Writing Opportunity: Steampunk Short Stories

One more writing link, then I'll move on to other things for a while. Steampunk Quarterly is paying $50 for stories between 7000 and 9000 words. I'm already thinking about what I might want to submit.

Writing is Hard: Resolutions, Marketing Tips, and Other Inspiration

Resolutions for Writers

JA Konrath has been recording his recommended New Years' resolutions for writers since 2006 and you can read them all here.

He also has another useful and inspirational post outlining what he's learned after five years blogging about the publishing business.

Books on Writing

I've decided to give up reading books on writing for a while so that I can do some actual writing instead. But I love studying the craft and learning more about the business, so I expect that I'll eventually want to try some of Pimp My Novel's recommendations. I like how they've got the list divided into books that help you before you've written your novel and those that help you sell it afterwards.

Pre-Release Marketing

On a related note, thriller author Tess Gerritsen has a helpful post about how she starts selling her books before they even come out.

Happy Birthday, Robot 6!

Robot 6 turned one year old this weekend. And we got a couple of very cool birthday cards!



By Guy Davis and Dave Stewart! Davis is one of my favorite artists of any medium, so I'm still pinching myself over this. Stewart is a legendary colorist, so that makes it even more unreal.



This one's by Mohammad F ("Hawk") Haque (Applegeeks), who's work I didn't know before, but plan to spend more time with from now on. That piece is so gorgeous and charming.

Thanks so much, Guy, Dave, and Hawk!

Also, it was a blast working with the other Robot 6 members last year and I'm looking forward to doing it all over again this year. Happy Birthday, guys!

Elsewhere on the Internets...

Here's the rest of what I've been up to online lately:

Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs



My last column for 2009 was about both volumes of Mouse Guard, but I spent more time on the more recent one, Winter 1152.

I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to talk about this week. Not that anyone’s called me on it yet, but I usually talk here about stuff that I enjoy and I know that that can give the impression that I like everything, which simply isn’t true. In fact, I just read a book that I didn’t like so much and contemplated talking about it instead, if only for variety’s sake. But is criticizing a mediocre, small-press book really how we want to end the year? As Tim O’Shea reminded me when I expressed my indecision on the subject, there’s a lot of bad material out there. Why spend a whole column focused on that when there’s good stuff that can use a larger audience? Mouse Guard may not exactly be an underground comic, but until it hits #1 on every Best Sellers list in the world, I’m considering it under-read.

The first thing you’re struck with by Mouse Guard is how beautiful it is. I was reading Winter 1152 in public the other day and a woman stopped and asked me what it was. As much as I try not to make assumptions about people from their appearances, I’m guessing that this immaculately-dressed businesswoman doesn’t have a large comics collection at home. But she saw David Petersen’s highly realistic, stunningly detailed, and lushly colored artwork and was attracted by it enough to want to know more.

But Mouse Guard is about more than the pictures and the seasons in the title dictate more than just Petersen’s color palettes. There’s a deep, compelling story at work with human characters – mice though they may be – and powerful themes that reflect the time of year they’re set in.

Read the rest here.

Incidentally, Mouse Guard: Winter 1152 topped by my list of favorite comics for the year. You can read the whole list (as well as those of Robot 6's other contributors) here, but I should admit that mine is flawed. I'm embarrassed that I didn't even consider webcomics when I made it, so - as I said in the comments - I'm ticked at myself for not including at least The Abominable Charles Christopher. It's as good as anything else on the list.

The 30 Most Important Comics of the Decade





This was a huge group effort by all the Robot 6ers. I wrote the entries for 30 Days of Night and Flight, Volume 1 in Part One (#s 30-16). I didn't contribute to Part Two (#s 15-1), but you should read that too. A lot of interesting stuff to think about in both sections.

Land of the Lost Game

I'm not sure where else to put this so it gets its own post. Sleestak has a very cool post about some great Christmas swag he got: a couple of vintage Land of the Lost games. He's got great scans of everything, including the board game's rules and gameboard.

Who Reads the Cownt?

Kat Varns reads the Cownt!



Kat is so awesome that she posted a picture of herself on Facebook with Cownt Tales #1 and with her permission I'm reposting it here. She writes, "Best comic EVER. Get one. Right now." You should listen to her.

She also says that she's the Cownt's biggest fan and is "actually probably going to be dressing as him for CONvergence" and maybe for SpringCon too! I can't wait to see that picture. Thanks again, Kat!

