Projects, content, and behind the veil looks at things

First off... the sample image today is by Denman Rooke, the artist for my horror mini, which I can't seem to get myself to talk much about... I'll add more details on the book shortly, actually, because there is some info out there on the web, so I might as well... I'm just super secretive with it. The book is written 100% hand has been for months. We're getting ready to send a submission package out to someone...

I was thinking today about content in books and how so many modern comic books frustrate the heck out of me... actually same with a lot of movies, too. It seems to me that a lot of writers want to try to fill a book so beyond letting a book breathe, they seem to stretch out conversations and moments that really should be condensed into fewer pages. Now, I'm known to be wordy and I'll never apologize for that, but when you're thinking of an issue of a comic book, you want something where by the end of the book, something has changed for he characters. Each issue should have a full beginning, middle, and end, even if it's not the resolution to the overall story through multiple issues. We shortchange our readers when we don't do that. In the case of Faction, for example, I have been pouring over the script, trying to make sure I give the story a chance to breathe, and also remembeing some of the early lessons I learned with script writing... If you have a lot of dialog, put it in more panels per page, more action means less panels per page. I follow that naturally most of the time; other times I have to kick myself to remember. With Acker's "voice" in the book, even when there's action, there's often some sort of commentary going on.

I'm not trying to bash on any modern comics in particular, because you don't make any friends that way, but I just have this feeling that creators often forget about the audience when they're telling a story. Personally, if I pay $3 for a comic book that has 22 pages of story and each page has 3 panels, full page splashes, double page splashes, etc, by the end, I'm ticked off. Why? Money is tight for most people... Give them their money's worth! That's one thing I'm proud about with Faction, I packed that sucker full of content. I don't see why it's so hard to do that? If you have a story you CAN tell in four issues, why drag it out to eight? If you have arcs, have some 4, some 6, and some 8 issues, all depending on the story, not concerns about a graphic novel or whatever. We all know that you can technically make a GN with about any even number of pages, so no issue... Basically, though, give them their money's worth. The other side of it (besides the 3 panels, splashes, etc) is dragging a story out for no reason. I've been following some larger indie books for years and realized recently that some of the ongoing series really aren't going anywhere. They're good reads, but after 50-something issues, how far has the story gone? It's like we're looking at a novel and instead of each issue being a chapter in the novel, it's only covering about a paragraph... Get on with it already! Geezzzz....

My other thought today had to do with the "behind the veil" look at comic books... A few months ago, I had the honor of attending a music and art show at Sky High Comics in San Marcos. When I went, I took a ton of sketches, script samples, works in progress, etc, to give people an idea of how a comic goes from concept to the final printed page. The reception was great! Someone recently commented to me that they haven't seen a lot of that in modern comics and it's a shame. The same person referenced the old Ditko issues of Spider-Man from the 60's and how they used to do pictures of how the web shooters were made and such... I can't remember the specifics, but I do remember seeing that in some of the collections of those old issues. Same with books from a few years ago... I love seeing how art goes from script to pencil, ink, and color and I know I'm not alone. With Faction 0, we added a TON of that stuff; everything from the Small Press Idol judges' comments to character bio's, concept art, etc, and the reception has been great. I wish more books did that! I remember seeing a year or so ago when Invincible changed his costume some of the different options they were discussing when it happened. I loved that! Those kinds of things really aren't that hard to put together when you think about it, because it has already been done! Adding a couple of pages to a page count isn't really that big a deal either, so add 'em on!

Bottom line is making the dollar go further. It's not about cutting corners, making page counts go down so you can necessarily print books for cheaper, improve your margins, etc... Sure, if you're printing 10 - 20k copies of a book, every penny counts, but how long do you think it's going to take for the consumers to get tired of it?

Let your artist do their thing in the books, but make sure 3 panel pages are at a minimum in a book and only do like one splash page per issue, if that... If you can, make up for it by making the book a couple more pages! With the story, make sure you're telling one, not dragging the fans through your attempts to stretch out the story for issue requirements or whatever...

Part of this rant is a response to the recent Return to Witch Mountain movie... I didn't love the movie, it was frustrating, but one thing I did appreciate is that although it wasn't done well, they tried to pack as much content as they could in a short period of time. It was like a three hour movie crunched to less than two hours. Personally, I would have liked to see it a little longer, have the story breathe a bit, etc, but I appreciate the intent. Better than other movies and books that are 3.5 hours long and you feel in the end like it could have been accomplished in an hour... I hate that. The ideal is something like the old Star Wars movies and even Revenge of the Sith. Yes, I don't think that George Lucas is the best director there is (no offense George). He's a freaking genius, but he should create and write, but let someone else direct. One thing those movies do masterfully, though, is put enough content in there that you walk out of a two hour movie feeling like it was four hours, but in a good way. Lots of content, action, dialog, and it progresses!

