I don’t seem to have any time these days. None. We’ve been shooting double the normal amount of episodes for Teletoon as of late, and will continue to for the next three weeks, there’ve been a lot of visitors coming and going, and deadlines seem to be popping up all over the place.

As such I haven’t been writing as much as I would like. It’s weird. I used to think I was a busy guy. I wasn’t married, had no kids, worked only one job, wasn’t really writing anything—no prose or OR comics. Yet, if you’d have asked me, I would have told you I was busy.

Me right now wants to go and slap me a few years ago. I would give anything to have that much free time. I’ve got two full time jobs, a kid, a wife (who I enjoy spending time with) and I’m writing more than I ever have. I actually stress myself out about it. Kind of silly actually, but I do. I get stressed out when I don’t feel I’ve written enough.

But for the sake of sorting out my mind  let’s take a look at what I’m trying to write at the moment …

1) The Sci Fi Project with Conor McCreery

We’ve actually been working on thing pretty steady for the past few months. I can’t say too much about it cause we’re pitching. But I can say that we both had our minds blown when the trailer for Ender’s Game was released today …

2) Braccus: The Whore Son

My second short story/novella about Braccus the Gothran. This story is such a bull to wrestle with. I posted ablog a few days ago about my strategy of focussing more on characters development. I actually shut it down for a few days to really hammer out solid character back stories and bios.

Then as soon as I did I went back through everything I’d written, which was only about ten or so pages, but given my limited time it took a good week to really give things the amount of polish I wanted. Frustratingly the day after I finished we had some visitors arrive.

In all honesty the guy who showed up is one of my all time best friends so I shouldn’t complain. It was great seeing him, we even played some Pathfinder. That was a laugh. I crafted a pretty sweet quest if I do say so myself. Although I didn’t tweak the monsters bonuses properly and it came off as a bit too easy if you ask me.

Still, I got myself stressed out thinking how much I could’ve written. That’s what I do when I lay awake in bed. I worry about all the things I haven’t done … like edit the version that’s on here. 

Well the bright side is I’ve actually pounded away on it quite a bit over the past three days. I’m excited to really sink my teeth into it again!

3) Teuton Volume 3

Yes. Adam is currently hammering away with the precision of a dwarven smith on the last few pages of Teuton Volume 3. And while those pages come in our wonderful friend Chris letters them, and then I go over them once more to make sure the dialogue I’ve written isn’t too awful.

Regardless it’s just something else I need to work on.

The really cool thing is that a bunch of our pin ups are trickling in, there are some really fracking cool ones too. Here’s one from Andy Stanleigh:

Andy works on a VERY cool comic called Titan: An Alternative History. I suggest you read it.

4) Comixology Nonsense

Well everyone has been going on about getting Teuton on Comixology and how important it is. So I submitted Teuton for online publication. But they rejected us. The reasons were all technical so it’s kind of a relief that they didn’t think the story was bad.

But the fact remains I need to go back over the specs and tweak them. That’s only annoying cause I can admit I get easily confused by the techy stuff. Tis my not very secret shame

5) Remnant … ohhhhhh the waiting ….

This comic has beena real work of love for me. I have a feeling there are some people who just won’t like it, but I don’t care. I love sword and sorcery stuff. And this one is just packed full of violence and magic. I am really excited to see it in print.

The cover is gonna look unreal and when it’s all done. I’m just waiting on the letters and the notes from my editor over at Frozen Beach, and yes I get stressed waiting for notes.

You sensing a motif?

So C2E2 is finally done. I dunno if you saw Adam’s post … he mentioned how hard I am on myself, and that’s a pretty fair statement. I just always have high expectations for shows and sadly this one was pretty slow in terms of sales.

Adam is very adamant (see what I did there?) that C2E2 was more about just getting work into a broader audience than actually selling hard copies. I mean let’s be honest, if even half the people who took our card actually come to this site and read what we’ve done then we’ll have begun reaching an incredibly broad audience on both sides of the border.

So … if you grabbed our card and are now reading this, thank you!

There were some very cool things that happened:

1) Meeting Ben McCool and keeping myself from gushing non stop about how much I loved Nevsky.

 

2) Hearing one of the filthiest jokes ever from Jimmy Palmiotti, and then getting a free signed copy of his book Sex and Violence–made even cooler when he remembered who I was.

