A Year Worth

Blog No. 365

It has take nine years (six of which have been weekly) but I’ve reached a year’s worth of daily posts. Does that make sense? 365 posts, 365 days in a year. It makes sense to me. It’s a little reminder of what happens when you just keep plugging away week after week. Sure, if I would have written a daily post, I would have gotten here a lot sooner, but I’m here now and with minimal fuss. It’s become kind of enjoyable (or relaxing) to get them written every week. I’m the kind of person who is not only forgetful, but I get easily scattered when there are too many things in my head. Writing things down is like cleaning out my head. I can focus and I don’t forget (as many) things. The blog has become something like that. I miss the opinion stuff I used to write before my fiction writing started to pile up and become the main focus, but having a record of my progress, and my thoughts and feelings, feels nice. On the topic of progress, I finished the second draft of Broadcast Wasteland.

It’s actually very worrisome. I did it rather quickly and other than some minor fixes and continuity/consistency issues, I left the story mostly as it was. I had anticipated cutting a couple of chapters, but I felt like they worked. Maybe when I get some feedback I’ll find that people think otherwise and I’ll end up cutting them (among other things) before the final draft is done. I also expected a much shorter story, but interactions between people seemed to go on. There are fewer characters and I feel like it’s a tighter story  than The Neon Heart (overall less happens) but it is actually slightly longer. Maybe a thousand words as it stands (and it will obviously change). I thought one thing and here I am at the other side facing something different. The only thing I can do is roll with it. I’ve enlisted Christian to give the book a once over to double check my perspective on the length. It’s not exactly a beta read. Things are far too rough for that. I’m just feeling so unsure since I didn’t find more problems. An odd feeling, indeed.

In the mean time, I’ve started work on the comic. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, or have forgotten, the comic artist, designer, writer, Glen Hawkes has agreed to do the cover of Broadcast Wasteland in exchange for some writing on his comic, The Misadventures of Bowling Ball. It’s a really fun and quirky story about bowling related heroes and villains. It’s practically a parody and is very joke heavy. Since he’s currently working on an issue, he asked me if I would be willing to try my hand and the next one. It’s exciting and a bit nerve-raking. He’s already done my cover (minus a few nit-picky changes from me) and not only have I never done a comic before, I’m trying to write someone else’s established characters.

Since Glen writes the comics by drawing them, he doesn’t have a script format. Also, he has the whole world in his head, so there is no character, location, or plot point list. My fist task has been to make a story bible (a collection of all that pertinent information for guidance and reference) and to establish a script format. There’s going to be a lot of back and forth and give and take, but Glen has been great to work with so far and I’m fully invested in finding what works best for him. It’s his baby. I have my own ideas, but what he says goes. I’m excited to get to the point where we have the kinks worked out and the creative process is running smoothy. I hope I can write something he likes, too. (He has given me guidelines, so it’s not like I’m flying blind).

My last event of the year is this Saturday. It’s a local author signing at the Tecumseh Library. There will be a bunch of local authors (some I’ve never met) and we will all have books to sell and sign. There’s at least one draw (I think two) and I finally have copies of all my books. Christmas is just around the corner. Just saying.