Ok, enough ranting for one day?

Back to the normal request ~ If you haven't already, please check out the Faction web site ~ http://www.beardedladyonline.com/faction ~ to read about the book, see the sample pages, read about the characters, factions, etc... I think you'll like what you see. Then pick up a copy of the book!

a. PRINT COPY - http://www.dimestoredistro.com/faction-0-2274.html
b. PDF DOWNLOAD - http://www.dimestoredistro.com/faction-0-dl-2275.html

Thank you!

Erik Hendrix

Writer - Faction and other things

erik@beardedladyonline.com

http://www.beardedladyonline.com

http://thelastbardsblog.blogspot.com

Dreams and dreaming...

From a very young age, I had extremely vivid dreams. The most vivid I can recall was a nightmare I had when I was living on Oahu as a child where my family was chasing me around our house, trying to kill me. My mom woke me up that night, telling me it was just a nightmare, but man it was vivid. Fast forward a lllooonnnngggg time.... I went years with only occassionally remembering my dreams, but more recently since my creativity took a spike in a good way, my dreams have been extremely interesting once more. I find that since I spend so much time thinking about storylines I've come up with during the day, I will process a lot of details at night while I'm sleeping, taking a quick trip to places that only exist in my head. Unfortunately, I can't remember many details of these dreams, but it "settles" things in my brain, allowing me to cough up TONS of pages of script in a short period of time. In a lot of cases, I end up writing kind of stream of consciousness and then go back and format in some way. The results sometimes are a bit chaotic, but from time to time, I end up with a little nugget of gold.

So, recommendation to everyone out there... Dream or daydream, resting or napping, sleeping or tossing and turning, if you have ideas, get them written down no matter where the source. I haven't tried writing when I'm feverish because I haven't been that sick since I started writing again, but next time I am, I'm going to see what comes out!

Rambling, hard decisions, and Faction news...

Today’s one of those days you don’t know whether to clam up or shout at the world. Over the last few days, I’ve had to do quite a bit of thinking in regards to “the comic book thing” and make some hard decisions and react to what has been thrown my direction. It made me start thinking about hard decisions in general and when you need to finally make those decisions.

The easy decision was deciding to pursue comic books with the further I put into my day to day job. I consider it easy now, but at the time I was afraid that by putting my work ethic into it, my creative passion would dwindle and die. I know I’ve mentioned that before, bit it was a valid consideration I had at the time. Looking back on it, though, I think it was just an excuse not to jump in for fear of rejection or something ridiculous like that. If you have a dream, don’t let something silly stop you from going for it. The only difference pre-decision and post-decision is that I became more determined and actually came up with more ideas! I dedicate time more often to writing, fighting the urge to fall asleep on the train or on my break sitting in my car (really hard on a sunny day with a nice breeze). “No,” I yell at myself, “you’re supposed to be writing!” I get ticked at my cars now when they give me grief, causing me to drive home from Irvine or to Irvine from home because it takes away from my “train time” to write, which seems to be my most productive. So I guess my point here is that if it’s your dream, it SHOULD be an easy decision. There are absolutely no guarantees that you will “make it” to whatever capacity you have decided for yourself. As I mention in another post a while back, I want to tell my stories… If it means a large indie or DC/Marvel, great, but I’m perfectly content to self publish if that’s what lies in store for me. In fact, there are some things I bet would be better if I DO self publish. Don’t consider self publishing to be a last resort… I’ll say it a billion times, every copy out there in the world of your book, physical or electronic, is a circulating resume. So what if you don’t sell 100k copies… You only need to sell one to the right person.