 

3) Meeting Dave Marshall from Dark Horse and talking with him about the upcoming stories from Conan. Let me just say, I am more confident than ever that Tim Truman’s adaptation of The Hour of the Dragon is gonna be amazing.

4) Saying hello to Tony Moore and his lovely wife and discussing the awful nature of teething. Uggh teething it is the worst.

 

5) Finally getting to have some face time with Eric Powell, and telling him that THIS …

These pages are the property of Dark Horse Comics and Eric Powell

 

… made me laugh harder than anything I’ve ever read in a comic. Yeah I’m a total Goon fan-boy, sue me … please don’t sue me. I am so poor I wrote this blog using dial up.

6) Ramon Perez reminding me the time had come to start dressing like an adult. Yes. I have an aversion to shirts with buttons.

7) There’s also the numerous good times I had with Adam, Phil, Brian, Michael, Ed, Conor, and Andy.

So all in all it was actually a pretty good time. I was just a bit down about the lack of sales, but as far as a trip goes it was fun time.

Now, last time I posted on here I was gonna talk about writing. See, I have a new system in terms of creating content. Basically I write comics and then while I wait for the art to come in I write prose. Not all of it winds up here on the site (because they’re not all winners) but if you’ve read The Veiled Blade here on the site, you’ll know I have a thing for sword and sorcery.

See, I wrote that story in January and I started with just a basic idea of this warrior named Braccus on an escort mission protecting a young noble women who played a key role on an archeological dig. The dig goes wrong–as they always do–and he has to fight to keep her safe.

As I wrote it I would get frustrated, the story seemed to meander and I would start mapping things out as I went–to the point of minutiae. To be honest, when I finished I was very relieved because for a good portion of it I was struggling. See, I’ve read a lot of books about story telling and there are a few different approaches. One of them is called The Writer’s Journey.

It was pretty useful and has a twelve point system for story telling based on mythic story structure. And The Veiled Blade actually follows that structure pretty well, but there was still something missing. I realized I’d just focussed on plot rather than story telling. So I opted to try something different with the next Braccus story–The Whore Son. This time I’m focussing on character.

Maybe I’ll still find myself frustrated, but so far it’s been a pretty interesting process.

I read a book called 45 Master Characters …

… and right away I stumbled upon a very cool writing exercise. It gives you a list of 26 questions to answer about your characters. If you can’t answer the questions, you really don’t know them well enough to write about them properly.

Character Questions:

1) Face – Is it full or narrow? Why? What can we learn about them by their age, history, occupation by their face? Are their eyes perpetually sad looking or Harsh?

2) Skin – How dark is it? Is it the soft skin of a pampered man or the rough skin of a blue collared man?

3) Hair – Is it long, short, curly, or stringy? Most mothers cut their hair short due to lack of grooming time in the mornings–unless they can afford a nanny.

4) Age – What is the best age to convey the struggle of this character? If your character is a divorced mother who has given up her livelihood to raise a family, then it would be much more dramatic for her to be starting over at forty years of age than at twenty.

5) Body Type – Are they a full figured? A woman with the hips of a mother who has bore five children? Are they lean and muscular like an accomplished athlete?

6) Style – Is he trendy or twenty years behind? Does he dress to old for his age?

7) Your Impression – Do you like this character? Why? Find out why you want to spend the next year writing about this character. It will help you to persuade the reader to like them too.

8) Is she introverted or extroverted?

9) Does he solve problems using instincts, logical thinking or emotions?

10) Does she want to change the world?

11) Where does he live?Describe the bedroom, its the most secretive and private room in the house.

12) How does she feel about her appearance?

13) How does he feel about his family and children?

14) What does she think of men and marriage?

15) What are her hobbies?

16) What type of friends does he have?

17) What does he consider to be fun?

18) How does she feel about her sexuality?

19) Does he have control of his environment?

20) What do others have to say about him when he leaves the room?

21) Does he take life seriously, or act like a child most of the time?

22) Where would he spend a sunday afternoon? By herself in a bookstore? At a luncheon with some friends? Looking over files for work?

23) What do they care about?

24) What do they fear?

25) What motivates your character?

- Survival – The basic need to survive.

- Safety and Security – Once basic needs are taken care of, we need to feel safe, secure and protected.

- Love and Belonging – Once we have a home, we desire a sense of family or community or connection. Unconditional love and acceptance.

