A Week in Writing #514 - Starting to Take Shape

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

Spent some time this week trying to put the booth for LA Comic-Con into shape. Got out the box of things we used at our last convention appearance, which was over 5 years ago, and started to put together what we're going to need now. This includes a skirt for the table and a new banner for the booth. It was decided by a group vote to have the new banner and the table cloth match colors and then there was agreeing on the placement of the items on the banner.

We already have one for Powers Squared, though it has the old logo on it, but we wanted to have one for SRCC, which is how people join our mailing list. Getting people to sign up is really the goal of the con as far as I'm concerned. I want to sell books, but I want us to expand our reach, too.

While we're not selling t-shirts at the show, they will be on sale on the website. To that end, we ordered some t-shirts to wear at the show. I will, of course, post photos on our website after the event, but until then, you'll just have to imagine what I'm going to look like wearing Julia's chibi Dr. Atlas designed t-shirt.

We were able to ask another creative about their con experience when Lucas Scheffel made his 7th appearance on our podcast, OAPS. Lucas, dressed as his character Gary Gorilla throughout, related his experience with conventions in Australia, which is where he lives. We also discussed his latest Kickstarter for Gary Gorilla, as well as his thoughts on the last two issues of Powers Squared. You can listen to it on or find other platform links on our website: https://powerssquaredcomicbook.com/oaps. You can also opt to watch it, and it's worth watching, when it goes up on our YouTube channel on Wedenesday afternoon at 2:30 PDT. While you're there, subscribe and ring the bell, as they say.

Next week, will be the 250th OAPS podcast, but we will be out of town (more on this later), so the artists past, present and possibly future will be taking over the show for us, the first of at least two times this summer.

Speaking of future artists, we took some steps this week on replacing our artist, who is leaving the role at her own choice. Our current colorist has expressed an interest in assuming the artist role and we asked her to draw the four main characters to get the testing underway. Still waiting to see what she comes up with.

I wrote a review this weekend for The Big Trail (1930), John Wayne's first starring role in a film directed by Raoul Walsh. My review of Blondie (1938) was the Saturday Morning Review on Trophy Unlocked.

And there was more work on Skylar this week, though not as much as I would have wanted. I seem to be getting a late start and getting sleepy earlier, which is a bad combination.

Next week, we'll be visiting my wife's family over the weekend, so this missive will be a day late.

That does it for me. Keep writing and I'll see you next week, just a day late.

A Week in Writing #513 - The Show Must Go On

Hope everyone is staying safe, and, of course, writing and a Happy Father's Day to all of the dads out there.

More cancellations on this week's OAPS podcast. We were doing our 14th Comic Book Club podcast, to discuss Pompo: The Cinéphile Vol. 1, story and art by Shogo Sugitani. This time, Jen and Rachel had to pull out at the last minute due to reasons. But, as the old saying goes, the show must go on, so just Julia joined Paul, Trevor and myself on the show. Interestingly, earlier in the week, I had the notion that one or more wouldn't make the show. It was a good show, as we also discussed our three favorite films, since that is also something in the manga. If your curious, you can listen to it on our website. If you want to watch it, it's on our twitch channel now (twitch.tv/powerssquared) but only for  a week. If you're reading this later or want to watch it on our YouTube channel it will be available there on Wednesday afternoon.

Next week, fingers crossed, Lucas Scheffel's rescheduled appearance. We're closing in on #250, but unfortunately, we won't be a part of it, as we're having to go out of town. The good news is that Julia will be hosting another artists' takeover.

My plan this week was to work more on Skylar and it did start out well, with my writing more than 1200 words on Monday, but the progress did slow as the week went on and there was more editing than writing.

I'm currently working on a review of Dark Phoenix (2019) for later in the summer. We've been on a mission to watch all the X-Men films prior to the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, so all will be revealed in good time. Trevor had the last two reviews on Trophy Unlocked with a review of Robot Dreams as the Saturday Morning review and Inside Out 2 up today; we watched it on Friday afternoon in 3D before the podcast.

New issue was released this past Wednesday, Powers Squared Issue #21, "Mission: Istanistan, Part 2". Every release is not without a hiccup or two along the way. One of the platforms we're available on, even with a month's notice, missed the date of release, but did make good the next day. If you're curious, check it out here.