Picking an artist for a project… I rambled about this the other day, but it is a hard decision and I respect any writer who has to go through the difficult process of finding the “right” artist for a project. When you write a script, do you have a specific style in mind or do you just envision the characters as real people conversing in the real world with any changes required to make it however fantastical the world in the book is? That’s how I do it… I don’t, however, limit myself to using “realistic” artists… Every book has a personality of sorts, just like an artist’s style. The trick is matching up the two. Do you go for hyper-realistic or loose and abstract? All things you need to consider. When I use the steps I talk about to create a world, characters, situations, etc, the only place I really start thinking about art style is when I’m creating the characters because they’re more important than anything else. It’s kind of like an actor in a movie. A line is only as good as the actor reading it, right? What makes a good character and a good book is the right mixture of writing and artistic style. Would Powers work with another writer and artist? Well…. Maybe with another writer, but the world really fits with Oeming’s style. No discredit to Mr. Bendis, though, my point is just that his world has been created so if someone else played in it, there would be a different flavor perhaps, but not a bad thing. Would you put Jim Lee in charge of art for Powers, though? Heck no! You would need to find someone else with a “different” style that would fit it well. Anyway, point here is that you need to find the right style and “feel” for the book and a critical element of that is the right artist. Clean or dirty, realistic or cartoony, etc…

Finding the right time to say goodbye… Probably the hardest thing I’ve had to do over the last six months or so is decide when it’s time to say goodbye to someone on my creative team. Considering not a single book has been published yet, it’s kind of funny for me to say that, but it applies anyway. Take the example of my fantasy book, for instance… I have discussed with probably seven artists over the last few months working on the book and none have panned out, mostly because I didn’t feel they were right for the book for whatever reason. Writers are artists, too, though they may not have the skill to put it into form, they can into words, which means they envision something. If an artist brings something different to the table, the writer has to decide how to make it work or decide that the artist is wrong for the project. With other projects, it was something else missing that was making the partnership “not work”. In other cases, it’s a simple matter of time. An artist’s worst enemy is time, especially if they are working on multiple projects, have a full time job, etc… Sometimes in the end things work out and sometimes they don’t. How do you decide when it has reached that point? This is something I’ve discussed with my wife in several instances and look to others for counsel and guidance. In the end, I have to make that decision, but it’s never something done lightly.

In regards to changes and such, I do have an announcement to make in regards to Faction. KT and I had a heart to heart this weekend and because of added responsibilities at work and his push to make a career change very shortly, there’s a change in the works. Arnie Gordon, another amazing artist in San Diego County, has agreed to take the artist’s helm and steer Faction through Rounds 3, 4 (crossing fingers), and beyond if that’s where we are guided by your support and votes. This is a mixed blessing for obvious reasons. KT is an amazing artist and is very familiar with the Faction world from our countless emails over the last few months. Arnie, however, is amazing as well and ready to show us what he can do… I’ve seen examples of his sequential work and I’m blown away by it. I’m confident that although this brings turbulence to the path Faction has taken, steady thus far, the book will be stronger for it. I thank KT for all of the work he has done so far to help get Faction to the point it is today and wish him luck on his desired career path… With his skills, I’m confident he will do well. As for Arnie, everyone please help me to welcome him into the Faction family… I believe whole heartedly that you will be stunned by what’s in store for Round 3 and beyond. Both Arnie and I share a passion for the comic book medium, which I have met in very few since I got started down this path.

Thanks to all again for the support and to quote Arnie, “peace out.”
Erik Hendrix
Writer – Faction and some obscene of other things I’m cooking up…

The challenge of finding the "right" artist for a job

Since November, I've literally spoken with over 100 artists of various styles looking for the perfect fit for my projects. Some are good, some are not so good, and some are so amazing it blows your mind. The problem is always finding the right one to match up with your (the writer's) vision of how things should look. The two that have been the biggest challenge so far are my detective / noir book (the late night cop show meets Daredevil/Batman)and my fantasy novel turned comic book. I don't know if it's that I'm being too specific on what I'm looking for or no one is going to "fit" for a while. Now, after some stumbling around, I did find the perfect artist for my detective book, Sachin, but I still haven't had any luck with the fantasy book. I've had a few artists I've spoken with, some who even tried to take a crack at it, but the "vision" of the book hasn't been met by any artists. Shoot! For me, the fantasy story is one that HAS to be told. It's a different approach to a fantasy tale and I also interpret some things in the genre a little differently. That's probably because I've read so many fantasy books since I was six that I need to do something different or I'll see myself that I'm being derivative.

To my point... finding "the one" for any project is something that I think some people don't put enough thought into. No disrespect intended, but it seems like a lot of artists have genres they fit a little better into so why force them into something that doesn't fit them perfectly? I'm not saying that writers should steer clear, I'm saying that if you find an artist you like but they don't fit the book you wanted them for, why not make something that does fit for them... collaborate on something that fits their style while still something you love, too. One recent example for me is Arnie (not trying to pick on you - ha ha). Arnie has an AMAZING style but he's into a certain kind of story, which is his right. I didn't have anything "on the pot" that really seemed like a great fit, but we both wanted to work together. The solution? We're creating an original superhero universe from scratch. It's taking a little bit more time since we're both starting from nothing on it, but that's part of the fun, we're going through the creative process together. When all is said and done, we'll have something original that we both poured ourselves into.

