A Week in Writing #361 - I Miss Comic-Con - Report From the Front

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

Every year for the past 12 or so, my family and I have made the trek to San Diego for Comic-Con. What started out as a bit of a lark, hey let's check this out after Legoland, has turned into an annual event and led us to co-create our own comic book, the oft-written about Powers Squared, which has, in turn, led to things like Podcasts, mailing lists, and newsletters, which, if you've read more than one of these posts, have read me writing about more than once.

As part of our yearly trek, I write a Report from the Front, where I detail what I did and what I learned. No doubt, you're aware, that for the second year in a row, the actual event has been canceled and has continued as a website linking you to Exhibitors to buy exclusives and YouTube where the panels take place. So, the front lines are as close as my couch.

Over the years, as we've gotten more involved in the business side of comic books, I've tried to make a point of attending more practical panels, i.e., those that teach rather than hype. (Note: If you've never been to SDCC before, there is a lot of hyping going on. Constantly.) This year, there were fewer days, from five to three plus the random program on Wednesday and Thursday, so there were fewer panels to watch.

If you're like me and you've been working from home during the pandemic you've probably been on a few Zoom calls that you simply watched, i.e., it hasn't been interactive. And imagine if the Zoom call you were watching was pre-taped. If you can do that, then you've had the Comic-Con@Home experience. As exciting as a pre-recorded conversation that you're not a part of, which is often to be applied sarcastically.

Now, a few panels have had some production values but I would put those under the category of hype; Unmasking Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins on Wednesday and the Dragon Ball: Special Panel are examples.

But for the most part, the informational ones seemed more like work than anything else. And I know that whoever puts together the panels usually brings together people they've worked with before, but sometimes you can overdo it when three-quarters of the guests work on the same podcast for example. You're not really getting a universal lesson when everyone has the same experiences.

We watched panels on podcasting and branding, but I don't really think I learned anything new from either. The one overriding truth seems to be that no one makes money on podcasts or comic books but you do it for love. The other is that if you do work in the industry, you have to be two of the three: nice to work with (not an asshole), talented, and meet your deadlines. There, I saved you three days of video watching. You're welcome.

I know this is meant to mostly be about Comic-Con@home, but I did want to give you an update on a query. No, not a new one, and not good news either, but a rejection. One of the queries I made back in April was finally officially resolved, about a month after I gave up on it. The agency said that they take 8 weeks to reply to queries so I took that to mean a pass at the end of June. However, 8 weeks can apparently mean 12 weeks because I received a form letter rejection at 2:33 a.m. on Sunday morning.

Again, this blog isn't here to settle scores but it doesn't get more impersonal than a form letter sent at 2:33 on a Sunday morning.

The takeaway from this, if you're looking for a bright side, is that when an agency says 8 weeks it could really be 12 weeks, so the fact you hadn't heard back doesn't really mean it's a rejection, it just means that they're behind schedule. Best of luck.

And it's never fun to start the day being rejected.

In other news, I did manage to finish the fourth draft of a story idea I had for Powers Squared, Aroma Therapy. 40 pages over two issues. Don't know if it will make it to print but it was an idea I've had for a while and decided to write it this week, yes in lieu of other writing.

And the podcast that the comic book birthed, On the Air with Powers Squared, is about to celebrate its 100th episode. For that show, we got Carla Hoch, the author of Fight Write to be a guest. If you have any questions you'd like to ask about fight scenes in books or comic books, leave me a comment by Thursday morning, we're taping her in advance, and I'll ask for you.

For Trophy Unlocked, in the spirit of Comic-Con, we featured Trevor's review of the video game Blacksad: Under the Sun and his review of The Peanuts Movie on Saturday morning. I'm currently working on a review of Who Framed Roger Rabbit for future publication. Hard to do much writing when you're watching videos.

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

A Week in Writing #360 - What am I doing?

Hope everyone is well and writing. At least, that's what I think I've been doing.

Have you ever had weeks like that, when you look back and realize that you hadn't done everything you wanted to do? I know that feels like me every week and, sadly, this one is no different.

It wasn't until I sat down to write this that I realized I hadn't worked on Skylar at all this past week. I don't think I'd ever really thought about it, except in passing and apparently didn't work on it at all. This doesn't mean that I'm done with it, only this past week I never had a chance to work on it.