They're far alone from problems. As has been noted here, we did a Graphic Novel version of the first five issues some time back and then did a revised version for a Kickstarter with another platform we're on. Not too long ago, we did another trade for the next four issues, which is currently only available on LibraryPass. However, I wanted to have print versions available for the future. When I submitted the pages, I included the cover and the backcover in the .pdf and they ended up in the book. (My mistake, though it wasn't one I rushed to fix.) This past week, I got around to dealing with it; I wanted to make sure I was following how the previous trade looked. When I downloaded the .pdf being used, it wasn't the right one. Rather that using the .pdf we used for the Kickstarter, the old version was being used (that is, if anyone ordered the book.) I'm still in the process of getting that fixed. This is how I spend my nights sometimes, working through fun stuff like this.

Issue 21 was featured in the Indy Spotlight on First Comics News on Saturday. Always nice to get a little unsolicited push. Much appreciated. I won't go through all the gymnastics I had to do to get this link on our website, but it's there as well, along with the other stories which have featured Powers Squared.

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

A Week in Writing #512 - A Week of Reviews/New Issue

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

Rather than a week in review, this was a week of reviews, as I spent most nights this past week finishing reviews for Trophy Unlocked. I know that doesn't sound like a week's worth of work, but given how things are going, that took the week. A couple of the reviews were pretty far along, American Graffiti and X-Men: Apocalypse, but another was barely started, Pushover. Then there is finding images, spell checking, adding links, posting and placing the images and that takes longer than you might think.

As it turns out, Pushover was the Saturday Morning Review on the blog. That was more of a late Friday night decision but that one's up. The X-Men review will have to wait for summer and I'm not sure when American Graffiti will appear; let's not get ahead of ourselves.

In other news, we have a new issue of Powers Squared coming out on Wednesday. "Mission: Istanistan, Part 2". This issue is a continuaiton of "Mission: Istanistan, Part 1". In that issue, the U.S. military enlisted Marty and Eli to help stop a rogue nation, Istanistan, from deploying a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) that they've been developing. Eli volunteers to teleport into the site and, using telepathy, Marty relays instructions on setting an explosive. But things go wrong and Eli is captured. Even though the Army tells Marty there is nothing they can do, he takes it upon himself to mount a rescue. But things again do not go according to plan. You'll have to read the issue to find out what happens. The issue will be available in print and digital through our website's store, The Campus Store. It's where the Hound Dogs shop.

Not a lot this week with Powers Squared. Our colorist's computer has been on the fritz for awhile, so we don't yet have her pages and I'm not sure when we'll be seeing art from our artist (see last week's post for details on that situaiton.) And no work forward yet on finding a replacement, other than some texts with our current colorist.

Our podcast had a guest all lined up, Lucas Scheffel, the creator of Angry Fred and Gary Gorilla, but he had a family emergency and had to postpone. Luckily, we had recorded a short preview on Issue #21 in April and were able to slot it into the OAPS timeslot. You can listen to it on our website (which also has links to the other platforms it appears on) or wait and watch it Wednesday afternoon on our YouTube channel (@powerssquared).

As always, Skylar got the short shrift. I did find myself editing another of the books, The Runaway, sort of by accident. I was looking for something else, but opened the title and started reading and editing as I went along. A real edit job awaits before I would submit for query, but I think it reads pretty well.

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

A Week in Writing #511 - A Bit of a Surprise

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

A bit of a surprise this week. The artist on Powers Squared, Julia Canon, has stepped down. The current issue that she's been working on, #27 "Billy and Raven", will be her last as the artist. This came during a Discord call that was initiated by me because she was not only way behind on pages but was being unresponsive, which are two things I hate. My plan was to read her the riot act and instead, before we can launch into anything, she resigned. She'll still finish the issue, which, again, is now behind schedule, but we're now looking for a replacement.

There are currently two streams of search. We've reached out to our former artist, Rachel Wells, to see if she knows of someone; she is a SCAD grad. And our current colorist, Jen Moreno, has already made it clear that she'd like to be considered for the spot. She's never done a book before, but from what I've seen, she's talented as an illustrator; it's another thing to do sequential storytelling. We'll probably want to do a test with all the potentials to see if their style is a good mix for us.

Julia's not going anywhere and will still be a part of the podcasts, etc. going forward, but it remains to be seen if she'll return to being the colorist or not.

This was newsletter week and that did get off this morning, when it was due. We've opted for the first Sunday of the month, as it gives us an opportunity to look back at the previous month and doesn't overwhelm. We tried a weekly newsletter, but were advised that was overkill, not to mention hard on me/us.