So... if you're looking for a specific style for a specific book, don't settle for anything less than what fits your vision. If you stumble upon an amazing artist and you two want to work together, find something for them or set them free. Don't stick them in something that they're not 100% into and you're not 100% sold on.

Another recommendation... don't put all of your eggs in one basket. We all have these ideas that are "the next big thing", right? What happens if you A) don't find the right artist, B) people don't see the vision as you do, or C) you do all that work to find out it's been done before? The solution, always have something else you're working on. I started with one idea, now I have almost two dozen. Why? Because once you get into that creative mode, things keep on coming, and that's a good thing. If you have an idea in the middle of the night, get up and write it down, get a notepad by your bed. If you have a particularly vivid dream, write it down and see if it's something you can use in a story. If you're driving with someone, ask them to write it down or text it to you... Don't let the ideas escape you! Faction, for example, was a brainstorm from November combined with a notebook from over a dozen years ago! I didn't know when I was going to use it, but when the time came, I was ready.

Ok, shutting up now... ramble done!

How to promote your SPI Entry - or anything!

Some people have asked me how I manage to promote things so well, which has seemed to draw people to the DimeStore site to sign up and vote… Maybe it has even helped to draw more competitors to the competition. I was telling Sam (one of the judges) the other day that you never really know what people are reading out there. There’s rarely feedback on the web, just hits, so if people are reading and end up listening to you, that’s great!

Below is what I posted today on the DimeStore site in hopes of helping my fellow competitors get the same level of “hits” in the competition.

I’ve been called a promotion machine by a few people, so I thought I’d go ahead and share my “tricks” with everyone. Fair warning, though, that there is some work involved. It has also been asked “when do I sleep?” Well, I don’t know… Anyway, below are some of the places I go, some of the things I do, etc, to help promote the competition and my project. My only request since this is something that everyone will probably take advantage of (in a good way) is that in forums outside of DimeStore, maybe we should post a thread for the competition as a whole and then individually post in comments, pictures, etc, to try and sell our projects with our words associated with what has already been submitted in the competition.

I bet the judges and/or Ian might have some pearls of wisdom to chime in as well as other competitors old and new, so please chime in.

1. If you don’t have a FaceBook account, get one silly!

2. Start a FaceBook Group for your project. This has been the single BIGGEST draw for Faction on the web, I think. Some of the voters of Faction came from the FB group and many of them weren’t my friends on FaceBook before the competition. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF FACEBOOK!

3. Update your Facebook group regularly.

4. Invite Facebook friends to your Facebook group.

5. If you don’t have a lot of friends on FB, let the system recommend them to you and just suck ‘em up. The system will give you a warning if you do too many at a time, but I didn’t have a FB account a month ago and now I have like 500 friends. The cool thing is I get a lot of messages from people now and I’m networking… I’ve even started to make industry contacts, which is SWEET!

6. If you don’t already have a blog, get one… Post whatever’s going on in your little slice of comic world. You can tie the blog to FaceBook with a widget, which has worked well for me. I have 40-something people following my blog, but mainly because I keep updating it with interesting things, not just “walked the dog today”.

7. ProjectWonderful.com is awesome… I set up an account on there, made an ad and managed to get my ad on several sites for free. You get outbid regularly, but if you keep up on it, you can have ads circulating over a bunch of sites for nothing. If you have a few bucks to throw in, you can find some medium to high traffic sites to put ads on for not too expensive. I posted on several sites and figured out which ones were getting the most click thru’s (people to site and actually click on banner) versus cost. I have one site which around 20 people have clicked thru in just a couple of days, which is great, and I’m only paying about $0.11 per day for that one. Others after a couple of days I took off the bid because I was paying up to $0.50 per day and wasn’t getting the hits. Just because my ad works on one site might not mean another book’s would, you just have to see. I put $10 in there and now have a couple of ads on my blog so I can get some funds into the account that way. Once my $10 is gone, I need to see if it was worth it.

8. Regular updates in the forums. I don’t know if you read through things, but I’ve become a member of the community on DimeStore… It wasn’t a pre-meditated attempt to integrate, I just found the conversations interesting and wanted to learn everything I could about the industry. Along the way, I’ve found that a lot of the people are really really cool.

