been able to use to complete the chapter I was working on. I think I'm about one to two chapters now from wrapping the whole draft up.

I want to use the "free time" after that to send out more pre-rejection queries to see if I can manage to land an agent using a previous book.

One new review this week, The Third Man, a film that I actually own but happened to catch on Saturday morning on TCM. It is one of those films I've been meaning to watch and it was too easy to watch it then, so I did.

This is still part of Scooby-Doo month on Trophy Unlocked, so the Saturday Morning Review was Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders. Another review appeared on Wednesday, MediEvil (PS4), which is becoming an unofficially new game review Wednesday on the blog. It's all good.

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

A Week in Writing #297 - Stay at Home Week 7

I'm going to have to rethink the slug for these as I may be staying home permanently. Now don't worry, dear reader, I have not been fired nor am I losing my job but they're letting us decide if we want to work in the office, post-stay-at-home orders, every day, some days or no days a week. If you go in every day, you get a place to sit, which I guess would be six feet of bench, rather than the current three feet. If you go in less than that, you get "hoteled", meaning you sit where there is available space that day. If you work from home, it's the end of the dining room table, which is what it is now. We have to make the decision during a pandemic that will affect us going forward, even after there is a vaccine.

Since I have to make that decision now, I'm opting to stay home. I'm not anxious to be there every day since that would be a bit of a crapshoot with my health and well-being. And going in even one day a week would still be a bit of crapshoot as well as there are no guaranteed COVID-free days.

There would definitely be advantages like no commute and no ironing. I'm thinking that would save me the equivalent of one and a half workdays a week or about 75 workdays a year. Hopefully, I will put that added time to better use than sitting in a car on the 101, 405 and 10 freeways every day.

Now, what I am doing with the time I have been saving? The short answer is never enough, especially when it comes to The Runaway. I worked a couple of nights on the book but never got traction on the chapter I need to write. It's one of those, I know what I want to happen, it's how to get into it. That said, I did finish one new chapter this week but I need to get on it more than I have been.

One new review this week, The Sea Hawk (1940). We watched the film on Friday night and in-between other writing this weekend I finished it. It goes into the backlog for me and I'm not sure when it will appear on the blog. This month, we're celebrating Scooby-Doo month on Trophy Unlocked. The Saturday Morning Review was Trevor's review of Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost.

So that brings us back to the third leg of my writing trifecta, Powers Squared. This week, it's been more about the business side of things as we wait for a date Issue #9 will go up on comiXology and then scramble to get the other platforms synched up.

This week, we've been having some issues with our Podcast. The week before last, Paul and I watched a Zoom presentation about expanding your podcast's audience and some of the ways we were given haven't panned out as well as I'd hoped. I don't want to get into everything but I've been documenting my issues the same way I would at work, which you know is not fun. I'm hoping the support people at Podbean can straighten us out.

Got to try my hand at writing a feature story for our newsletter, The Hound Dogs' Howl. We've been trying for the last couple of months to feature other Creative Twins and another creative pointed us to some brothers who are out to be models and actors and I wrote up their story based on an email they sent us. We want to have more subscribers to the newsletter, which I hope some of you would do. In the meantime, I'm going to link to a preview if you want to take a look at what we put out every Sunday. You can read it here and if that looks interesting, sign up here. Go ahead and sign up even if it doesn't look interesting because you'll get a free digital copy of the first issue if you do and then you'll know what I'm writing about, though I have to warn you it only gets better.

I've also been working on revising our Pitch packet for that someday pitch we hope to do for an animated series based on Powers Squared. You gotta have dreams.

In the it's-not-all-about-me department, we did a table read this week after dinner of a script Paul wrote as part of a writing program submission, an episode of Rick and Morty. I won't go into specifics, but I have to give him credit for writing in the voice of the show. I mean it does read like an episode. He's done this before during an animation writing class he did. He wrote a script for a show called Tutenstein and someone who had worked on the show told him the same thing, that it read like an episode. That's quite a talent, if you ask me. I'd like to think I could do that if given the chance but he actually can do it now.

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

A Week in Writing #296 - Stay at Home Week 6

I think it was the late lyricist Peter Sinfield, who wrote: "Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends..." which is how I'm starting to feel about the Coronavirus. Not that I'm one of those who can't wait to throw off the shackles of governmental repression but this seems to be a never-ending story.