This entire week, I felt like I was losing time, and as we know, there is never enough of that to go around. The fun part is that I can never remember where the time went. I mean, I sit down every night and something gets done but when I look back it seems like nothing got done.

Of course, no new queries. Thursday night, the night I set aside for this, was a no-go this week. I'm not going to promise anything this week as I hate to disappoint. But when I do again, I'll report back here, but no more empty promises going forward. I feel like I'm letting you down along with myself.

I finally finished my review of Ace in the Hole, which was harder than I expected. Now I'm working on one for The Trouble with Harry. As per usual, no ETA for when these will appear. Things got a little shook up on Trophy Unlocked this week. On Wednesday, instead of a video game review, it was Trevor's review of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable - Chapter I, a movie. And on Saturday, it was Paul's review of the documentary The Cartoonist, about Jeff Smith, the man behind Bone. Sunday, was a bonus review of Space Jam: A New Legacy, which we had the misfortune of watching on Friday night.

So, don't be shocked, the rest of the week was spent on Powers Squared. Some of it was spent on reviewing pencils for Issue 19 and some of it was spent working on another idea I had for a future book. I'm calling it Aroma Therapy and I'm not going to explain, at least not yet. I've written a first draft or two of the first 20 pages.

We had our monthly group meeting, or what our colorist called "our monthly 'We're Not Dead' Podcast". These are usually my favorites as it's everyone involved in the book. We discuss what's going on and what we're working on. You can listen to it here. We're only about three away from our 100th podcast. It may sound like we're crossing streams, but we're trying to line up Carla Hoch, the writer of Fight Write, as our guest.

Next week, we're having Lucas Scheffel live from Australia to discuss his new Kickstarter for his Angry Fred comic book.

Speaking of next week, it's time for San Diego Comic-Con, though once again, it's @home, which takes the stuffing out of it. I will be "attending" and will report on whatever it is I learn.

Well, that's a good place to stop. Keep writing and I'll see you next week.

A Week in Writing #359 - Short Week

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

Let's start with the bulk of the work, which seems to always be about Powers Squared.

For some reason, the issue we're working on, #19 Kamaitachi, has been more time-consuming than usual. Part of it turned out to be communicating what we were looking for in a couple of panels, which affected three pages of the first eight. It came down, believe it or not, to the orientation of a stairwell, which plays a big part in how the story works.

Part of the problem was that she had no reference for what we were talking about. The only example we could think of was in front of the San Diego Convention Center, something we had experienced at Comic-Con. Of course, we had no photos of that particular stairwell, I mean, who takes photos of stairwells?

Using Google Maps, I was able to get a street view of the Convention Center and then Snip got the image and sent it to her. All good now.

We also had some work on character designs. Minor things, in a way, but important details. Again, we managed to get it all worked out.

With Rachel, we sort of re-lived that part of the week on our On the Air with Powers Squared podcast, available on our website, https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/oaps if you want to listen to it, or watch it on twitch.tv. It's part of our plan to spend one or two shows each month on the process of putting together an issue.

We also discussed working on a cover for our BD for the Artithmeric Kickstarter, which is now tentatively scheduled for mid- to late- September. We need a new cover as well as an image for the back. My goal is to have everything done by the end of August.

Did some more writing on Skylar, including close to 1000 words during one session on Saturday. I think I'm making good progress for a change.

Other than that, I feel like I've been falling behind. I did some more agent research during the week but, once again, didn't send any queries. I just didn't really have the time, and I know I know that's my old excuse.

I also started a review, Ace in the Hole (1951) but I'm not as far along as I'd like to be, so that's one more thing I need to work on this week. I did write and publish one this weekend, Black Widow. We watched on Disney+ rather than in the theater. Still not sure yet when we're going back.

Speaking of Trophy Unlocked, the other reviews this week were Paul's review of the video game Night in the Woods on Wednesday and his review of Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory on Saturday.

Well, that about does it for me. See you again next week.

A Week in Writing #358 - I Know, I Know

Hope everyone is staying safe and writing. For those of you in the U.S., I hope you had a Happy and Safe Fourth of July.

The subtitle isn't about my knowing the answer to an unasked question but rather my own realization that I mislabelled the post. I had it as #157 instead of #357. I don't know what I was thinking and just happened across the error sometime mid-week. If you ever see something like that again, please leave me a comment or something. So embarrassing!

So, confession time and we should get this out of the way right off the bat, I did not send out any queries this week and the ones I have out have probably expired on the vine. My goal is to do those on Thursday night but that turned into a couple of hours of reviewing thumbnails and character designs for Issue #19 of  Powers Squared.