Our celebration of all things Transformers came to an end on Friday, when we played our interview with Marty Isenberg, who had been a writer on several Transformers-themed shows. While we usually go live on Fridays, we pre-recorded this interview back in April, when he was available. It also gave us some flexibility having one in the back pocket, so to speak. It's available to listen to here and can be watched after Wednesday, the 5th, here. There is also a playlist of all the TF40 podcasts, if anyone is interested.

For Trophy Unlocked, my review of The Guardsman (1931) was the Saturday Morning Review. This one dates back to 2021, but at least it's seen the light of day. I'm still working on three, having finished The Little Shop of Horrors, I'm also working on one for Pushover.  As part of our drain the DVR Saturday nights, I picked this one, since I had recorded it twice to view; it seemed like the time to get to it.

I've worked on Skylar as often as possible during the week. I've got a new chapter to write, as the plot has been evolving, so I'm looking forward to that.

Queries have not made their way back into the grind. I just don't have the time to get to it. One more thing to add the pile that's already too high.

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

A Week in Writing #510 - Prep Work Underway

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

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Let's start with last week's big news, announcing that Powers Squared is tabling at Los Angeles Comic-Con in October. That's not something that will come easily for us as we haven't done a Con since 2019 and that was about as small of one as you can find, the San Fernando Valley Comic-Book Convention. We're going downtown for the next one and we have to improve our game.

To that end, we spent about two hours yesterday afternoon watching Stephen Silver's seminar about conventions. While it was geared more towards artists, a lot of what he discussed would be applicable to us. The pre-recorded seminar did provide useful advice and did come with a check list.

We've already started testing a battery backup to use. I'm thinking about having a computer available in case someone wants to sign up for our newsletter and we're planning on trying to do our podcast that Friday night as well.

It's starting to be newsletter time, and I used the delay in the Indianapolis 500 to work on it. I think I got through most of the basic stuff. I still need to do a spotlight on twins and there's still a recommnedation, but I think we're in pretty good shape.

I did manage to get some work done on the oft-put off Skylar. Mostly, I had a couple of ideas that I think will make it better and I believe, on at least a first draft level, I got them in. Now, the push to finish it continues.

I still haven't gotten back to the query/rejection process, but I at least have been thinking about it. Too many things to do first.

For the third week in a row, my review was featured on Trophy Unlocked. This week, I actually had two. The Saturday morning review was The Secret Six (1931), one of the older reviews I wrote. And then today, we published a review of the silent film Speedway (1929), in honor of the Indy 500 race.

I'm now working on three reviews, adding The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) to the pile.

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

A Week in Writing #509 - Tabling at LA Comic-Con

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

Well, I guess the big news is that Powers Squared will be tabling at this year's LA Comic-Con in October. This is something we've been talking about for months and years and we've finally decided to bite the bullet (it ain't cheap) and table in Small Press. The con runs from October 4-6 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and we're hoping to at least introduce new people to our book. If you attend, hope you'll drop by.

It will be a sort of return for us, as we did do a panel at the Con a couple of years ago.

As with everything, I really have no idea what it will take to pull off and I don't know how success will be measured, but it will be a new experience, and one that I will be reporting on here, so buckle up as you go along the ride with me.

I don't know if you've been listening or watching, but the Transformers podcasts are coming out really great. We had a conversation with John Barber, who had been the writer and editor when the franchise was at IDW. He's a great interview and is a lot of fun. I would encourage everyone to give it a listen here or watch the video when it goes up on YouTube on Wednesday. It is still available on twitch.tv/powerssquared until next Friday.

John was nice enough to tweet out about being on the show, but I'm sure he drove eyes to twitch.tv/powersquared, which also apparently exists.

In addition to the OAPS coming out on Wednesday, we also posted another Taste Test, #7, in which Paul samples and compares three original MrBeast flavors against their new formulas.

Speaking of Powers Squared, our artist and colorist are busy working on new pages, which we should have by the end of the month, so hopefully, everything is staying on time.

No new review this week from me, though my review of The Sin of Nora Moran was the coveted Saturday Morning Review. This follows my review of Let It Be, my Second Look actually, which was released on Monday to coincide with the film's original release date in 1970.

I have two reviews that I still need to work on, and instead of Saturday night movies, we watched Episode 3 of the latest Dr. Who series, "The Devil's Chord", in which the 15th Doctor meets The Beatles. Quick review, while I like the new doctor Ncuti Gatwa and his companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), the story didn't really work for me. The actor playing the villain, Maestro (Jinkx Monsoon) is a force of nature, but wasn't enough to save the episode for me.

I did some work, good work I'd say, on Skylar this week, but never enough.

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

A Week in Writing #508 - Fun with Podcasts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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