Busy Little Bee

Back to the grindstone again.

After a somewhat more manageable last couple of weeks I find myself once again in the middle of a lot of projects. A short break in one of the TV series I’m writing for is now done, and they’re in “We need it yesterday mode” with two episodes required by Wednesday and Friday of next week. The other documentary is also gearing up, so that’ll keep me occupied and Nowhere is still not quite done, although that ceiling of 150 pages on Book 1 is fast approaching.

Comic Book Progress

123 pages and counting. Don’t ask me how many individual “chapters” or “issues” that is, because I haven’t bothered to keep track. I think novels have pretty much spoiled me, I find it pretty difficult to squeeze all the plot I need to into the allotted space sometimes without giving the impression that things move way too fast.

The submission package has been sent and is doubtless sitting on a Slow Boat To Cali. Fornia, that is. Slave Labor Graphics is the first target in not-so-scenic San Jose, so we’ll see what they think, though I’m seriously entertaining the suspicion that they might say “Great art, but can we junk this writer?”

Oh well…

Scary Grown Up Stuff

So the Wife’s application for Canadian Permanent Residency was submitted a while ago, and we got a letter back saying that the initial phase (Whether or not I was suitable as a sponsor) has been approved and her application proper is now being processed.

Of course that’s going to take a while, but in the meantime, bizarrely adult considerations have to be made like “Where the hell are we going to go?”

Not having a ton of money at the moment, one extremely odd alternative has popped up.

The maritime provinces.

A good sized house there sells for 20,000 Canadian. This can be reasonably handled with our fairly limited savings. I’m not saying that that’s what’s gonna’ happen for sure, but knowing real estate is so cheap out in the middle of nowhere does have its appeal from a financial survivability viewpoint.

Of course the sanity viewpoint is something else, but heck, this is all speculation at this point…

Holy Crap

Official word from RedOctane, creators of Uber Rock game Guitar Hero, they have announced a new song confirmed to be on the Guitar Hero 2 playlist:

Guns N’ Roses, Sweet Child O’ Mine. Lynrd Skynrd’s Freebird.

Damn, I wanted this game before, I want it twice as much now.

Tweaking

Spent some time fixing up the written portion of the submission. The Wife took a hatchet to it and it’s now down to a more reasonable four pages. Now all that’s left is all That Other Stuff and we can see whether or not this is the kind of thing that anyone besides us would like.

Comic Book Submissions

Well, part of it is done, anyway.

The cover letter itself is one page. The outline of the series runs another five pages, and the character descriptions totalled up five pages as well, bringing the written portion of the submission to 11 pages. There’s still the actual character designs and the minimum 5 finished pages (Though we’ll probably submit more than that) and we’re good to go.

I’m starting to wonder though if maybe Slave Labor Graphics shouldn’t update their website on submission guidelines or something. They make it quite clear that their submission procedure is to make their life easier and minimize their visits to the post office, asking for submissions to include a self-addressed stamped envelope and not to be registered or certified. However, for a submission that is international, you can’t include stamps with it, and so have to include International Reply Coupons which can redeemed for stamps… once you go to the post office to do it.

Maybe they should say “For non-American submissions, don’t bother with the IRC stuff, we’ll e-mail you.”

After Watching Monster House

I came out of it having found it surprisingly enjoyable. I also realized exactly what was going on after the opening credits showed a leaf being blown about all over the street, and then the closing credits revealed Robert Zemeckis was one of the executive producers…

Ho Hum

Busy with writing and stuff.

Well It’s A Start

Look, physical evidence of our comic online! Whee!

And thanks go to old college friend Aerin for making sure the Latin doesn’t make us look like idiots.

Productivity Sucks

If there’s one thing that really bugs me, it’s keeping busy and doing stuff everyday. I really get off on being an idle slacker so actual deadlines, hitting milestones and all that other assorted managerial crap tends to get on my nerves, and yet that is exactly what is happening these days.

I find that between the regular GameAxis gig, writing episodes for one production house, having started preliminary research on a documentary for another production house, writing articles for Maxim, writing a comic for Kid’s Company AND writing a comic for… no one in particular, I’m being depressingly productive and can look back on each day with a solid chunk of accomplished work.

Sucks, man.

I’m now in the process of sloooowly filling out the submission requirements for Slave Labor Graphics, who is the first target of Operation Please Print This Comic. I still have to finish up the cover letter, write up some character descriptions and then give a synopsis of the story (and let the record show that on this day, I did admit, “I know how it ends” so that if it should go to print and run on and on and on forever, no one will think “he made it up as he went along.”) and then wait for the Wife to gather up the visual samples. She needs to produce character sketches as well as at least 5 finished pages to show that she’s not just a pin-up artist and understands the concept of sequential art.

Sequential art sounds so much more legitimate than “funny” or “comic” books.

On top of that, some good games are coming down the pipeline and Guitar Hero (STILL!!) is not finished, though Cowboys From Hell by Pantera is edging closer and closer to actually being a playable song rather than a marathon of confused fingers.