I will be honest with you that I'm not one of those people who needs to be around other people to feel alive. When I did go to work, I spent most of the day with headphones on because there was no escaping all the noise from everyone around me. The environment was open seating, by which I mean we sat at a long table and had the most minuscule of dividers between us and the people on either side or in front. I'm hearing they're talking about changing things up but I can't imagine they'll make it Covid-safe. I think I'm home for the duration which is okay by me. And I'm not alone at home so I can get by. I do look forward to someday going to a record store or a comic book store or to a movie in a theater but I can hang on until that day comes.

As far as writing, which is the point if this blog, I think we're done with the next script for Powers Squared (Issue #15) and the proposed Pilot for a series based on the comic book. I know, big dream but they do come true and you have to be ready for them. If nothing else, it's a good exercise to learn to write in a different format than a novel or a comic book. We even read the Issue #15 script on our podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared. Now, we need to work on the Pitch packet.

Paul and I attended a Zoom presentation during the week about how to get more ears on our Podbean podcast. So far, I think it's working as we have gotten more reactions than normal, though I'm not 100% sure if everyone who reacted is going to become a longtime listener. We're now not only on Podbean and Apple Podcasts but we're also on Spotify and the podcast is playable from Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.

With a creative endeavor with a website, there is work that goes into maintaining it. This Saturday I redid our Join page on the website, which I encourage you to do, adding in Spotify as well as reorganizing the various ways you can follow us. I also added a new character page for Quincy Victoria Davidson, who gets introduced in Issue #10.

I did finish two future reviews for Trophy Unlocked this week, King of the Underworld (1939), a gangster film starring Kay Francis with Humphrey Bogart getting top-billing, and Loose Ankles (1930), a pre-coder starring Loretta Young and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Not sure when they'll go up but I'm certainly ready when the call comes. While I know the rest of the world is watching Netflix, we're trying to go through the backlog on our DVR and get rid of some of the older recordings that have been sitting there for literally years.

This week's Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked was JoJo's Bizarre Adventure for the Dreamcast, a videogame from the last century, 1999 to be exact. Like classic films, this blog also covers classic videogames as well. My job when these reviews are published is to update Facebook and Twitter and to add them to a Pinterest page I set up for the blog, you know a different and visual sorting of the reviews. I also tweet every day that there is a title, movie or videogame on Trophy Unlocked with a release anniversary as well.

I was able to work some on The Runaway but probably only about 1000 words this week. I think I've written that I think I'm in the home stretch but it might take until the end of May to get the draft completely done, at least at the rate I'm going.

A Week in Writing #295 - Stay at Home Week 5

Does this feel like the new normal yet? If I could I would work from home, though I'd prefer it to be writing for a living rather than what I currently do for a living. There's nothing wrong with what I do and there is nothing wrong with the company I do work for, but writing is what I want to do and it is still only an avocation.

I'm still not seeing this abundance of time even though there isn't that commute. When I get off work, I'm trying to go for a walk which means that's time I'm not writing. In my case, I need the steps. I know there is nothing magical about 10,000 steps but I do know it's better than zero steps, so I do try to make an effort to get some walking in, though I sometimes feel like it's an uphill battle.

Powers Squared once again took a big chunk of the week's writing. Again, it's not so much the writing but what I say is the business side of the project. For the first time, we had an issue rejected by Comixology. And it wasn't for content but formatting. We submitted the same file we had used during the Kickstarter and apparently, it wasn't as good as it could have been. They didn't like the border around the cover, some pixelation on a page and the margins around the outside were too wide, or at least could have been thinner. All fair critiques and I had no problem fixing them but it's a little time-consuming and as much as I don't mind editing to make something better, I don't like having to re-do things. I know that's a bit of a contradiction but that's how I feel. I resubmitted it a couple of days later, so I think we're good. Now I'm wondering if I need to change files used elsewhere.

We also received new inked pages from Rachel, which we needed to review and there was one page that was revised, so we had to send it to Julia, our colorist, before she did too much on it. We were wondering how she was doing, so during our intermission on movie night, we noticed she was streaming her work on the book, so we dropped in for a quick chat.

And, of course, there's the podcast/twitch stream, the newsletter and the YouTube video that have to be done every week as well.

Finished one review this week, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, but that may wait until October. I think I'm one short of the five we'll need for that month. We're trying to go through our DVR every Saturday so who knows what we'll find there.

I actually have a new review up on Trophy Unlocked this week as the Saturday morning review, Little Big Man (1970), a sort of  Forrest Gump of the Indian Wars.

And then there's The Runaway. I'm still working on the book. I got through one chapter but there is still a lot of work left to be done. I keep thinking tomorrow or tonight and something always seems to come up. I won't outright lie and say this will be my priority for the week but I really want it to be. When I finish this draft, I'll have to take some time to send out queries. What's a pandemic without some rejections thrown in for good measure?

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