I know I talk about that every week and it is days like this past Thursday where it takes over my schedule. We're starting to work on a new issue with our artist and I don't want her to think we're ignoring her efforts by not looking at what she sends us. The exception to that is anything sent on a Friday doesn't get looked at right away, 'cause hey, it's Friday.

And I know last week I was bemoaning the lack of pages that had been colored and that, at least for now, has been rectified as we're finally up to 8 pages. When we started doing the book, I envisioned it the artist drawing eight pages each month with the colorist about a month behind and the letterer a month behind that. Of course, it's never worked out that way and right now, the colorist is a couple of months behind the artist.

I don't begrudge her or anything. She did just start working full-time and needed to get back into a rhythm with the coloring. Hopefully, we're back on schedule, though, as I wrote about a month or more behind. It's not like we have a tight schedule since we're about seven issues ahead of the releases.

Even though it's the fourth, we still had a newsletter to write and we did get it out this morning. As always, I hope one of you reading this might sign up for it. It's FREE and it only comes once a month. You can sign up for it by enrolling at https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/srcc.

We had a good OAPS show on Friday, with Julia joining Paul, Trevor, and I as we did a table read of Issue #19. I thought it might be fun to really go into more depth on how we put together an issue. While a table read isn't really part of the process, it is a chance to introduce the script. You can listen to it at https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/oaps.

We're about five away from doing our 100th podcast. I think it's like the first Friday in August. We're not sure what we'll do yet but it is a sort of a momentous occasion. Don't worry, I'll be reminding you of this several times before we actually get there.

If you read Trophy Unlocked during the week, you'd notice that I sort of took over the blog, at least for five days as we gave a salute, of sorts, to pre-code films. Monday's film was Her Man (1930), followed by Chances (1931), followed by The Last Flight (1931), followed by Trouble in Paradise (1932) on Thursday. We finished the week with The Sign of the Cross (1932), Cecile B. DeMille's ode to debauchery and Christianity.

And now for something completely different, on Saturday it was Paul's review of Holes to round out the week.

I started work on another review, Crime School (1938) but I'm not as far along as I'd like. Really got tired last night before I could get very far.

During the week, I did manage some more work on Skylar.  With this version, I'm up to 16,598 words and I think it's going better than previous rewrites. I try not to set too many goals, as I never seem to make them, but I'm hopeful I'll get further along. I feel like I'm on a roll this time (and I know I've said that before, but this time for sure).

Well, I think I've covered the main topics.

Keep writing and I'll see you back here next week.

A Week in Writing #357 - Am I Ever Going to Make It?

Hope everyone is staying safe and writing.

I know the headline may seem alarmist but I had trouble sleeping last night. While that's not necessarily new what I was thinking about was the question above. It occurred to me that maybe this is never going to happen for me. Maybe I'm never going to make it as a writer or sell anything or whatever success looks like in an industry where apparently few actually do it as a living. I'm sure I'm not alone in these thoughts. Almost anyone trying to break into a creative field no doubt has had this thought before. I know I have but since it happened this week I thought I'd at least mention it. I'm not going to give up, but I do have those feelings.

So, this is another week when I ran out of time to query, which is one key for making the above happen. Part of what I decided last night was to double down on this and I will be spending some amount of time next week to get this going again. But time is always the most valuable commodity and how that gets spent is where the tension lies.

Like most of you, I only have so many hours in a day or week to work on my writing. This week, I spent a couple of nights hopefully giving something back to one of my sons, Paul. He's working on a sitcom pilot and I read it twice over two nights, made notes, and talked to him about it. Nothing I don't think any parent wouldn't do. While I know my comments aren't the last ones he'll get nor the best, I do hope that I was able to help.

I did do some more work this week on my Skylar manuscript. For those of you counting, and no one is, I'm on version 10. I'm rebuilding the chapters if that makes sense. I'm up to 13,000+ words so far and I think this time it's working better. This isn't all that unusual for me but I'll admit this manuscript has been harder than most to get a feel for. Hopefully, this one will take.

I know that every week I make a point of talking about Powers Squared. Things seem to be at an out point at the moment. While I'm hopeful things will work out, it's been about a month since we've had new colored pages. It's the same issue I have with my writing, our colorist has a job and it's getting to our work that she's having trouble with. I'm trying to be understanding, but it is still frustrating.