9. Other forums. I have a DeviantArt account where I post images for the project when I think about it, a journal which I update from time to time, etc. Also, there’s CBR, the Wizard Forums, Comic Careers, PencilJack, DigitalWebbing, etc etc etc…. When I post on the forums, I’ve been pretty good about just promoting the contest as a whole and whole-heartedly believe that should be the intent on those sites… What I’m afraid of is that if we are all posting on the same forums, we’re going to saturate the forums and people will get turned off by the whole thing. If we have a single thread for SPI Round 2, for example, communicate it here, and all have a chance to post some details on our project from our perspective for people to check out, link to the competition, etc, I think it would benefit all of us VERY well. Just my opinion.

10. Twitter? Actually, I don’t have an account and probably won’t get one, but it has seemed to help a number of people spread the word.

Anywho, I hope this helps everyone AND that people take advantage of the recommendations. We all want to win, but the competition isn’t all about winning, it’s about joining a community, embracing and being embraced by it, and helping to introduce people who don’t know about the competition or Small Press in general what it’s all about. Anything we can do to get someone to look at ANY project is a win for the community.

Rambling as only I can… history, comics, getting published, SPI, and what it all means…

I’ve talked with several friends over the last few months about this mysterious comic book world I’m trying to crack into, so I thought I’d share some insight as to what’s going on in my head…

Back when I a little kid, around six years old, I was introduced to books like the Chronicles of Narnia, the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series, Lloyd Alexander’s books, etc… Thought I did read the typical books of kids that age as well, the fantasy stories my mother purchased for me really struck a chord in me. I can remember back in elementary school, probably 3rd or 4th grade, having some school project that I ended up making a book out of, drawing pictures of dragons and heroes fighting them. I’m not sure of the details because I don’t have that kind of memory, but I know I won some sort of competition and the school asked to put my “book” in their library. I really wish I had that now so I could see what I did back then.

Anyway, fast-forward a few years… When I was a child, I did everything from read voracious amounts of science fiction and fantasy (hundreds and hundreds of novels) to comic books to watch anything my parents would let me get away with (and often things they wouldn’t). Add to that my mother and her ever-evolving list of new age, occult, spiritual, etc studies she picked up along the way and showed me and also a healthy dose of the life only a military brat can bring and I was quickly developing into, well, an odd kid. At an early age I was also exposed to D&D, which along with those other experiences, definitely helped to pave the way for the prolific creativity which I’m plagued by now (don’t mean to make it sound like a bad thing, because it’s not).

In high school, my creativity hit a new stride. My best friend at the time and I were really into music, wrote tons of songs, and had aspirations to start a band. Unfortunately, neither of us could play guitar and I was terrified to sing around anyone but him when we were goofing around. Now there was a dream easily side-tracked. Also in high school, I hooked up with a group of friends who were already playing Star Frontiers (old TSR game) and after discussing, we ended up delving into the realm of D&D together. We bounced around various campaign settings but seemed to like Spelljammer the most because you could go literally anywhere and we did. Dan, THE ultimate DM ~ by far the best I’ve ever known, created vast worlds, unique creatures, and let us run through and mess it all up. During that time I started to really get a good grasp on character development. The trick is to find something within yourself, no matter how small, to put into the character and run with it. We all have light and dark sides, normal and strange, extremely intelligent and downright stupid, etc, so you find the grain, flush it out, and everyone, when it comes down to it, is an aspect of you ~ even the whackos! Same applies now when I create characters… I have a couple of villains that I think “Where did that come from?” but I’m sure it’s somewhere in my psyche.

Along the way I delved into DM’ing campaigns myself, filling notebooks with details of the worlds, characters, spells, classes, etc, striving to make the “perfect” world for the characters to run around in, planning for every scenario. In the end, I was annoyed because the PC’s, instead of doing something logical, decided that it would be more fun to kill everything. I can imagine video game developers must be annoyed when they roll such a nice plot into a game like Fallout 3 and people decide that rather than talking to people and, even if it goes poorly, go through the dialogue, they skip the dialogue and put a bullet in their head. That was more or less what happened. Worlds of intrigue were reduced to bloodbaths and my notebooks filled with notes ended up collecting dust in a box somewhere. The skill I picked up during this time, however, is world building. Despite the fact that PC’s tend to do the unexpected, when you create a world and characters meant for that world, they tend to go along a path or one of the paths you created for them (where else are they going to go?). It was quite a while before I assimilated that knowledge into my writing, but it was in there.