- Esteem and Self Respect – Is earned love and respect for what you’ve done in your life, to be looked up to and to be recognized.

- The Need to Know and Understand – The search for knowledge. We have a natural curious desire to know how things work and how things fit together.

- The Aesthetic – The need for balance, a sense of order in life, a sense of being connected to something greater than ourselves. Can be spiritual.

- Self Actualization – To express ourselves; to communicate who we are; to actualize our talents, skills and abilities whether or not we are publicly recognized.

26) How do other characters view your character?

 

More importantly if you don’t know your subject well enough, you’re just writing about stereotypes instead of actual character. So I used those 26 questions for two or three players I was using in The Whore Son, but as I began writing I once again found myself in the classic situation of writing about stereotypes rather than actual character. I was annoyed, because in a story there is so much going on that once you begin using a generic place holder to move the story along it just keeps compounding the farther you go.

It was a very frustrating realization. So the stuff I posted on here last week with The Whore Son is as much as I’ve written. I stopped working on it entirely and began going over EVERY character that appears in the story, even the ones who are only involved briefly. It was a really interesting bit of work, because I began thinking about WHY each person is doing what they’re doing during the course of the story: the backdrop, the motivations, all of it.

And it seemed to make each player jump off the page, so after doing all that you know what I’m doing now? I’m re-reading and re-working everything I’ve written thus far. Expect some changes, but they’ll be for the better.

Until next week my friends, may the force be with you.

Do you know J. Torres? He’s a great writer and also a fantastic human being. I (meaning Fred) had him on my podcast a while back (which can be found by CLICKING HERE) and we discussed a anthology of Canadian Super heroes he’s working on called True Patriot.

There are some really stellar talents working on the book too, like Scott Chantler, Agnes Garbowska, J Bone, Andy B, Ramon Perez,  Jay Stephens , and so many more …

On a side note, have you read Andy B’s Black Church? Holy ball sweat! That story’ll put hair on your chest, or maybe you’ll spontaneously grow a sweet mustache. You really need to track down a copy of it!

But back to True Patriot, a few weeks ago J contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in submitting a story for the digital version … which MIGHT make it into the print edition. Of course I said yes, cause not only is it a huge opportunity, but I really like the idea of working on a Canadian specific superhero … even if J is always crapping on me for not being a big Alpha Flight guy.

So after some back and forth about what exactly he was looking for, I decided to write something light-hearted and comical. I haven’t written anything comedic in a while so I eager to start working right away and came up with an Atlantic Canadian character called The Bluenoser.

After he approved the story I checked to see if Adam would have time to do the art. We’re pretty busy with Teuton Volume Three stuff so I wasn’t sure. Thankfully Adam was able to juggle his schedule and now we’re closing in on our deadline. That’s actually the reason we haven’t had a new blog post in two weeks.

Now as with most things in life we’re unable to do this story on our own, so we’ve called in the illustrious Brian Evinou to give us a hand with colours … provided he can keep himself out of bar fights long enough. What a brutish thug he is.

So to give a you a taste of what to expect, here’s some roughs …

The Bluenoser … isn’t he handsome?

Gull Girl … a vile strumpet in carrion clothing!

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

So that’s all you get for now. But as things move along I will be sure to get you more info … provided J says it’s OK of course. But once again, keep your ears and eyes peeled for True Patriot! And buy a copy!

 

 

 

 

 

So the new site is in the works. I’m pretty excited about all of it so far.

In fact there are a lot of things on the go right now. I’m about to finish writing the third volume of Teuton. That will conclude the story. Adam Gorham and I also opted to re-issue Volume 1. We got a lot of advice on ways to improve it, so we took that advice under consideration and began revamping it.

The first twenty pages or so have been updated. They are a lot smoother now. We also had Chris McQuaid take over the lettering … I can admit it. He’s a lot better than me.

A few weeks ago I finished writing Issue 6 of Remnant (that’s the new and final title for the comic formerly called Son of Gothra)

See, our editor Charles Pritchett over at Frozen Beach Studios told us that Son of Gothra sounded like a Japanese monster movie. So after a few other selections Remnant is the new title. I like it.

There’s also a sci fi story I’m tinkering on with Kill Shakespeare’s Conor McCreery. More on that in the coming months.

Now aside from comic stuff I’m also working on doing some short stories and potentially a novella this year. Loads of stuff on the go. I hope you stick around for it.

- Fred