Tuesday, December 31, 2013

New Year's Resolution 2014

I'm sitting at home waiting for the ball to drop in Times Square. At this time, as I always do, I'm looking forward to the new year. Here are my goals in no particular order:
  1. Turn my outlines for the two sequels to "Alien Body Suit: Under Her Skin" into completed stories.
  2. Publish / find a home for a number of the stories I've completed but not released. (TPF, TotTC, HG, and a trilogy of shorter stories in the same universe I don't think I've mentioned before: AH, INF, BU)
  3. Finish the stories I have mostly - but not all the way - completed. (COT, TB, BaM, MAU: SEP)
  4. Complete my outline and start work on my screenplay project: CS.
  5. Set up a webpage as a home for the content / stories I intend to start self-publishing. It's past time for me to jump on the Amazon bandwagon.
  6. Start work on the on one or both of the two book projects I've had in mind for a while now.
  7. Make time to write. This resolution involves watching less TV, which is a huge, HUGE time suck for me.
There are a couple more minor goals, like how many pages a week I want to write, forming an LLC, getting illustrations done for my stories to be published and so forth, but the ones above are the biggies.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Random Observation

No one wants a King as a servant. All that does is highlight the inadequacies of those that the King serves.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Whatchama'callit

I'm always amazed when I search story titles at Fictionmania that seem obvious to me and come up empty. Oh well. More clever titles for me to use.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Wanted: Writing Agent

I've got a few finished stories that I'm not sure what to do with at this point. I really wish I had a test reader that I could trust to give me feedback on my work. One of them for sure is bound for Fictionmania and TGStorytime. I've considered self-publishing a couple of them. Really kind of lost and frustrated.

All my writing lately is the literary equivalent of puttering in the garage. Things happen, progress is made, but nothing really gets done.

I need a like minded individual to bounce ideas off of. Like an agent. Someone that could say, "Hey, this story is really good. Don't give it away for free. This one's OK, but don't charge for it. And this one? Burn it; it's horrible."

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Retraction

After a lot of time to think and more than a little soul searching, I've retracted my last post, "You Know." I meant every word of it, but there's no way I'll ever stop writing. To pretend otherwise is just stupid and vain.

I'm still outlining for the sequels. More info soon.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Next Up

Now that ABS: Under Her Skin is up, I've been fleshing out the outline for the first of the two sequels, ABS:IM. I'd like to have outlines for both sequels done ASAP. My goal is to have both sequels written by the end of the summer so that they can go up fairly close together when they do eventually get illustrated and come out.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Alien Body Suit: Under Her Skin

EDITORIAL UPDATE AS OF 3/23/13 AT 11:51PM: IF YOU'RE READING THIS POST, YOU SHOULD READ MY MOST RECENT POST, "YOU KNOW." JUST SO, UM, YOU KNOW. WHICH YOU WILL IF YOU READ THAT POST.

It's up! Alien Body Suit: Under Her Skin is now for sale for $9.95 on the TG Comics website. It's my second story to be illustrated and published there, but the first to be a Premium. In fact, it's the first premium illustrated story to be put up for sale on that website. I'm excited and a little scared to see how it will be received. If it doesn't do well for Femur - the webmaster, publisher and all around guru at TG Comics - it may close a door for other authors. I hope that doesn't happen.

TG Comics is virtually unique on the Internet, and that is a damn hard thing to do. I don't think the average visitor to the site really gets how much time, effort and money Femur spends on the site. The process of getting my story published there has given me a glimpse behind that curtain.

I think everybody knows the site is Femur's love song to the genre. I don't think everybody gets the depth of that commitment. The TG fiction community owes him a huge Thank You. Like Mindy Rich with Fictionmania (for stories), or Mako and Ray with the now defunct "Siren Song" website (for video), Femur's TG Comics website is the gold standard for sequential and illustrated TG fiction. I could not be more proud to have my work for sale there.

On a less profound, more whimsical note, can you see now why I am so coy about titles? If I had told people that ABS stood for Alien Body Suit, the content and direction of the story would have been too obvious, to the point of being a spoiler. Clearly the sequels - ABS:IM and ABS:WLW - are stories in the Alien Body Suit trilogy. (As a side note, it's "body suit" and not "bodysuit" due specifically to how the device is first seen / precieved in the story. You can read that part of the story for free in the preview that's up at TG Comics.) Those titles are guess-able if you know my writing well enough. Even so, I don't like to show my cards until I lay down my hand. Like the plot of those sequels ... well, read and see.

But start by reading Alien Body Suit: Under Her Skin. The test readers all loved it. I think you will too.

Friday, March 15, 2013

The End Is In Sight

I have a tentative release date!!! That date is this Tuesday, 3/19/13. If everything goes as planned, I'll be able to reveal the full title of ABS:UHS, which will tell a lot about the nature of the story itself. Then I can also talk more openly about the planned sequels: ABS:IM and ABS:WLW. Obviously, the "ABS" part of those titles will be clear to all after Tuesday's release.

If anyone is following this blog, I have to confess that I'm very excited and hopeful for this project. I hope it leads to good things for both myself and my publisher. They are taking a very big risk on this project. I want it to succeed. If it does, I'm hoping that it opens up possibilities for other authors of TG fiction.

Monday, February 18, 2013

... And Closer

I got ABS:UHS back from my publisher with the edits applied last night. VERY close now to being done, with publication not far behind. At least, that was the impression I got from the E-mail I received. I'm 110 pages into my final pass through the story out of approximately 225 pages including illustrations. (Illustrations have been done since early summer of 2011.) The remaining revisions are few and minor ("they" instead of "the," some discrepancies between illustrations and captions and so forth). I should be done tonight, with the rest of the work in my publisher's hands.

This will be the first major story I've put out that wasn't with Reluctant Press. I was so close to self-publishing. I was ready to take that on, but with so little money of my own to invest in illustrations, the offer from this publisher to do 100+ illustrations just kind of blew me away. At the time, I thought my chain was getting yanked, but it was a serious offer. And the quality? Light years beyond the illustrations I have had coupled with my work before this. Now 3 1/2 years later, it's coming out. "I can't wait to share this with you," well, those words just don't seem adequate to express how I feel.

I'm getting nervous. Scared, even. I know some people are going to hate it and dump on me. There's always a few people that seem to enjoy going negative. I hope there are more that love it. And buy it. I'm pretty certain that a bad financial outcome will close the door on anyone that wants to follow in my footsteps. I think that would crush my spirits.

I can't stop rereading this story, though. I don't seem to get tired of it. I hope other people feel the same way.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Closer

After spending a month and a half putting off doing revisions for ABS:UHS, I finished final revisions and passed it back to my new publisher for the edits to be applied. I'm now waiting on them to finish so that I can finally talk about this project. I'm looking forward to that!

Excited to share this illustrated story (100+ illustrations!) with the world. Check here for details and updates.