During the years that I played D&D, but after high school, I was working at a book store, reading tons and tons of books (I rode the bus so I had time). I decided it was time to create my own. Using my own methodology, I created the world, created the characters, came up with situations, and dropped the characters in. My early attempts to write said book, I can look back on now and laugh at, but the foundation is still there in the fantasy novel I’m writing now. I filled notebooks with ideas, characters, bits of plot, etc… When I switched to a corporate job, my time to write shrank ~ I had a car, so no bus time to write, I had responsibilities, so no time to daydream, etc… Eventually, I stopped writing on my book and another set of notebooks ended up collecting dust in a box someplace. I switched over to guitar and writing songs since I had some work friends in bands. After a while of fumbling with that, everything stopped except writing poetry and songs. Relationships from the time provided perfect fodder for both the bad (previous relationships) and good (meeting my wife, falling in love, and getting married) writing.

Career changed, priorities changed, and suddenly I found time to write again, though it take me a while to take advantage of it. I commute on the train a couple of hours per day, leaving me dedicated time in my own little world. First thing I started doing was re-writing the novel I had started and stopped years prior. I couldn’t find my old notebooks at the time, so all I had to go on were a handful of old computer files with character information and some gods. Lucky for me! I started writing like mad, quickly tallying up over 200 pages of straight text ~ hand written, of course, because that’s how I was the most comfortable at the time. As the pages were cranking out, however, other ideas started popping in my head that wouldn’t go away, so I started jotting down notes on them, setting them aside, and eventually putting them in files on a pen drive. I didn’t know what I was going to do with them, but there they were. Inspiration struck when one particular idea really seemed like a good idea for a comic book. I had been reading comics for almost 25 years seriously, so it just kind of made sense. As soon as I started to dabble in script writing, I realized my style translated very well to script writing. This was confirmed as soon as the first artist I worked with got ahold of my scripts and was able to create about exactly what I had in my head on paper. I was onto something, I realized!

Soon, my novel was set aside for a time and I started pouring all of my spare moments into writing my opus, a detective story based on a character I had created as a joke at work years before, cranking out a TON of script pages before I even stopped to catch my breath. I was passionate about it, and decided this is what I HAD to be doing, even if only freelance ~ I wanted to be published, I wanted to be able to say, “I’m a writer” without it being a hobby. My creative mind and my professional mind talked, came to an agreement, and I started to push forward, unscathed, undeterred by the horror stories of people trying to get published. Soon, I had around 16 ideas on my pen drive, hundreds of pages of scripts, multiple artists working on various projects and then I landed in Small Press Idol. Feedback from my peers in the small press world confirmed that I’m not just “trying” to write, I’m actually doing it and doing it well.

Milestones – not in order of importance…
- Finishing my first mini-series… The project I’m working with Denman Rooke on I finished writing about two months ago and can’t wait to get it out there. It was an amazing feeling, though, going from original concept to getting it completed in the four issues (my target number).
- Writing over 180 pages (as of today) of my detective story and being close to having a submission package ready to ship out. Sachin Nagar, the artist I’m working with on the project has amazed me with his ability to take what’s in my head and on paper and translate it perfectly.
- Making it through Small Press Idol Round 1… We may win, we may not win. I’ll tell you this, though, we DO have a good shot. Obviously I can’t share details, but my story is amazing, my characters breathe, and KT’s art is organic and beautiful. Round 2 will show that, but take my word for it, this series can literally go on forever without becoming a cliché.
- Red Handed Studios… The fact that Cary has a good idea of what I can do based on what he’s seen and a few conversations leading him to offer me a spot on his team for Dynagirl is awesome. He’s a great writer and has created a world with some solid heroes and plenty of room to go to town, so I look forward to digging in.
- Small Press Community… From Doc to Ian to the judges at Small Press Idol to the countless others who frequent the DimeStoreProductions site, I have come to value their input, their banter, and their insight into a world I didn’t understand or really know about before starting this comic book journey.

Whether the comics I write will lead me to the “big leagues” or not is anyone’s guess and it doesn’t bother me. Success, as I’ve defined it in previous posts, is what you determine. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve almost achieved it, so anything above that is just icing on the cake. “Big League” publishers ~ I’m here, prolific, and have a billion ideas. I’m not going to forget, though, who has helped me over the last few months no matter where I end up.

