Writing from the Boys’ Room

So here I am, another week at Open Eye.  We got most of the gang here:  me, Jason, Charlie, Ethan, and Franco.  Here’s the topics of discussion for the day:

We are planning for Baltimore.  In early Oct we will (all) be packing our bags and heading to the City of the Ravens.  There is a nice little con up there with some real comic love.  The current plan is for Dreamers’ Daughter’s first twelve pages to be a go for previews and have all the info to get you back here or to the homepage of the book, which will hopefully be up by then.  Jason’s current plan is to have the whole first issue of Knights of the Realm ready to go.  It’s ambitious, but if anyone can do it, he can.  My hope is to get together a shirt etc to help us promote the table.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Who to print with?  Both Ka-Blam and Comixpress have their strong points.  If we go with a really big run, we’ll probably go with Comix-press. 

Lost Time, Found

I am like the moon. I am star-drenched. The light shining from those around me is making me glow. I have rarely felt so lucky as I do now. If I write these books anywhere near as well as I know they will be drawn, oh what the future holds.

So here's the status:

Dreamers' Daughter: Still my first among favorites, though I haven't written any of it in weeks. On the other hand, if there is one book a month, I am nearly three years ahead. Of course I'm sure some of those may never see the light of day, but what's so great about daylight anyway? Everything I've written I like for one reason or another. Charlie has finished the sketches for 7, 8, 9, and I'm told 10. There is not yet color and he has decided to redo even the thumbnails for the other pages. I get this weird feeling like, as much as I love DD, it may not be the sort of book I can lead with. It will be something that takes the reader a little trust to invest in and pays off big time. Maybe once I have that elusive thing called a "fan base" they will deliver my daughter crying into the daylight.

Alright then, enough sounding creepy...

Monsters of Rock: I finished all my edits and handed it back over to Jason. Jason has applied all of the edits and now the text of the book is complete in all its wonder. Jason is now beginning the process of laying out for color and final production. All of Monster Town stands firm behind him.

Knights of the Realm: You know how you always have that class at the beginning of the semester that you think, "Meh, it'll do" then about half way through you realize that the classes you were so anxious to take aren't as great as you thought and the "meh" class is actually amazing if you pay attention. Well, Knights of the Realm is that class for me. I wrote the first script with no real plan for the future, thinking simply, this seems too interesting not to write. Turns out, half way through issue two, I couldn't stop laughing at my own jokes. I know that is traditionally a bad sign, so I had other people read it. They two found themselves cracking up. When I had Jason read it he asked to illustrate it, since he had some spare time with monsters being all in the computer stages. I said that would be great two weeks ago and we now have three completely finished pages, at least five more in the sketching phases, and some amazing character designs.

Sarcasmo: Sarcasmo met with the unfortunate accident of falling into a very dark hole full of Garth Ennis like humor and messed up relationships. Normally, I would greet this with open arms. However, this was supposed to be my clean, nearly all ages, good for the soul book. I swear now that Sarcasmo and the rest of his team of Super misfits will return...I'm just not sure in what form.

New West: Now have three complete issues of New West, though the third may need a little editing. According to my length predictions, that puts me more than halfway through the series. I like that idea, though New West has currently taken a back seat to Knights,as Jason is burning up my heels. If he's going to put all this work in, I have to prepare the sort of mess I need for submission. Charlie wants to do New West, but unless he can find his way out from under the colossal maze of DD, it may not happen for a while.

Lost Loves: This idea...there's something there...it may not have the same name when it comes out the other end, but I can feel it shaping itself in my mind. This may be the book that has the potential to really get me in trouble, as I may find myself at the pointed end of a few fingers when I write what I feel.

Para-legals: Still in a holding patter above my head

One step at a time

Day off, whoo hoo!

So, I'm of course spending it working on writing and such.

Well, I started with reading comics and eating lunch with Alicia, then I moved up to writing. I updated all four of the established Dreamers' Daughter blogs today as well as making my presence felt on both twitter and sidebar. Planning to go see Harry Potter this weekend with Alicia as well as the Strutzs and Fullers. Don't I sound grown up with all my married friends? Oh dear God...

Actually tied for the win in a round of trivia last night, which is better than we've done in a while. To be honest, I knew we'd get it when the title was announced as "Movies involving time travel". Right up my alley.

Anyway, maybe time to do some real work now. Later

My Babies

Alright, in the last couple days I've updated Bisa, Zuri, and Paula. Starting to feel good about this. Need to get around to Altsoba, but I always feel particularly careful about hers. She does, after all, have a demandingly unique voice.

Did the Monday night circus tonight. Things with Jason on Knights are looking very promising. He's drawing like a madman! I gave back my edited all to hell copy of Monsters of Rock so that he can make the changes to make the book rock at the level it should. Hopefully, and I'll check this with Jason, he'll be up for posting some of the art and or story on the blog at some point. That would make life happy.

I'm actually feeling kinda okay about this whole twitter thing. It's nice to have followers, even if I don't know them. I'm feeling rather like The Monarch at the moment. I wonder how they would feel if I gave them all numbers instead of names. Plus, weird thing about twitter, instead of learning the things I cared to learn about people of interest, I can instead learn the inane and somehow reassuring details of their day to day life...and keep up with friends in an all but completely meaningless sort of way.

I'm hoping aloud that everything is all right with Charlie and family as they are going through kind of a rough spot with his grandma. Hope to see you next Monday buddy.

Jason rocks my world

So anyone that hasn’t visited the link to Jason Strutz’s homepage on the right of this blog should go ahead and do it, because the man is awesome.  The artwork on the site itself was enough to pump me up about working with him, but the stuff I’ve seen from our upcoming projects really rock my world.

For those of you that don’t know Jason, he’s a sort of freelance/whatever he happens to want to draw guy with mad skills.  Right now we’re working on two things:

First is Jason’s baby, Monsters of Rock.  Monsters of Rock is a kids book about a group of young monsters who form a rock band to compete in the local Battle of the Bands.  Jason had been kicking around the idea for some time but was having trouble making it what he wanted it to be.  He gave me the script and I put my shoulder to it and pumped out a fun little script (which I am quite proud to say rhymes).  I’ve been watching it come together as Jason sketches it out and I finally got a finished rough pencils draft to take home and make marks on.  The pictures are going to be awesome and I finally made it sound just the way I wanted.

The second project is still its fledgling phases, so I’m nervous to talk too much about it.  Suffice to say, it’s based in the concept of the current knights of England being called to take up their posts and defend the country from threatening magical forces.  Jason got a nice finished and colored version of the first page done and I am psyched.  It’s beyond what I could have hoped for when I wrote it.  I hope we get to keep doing this, cause I really feel like this could be a huge success.

Dance my Puppets

So here it is, this is Jeremy's blogger blog. I have the whole live journal thing already, but since all of my creations are out here hanging about the blogger, it only makes sense to have this here. Maybe I can find a way to link this to my livejournal somehow, but that is a task for later. In the meantime, this is about to get crazy up in here. Peace!