We're still working on a possible cover for our BD, even though nothing has been confirmed on that front. I'm sure our artist is up to the challenge but we're looking for something that reflects the spirit of the story without redoing an existing cover from one of the five issues being combined.

I did some more work on the Pitch Packet, combining and organizing the character descriptions I'd written and parts from a previous try at it. I'm waiting until Paul is done with his pilot script before getting into that with him; the pilot is more pressing at the moment.

This week, we watched An American Tragedy and I wrote a review of it for the future. This week, Trophy Unlocked featured a couple of game reviews, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart written by Trevor on Monday; and on Wednesday Trevor's review of TY the Tasmanian Tiger 2: Bush Rescue HD. I know that it seems like my reviews don't get published but next week, there will be five of my Pre-Code reviews up on the blog. We were talking about the backlog I had and I had the idea to maybe do a block of these films leading up to the anniversary of the start of the Production Code. Turns out, all films released after July 1, 1934, had to abide by the code so we decided to pull the trigger. I'll invite you to read the blog and I'll report on it, as I do, next week on what went up and when.

Well, that about does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you 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 #355 - Doing Two Things at Once

Hope this finds everyone well and writing.

I'm trying to write this while bidding on some items on eBay, so pardon me if I get distracted. I do have interests outside of writing and it's always a balance between the two.

We had our monthly all-hands-on-deck meeting on OAPS this week. If you're new to the blog, in addition to writing and producing a comic book, my son Paul and I host a podcast, On the Air with Powers Squared, which is essentially about our comic book but also about things related to it. We've done some interviews with other creators, marketing wiz Gamal Hennessy and IDW Editor-in-Chief John Barber. But I think the ones I like best are when we get the other creatives from our book (Rachel Wells, Julia Canon, and Trevor Hankins) on the show. It's a chance to catch up, tell them the bigger plans we have and encourage them.

You might not think about it but there is a lot that goes into doing a comic book even if you're not the artist. Very time-consuming little details, which every week I find someplace where I could do better. And it's hard sometimes to be timely with a tweet when the video goes up at 2:45 on Wednesday afternoons since I also have a full-time job.

And I haven't even scratched the surface on all of the things I should be doing if I had the know-how and the time to do it. Oh, sweet marketing, you're very confusing and mysterious.

This week, I did more work on a new story for the comic book. If you're not a reader (and you should be), this issue involves Dr. Atlas coming to the boys and Mocha for help. He must be pretty desperate to do that. Last week, I wrote part one of the story. This week, I wrote part two, which is about 4013 words long. I'm not done but this is what I spent a lot of my time on. You know, you get in the groove on something and it's working so you want to complete it.

I did write a 2400+ word review for Trophy Unlocked; So This is Paris, a silent comedy from 1926, directed by Ernst Lubitsch. This is one of those films I found that TCM was showing a while back and it sounded special from their description. As it turned out, it was really good. As always, not sure when this will see the light of day but it is another one in the bag, so to speak, and ready to go.

Otherwise, a pretty busy week on the blog with four reviews, including Duck Tales: Remastered (PS3) on Wednesday written by Paul; Friday saw another videogame review, Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 again written by Paul. On Saturday, my review of Ghost in the Shell (2017), the live-action remake of the anime classic, was featured; and on Sunday, Trevor's review of Raya and the Last Dragon plus the accompanying short Us Again.

By the time I got to Skylar, my novel, I started to rethink my rewrite so far. I want to get into the action pretty quickly but at the same time, this is part of a series and a lot has happened to my main character. I have to come up with a way of being able to bring all that out. I like the idea of showing rather than telling so I'm in a bit of a dilemma at the moment.

So, I know I'm bad with the queries. I did some more looking up possible agents to reject me this week but I did not pull the trigger on any submissions. I'd like to promise I'll do better next week but I won't.

While I will continue to write, this is going to be a very hit-and-miss week (which might be the subtitle for next week's blog).

On Monday, my son and co-creator Paul is going through a graduation ceremony at UCLA for his Fiction Writing Certificate program that he actually completed late last year. No promises on that day or on Thursday, when we're all going to Disneyland's next-door neighbor California Adventure Park. The real goal is not the Avengers Campus but actually the Oswald store that's just inside the gate. Long story and I'll probably tell it next week; got to give you something to come back for. Friday is a holiday, so maybe something will get done.

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