Anyway, that’s it for now… I just thought I might try to organize some of the chaos in my brain to share with people… By the way, I DID eventually find those old dusty notebooks taped in boxes… My writing when I first started my book? Not so good. Ha ha ha…

P.S. – Dan, my old DM and best friend… we still need to co-write something together. I’m not letting you off the hook yet.

Small Press Idol 2009 - New Rough Cover from KT

Check this one out! KT sent me an updated rough cover at around 1am today (after he got off of work) and I'm blown away! I've seen it a little further along than this, but we can't post too much detail this early in the competition. You have to use your imagination a little bit and throw in some lighting effects and also the shadow of one of the big baddies above the figures below. The names of the characters save Acker (center - mentioned in the pitch) and their bios will appear in Round 2, which starts on April 1st.

In other exciting news, feedback so far on this updated rough cover is that it's a HUGE improvement over the original we posted. I liked the old one, but I do agree this one is a lot better. The details KT put into it are amazing and it tells things about the story that will make more sense after you read issue 0 - when THAT will be released all depends on how far along we get in the competition based on the judges and Votes from YOU! If you haven't done it already, please join the forums at http://www.dimestoreproductions.com/ so you can vote. It's the only way the mods can make sure the people voting are real... otherwise us sneaky creators could just vote all we wanted. ;)

In other news, some great things are getting ready to be revealed, but I can't spill the beans yet. It does, however, move me towards a point - below...

HOW DO YOU MEASURE SUCCESS?

I've posted on a few forums about my view of success. Back in the day I had this dream of starting up a band as the lead singer and guitar player (not lead). I always said I would consider the band a success once we put out our first 45 record. Seems kind of funny, right? Why would a single be a measure of success? Well, I think about it as what I spent the most money on at the time in regards to music. It wasn't major record labels, it was the indies, music I picked up from shows, etc... I just wanted something tangible to sell at shows. Now, I never ended up getting anywhere with music, band ventures fell apart, but that's no big deal, I'm cool with it.

Now, what's my measure of comic book success? If people interested in the book are able to buy a tangible copy, I'm happy. Is there a dream somewhere inside of working for Marvel or DC Comics? ABSOLUTELY!!! It is not, however, what point I would consider myself a success, just the icing on the cake. I want to publish my books... I want publishers to believe in what I believe in to the point that they are willing to help me publish my ideas for mass consumption. If hundreds of people want the book, I'm a success. If thousands or tens of thousands want to read them, that's just gravy.

A while back I posted on the DimeStore forums asking what people's dreams are with comics. I want to tell stories. I'm working on a book - someday I want it printed and to be able to walk into a Borders, B&N or look on Amazon and see it for sale. With the comics, if someone on the East coast wants the book, I want them to be able to find it.

Anyway, that's enough of a rant from me for now... If you're a writer, artist, or whatever, don't think about your pipedream, think of realistic goals and how you're going to get there. That way if you meet those goals, you can push beyond them and you've succeeded. If you end up getting picked up by one of the larger publishers, can make a living, become famouse, sell movie rights, etc, that's just icing on the cake.

With Faction, the dream is to have an ongoing series published with a steady readership. With some of the others, the dreams might vary. :)

Tips for writers....

I've been submitting comments on various forums all over the web-verse and had a thought... Perhaps I'll add some tips for writers on my blog to help those who get stuck on things... I've been a world-builder of sorts since my early days of writing, so I have a tested method of writing that seems to work very well for me. Keep in mind, this is me trying to get my thoughts out, so they may be a bit disjointed at times... I think at some point I'll try to compile the thoughts into a more cohesive package.

1. Idea Phase - This is your brainstorming phase. As soon as you can after you have your original light bulb go off, sit down and write out as much as you can, stream of consciousness about the idea... Even if it's garbage, get it down on paper, on a file, or something so you don't lose it. This is the trick I use when I have a particularly profound dream that might be of some creative use later. Even if everything changes from this point, just get it down. If you don't know names, write something generic or "insert name here", doesn't matter. This is the foundation for what you will work on later.
2. World Building Phase - Here is where you take some of the comments you jotted down in your notes and you start to flush out what kind of world the book takes place in (this goes for novels, comics, or screenplays). Is it in a post-apocalyptic future, in the far reaches of space, steeped in some sort of time period, etc... What does or does not exist in this world? Magic, technology, spirituality (religion, other gods or beliefs), superpowers, mutants, aliens, what kinds of people, what kinds of jobs, social classes, governmental system(s), etc... Kind of like a program, you are setting tolerances for the world on a grand scale. Even if your character(s) never interact with some of the aspects, they are present just in case you need them.
3. Character Building Phase - Here is where you follow the same criteria as the World Building Phase, but in this case, you do it for the characters. What do they look like, what do they wear, what do they believe, what is special about them, what are their strengths/weaknesses, etc... If you have an anarchist punk who only drinks beer, he wouldn't exactly be caught in a coffee shop sipping hot chocolate, right? That's an extremely lame example, but I think you get what I mean. If a straight laced conservative type walks into a biker bar, there had better be a good reason for it! The more the character is supposed to be involved with your story, the more you should know about them. What makes them tick, did anything interesting happen in their childhood, when did their "powers" if any first manifest (if it's not an origin book), etc... Get the idea? Don't make these things up on the fly while you're writing the book because they will come back to haunt you. If you think of something that you feel is important later, by all means add it in, but do some error trapping, make sure you haven't written something previously that contradicts your changes. Make sense? It's very important that just like with the drawn character, something has to distinguish each character from each other. I'm not talking chocolate versus vanilla, I mean fundamental differences in personalities, powers, beliefs, etc... Otherwise the character might as well talk to themselves all the time.
4. Events Phase - This is where you start jotting down ideas of what you would like to happen during your book. Are you dropping a bomb on the characters, are they going to get locked into a log cabin somewhere and reenact Evil Dead? Is one of them going to get attacked by some sort of supernatural creature. Things like that... If you have a sequence of events that are somewhat interrelated, that's even better. Keep in mind that you don't want to throw the kitchen sink in here... Don't have the characters running into aliens one page and vampires the next... it might be funny, but not along the same plot-line... Now, I know X-Files and Fringe can pull off things like that, but I don't think they do that in the same episodes. Buffy doesn't fight aliens and Mulder doesn't carry a stake. Got it?
5. Drop-In Phase - This can be an outline or just dig into writing at this point (that's what I do). I have the world, the characters, and the events... Now it's just time to combine them. Drop the characters into the world you created and push them into the events. Everything needs to be logical... Get the characters established into the world in some way if you can or at least imply it and then rock the foundations. The development needs to be handled organically, which may help with problems some people have such as with dialogue. You need to think about how each character will react to the events and how they will react to each other. You're going to have calm and crazy people in a stressful situation. Sometimes the calm person can slap the crazy person to calm them down... sometimes it has the opposite effect. Start writing and see where the CHARACTERS drive you. Don't force the plot, let it roll out of you as stress free as possible. Hopefully if everything in the previous phases were carefully developed, writing will be a lot easier. If you get stuck, try going back through what you've written and get yourself in your characters' shoes, that may help. If not, get a bigger hammer... force the lock... whatever you want to call it. Write through the rough patches and hopefully you'll get to your stride again. Once you've powered through it, you may be able to go back to those rough patches and polish it up again.

That's it for phases, but I wanted to talk a little about other things... Probably just one today...

Dialogue - Dialogue seems to be tricky for a lot of people. I read somewhere in a forum recently that someone felt like their dialogue sounded something like poor dubbing from a b-martial arts movie. If you developed the characters on the front end properly and drop yourself in their shoes, the dialogue should flow out comfortably. If not, you need to try and sink yourself into the character more. Also, in some cases, people seem to feel obligated to add dialogue to a panel best left silent. The art of the medium is that we (the creative team) are supposed to tell a story with words AND pictures. This means that the artist is able to express things just as well without saying a word. Sometimes the image of two people looking at each other intently can just as easily say "I love you" or "I'm going to stick a hot poker in your eye" as well as actually verbalizing it. Try it out... Did you read any of the 9/11 books Marvel put out, especially Amazing Spider-Man Vol 2 #36 by Straczynski and Romita Jr? Not a word in the book, but the emotions conveyed in the issue were stronger than many writers can manage in their careers. Avoid having the dialogue reflect exactly what's happening in the panel, "I'm going to punch you" or "My knife is in your belly"... Again, lame examples, but a lot of people do it. Another pitfall is people leaning towards old school method of writing. This isn't done much in mainstream books for a reason. It worked in the 80's and before, but don't dot it now! How many times can you remember people stating in a panel what super-power they are going to use? I don't want to list examples because, well, I'd like to be working for a major publisher, but here's a made up sample, "With my rock hard skin, your blows are completely ineffective." If you state it in the first issue, that's one thing, but the reader isn't stupid. One thing I've seen in a lot of books in the last few years which I like is on the inside cover of the book a listing of characters, their basic personality, and what powers they have... That's assuming it's a superpowered book...