In related news, I need to get a copy of Cownt Tales to this woman right away.



I think she'd enjoy it. (Thanks to Brother Cal for this picture.)

One last bit of Cownt news, my boss JK at Robot 6 was nice enough to run a profile of Cownt Tales last week in preparation for Indy Comic Book Week. Thanks again, JK!

Elsewhere on the Internets...

It's been a while since I've done one of these, so there's more stuff than usual to share. Here's some of what else I've been up to online lately. I'll probably need one or two more posts like this to catch up to the rest.

Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs

There were two things that always got me excited as a kid: pirates and medieval stuff. Whether it was King Arthur, Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, or something else, I always thrilled to tales of chivalry, plate mail, and yew bows. But then I found Star Wars and everything else didn’t seem as exhilarating anymore.

Well, now I’m grown up and Star Wars has lost nearly all its shine. Jack Sparrow has rekindled my love for swashbuckling scoundrels of the seas, but so far nothing has gotten me excited about castles and wizards again. Not until Demons of Sherwood, that is. Bo Hampton and Robert Tinell’s webcomic turned graphic novel has everything a good medieval story needs: knights, damsels (sometimes in distress; sometimes rescuing distressed fellas), merry men, spooky woods, noblemen of questionable trustworthiness, holy relics, and enough of the supernatural to make things interesting without turning the whole thing into a fantasy tale. It’s also very grounded in reality.

I’m not talking so much about research or historical accuracy, though it may have those things going for it too as far as I know. What I mean is that the art and the script have weight to them. The story reads as if it’s happening to real people, in spite of the utterly fantastic things that are going on around them.

Read more here.

When I reviewed Book One of The Good Neighbors back in the day, I was struck with the maturity that Black and Naifeh brought to their story. Black’s known for The Spiderwick Chronicles and Naifeh’s known for all sorts of kid-friendly stuff like Courtney Crumrin, Death Jr., and Polly and the Pirates. The Good Neighbors, on the other hand, is about a college girl named Rue whose mother is missing and whose father is a suspect in not only Mom’s disappearance, but also the death of one of Rue’s schoolmates. I was impressed with how dark and serious the story was, but how at the same time Black and Naifeh kept the characters lively enough to prevent it from becoming oppressive. They continue that balance in Book Two.

At the end of the first volume, Rue learned that her mother was a faerie; the daughter of the Faerie King who was won in a bet by Rue’s human father. But one of the conditions of the prize was that Rue’s mom would return to her people if Rue’s father were ever unfaithful, which he was. Which explains Mom’s disappearance. The dead student was a related, but tangential casualty of another faerie-related matter. As it turns out, Rue’s paternal grandfather is planning a takeover of Rue’s town and the local faerie activity is getting out-of-control as a result. The trouble is that no one but Rue – thanks to her mother’s heritage – can see it. In Kith, Grandpa’s plan takes a huge step forward as he demonstrates how far he’s willing to go to achieve it. And those who oppose him demonstrate how far they're willing to go to stop him.

So, I don’t know how you feel about faeries. They’re rarely near the top of my list of Things That Are Awesome, but I think that’s largely because of what Disney’s done to the concept. Not that I hate Disney, but they’ve turned faeries into Things That Are Quaint. Read the original tales – or, say, Mike Mignola’s take on them in Hellboy – and you remember that these can be malicious, scary creatures. Those are the kinds of faeries in The Good Neighbors. They’re intelligent, scheming, and utterly inhuman in their priorities and motivations. Black gives us the first hint of this in Book One when a flashback reveals the complete inability of Rue’s mother to relate to or comfort her daughter. When Rue comes home in tears because her friends laughed at her at school, her mother’s response is was to smile coldly and say something like, “How nice. You made them laugh.” Maybe it’s the parent in me, but I found that chilling.

Read the rest here.

What Are You Reading



Made some quick comments about Maus for Robot 6's weekly feature.

Robot 6's Holiday Haul



The other 6ers and I talked about our comics-related holiday gifts, both given and received.

New! New! New! New! New!

I'm not really big on the word "resolutions" because it sounds so serious and momentous. I do believe in making plans though and setting goals, as long as the goals are things I can directly control. Someone pointed out to me a long time ago the difference between goals and desires and it's changed the way I plan for the future.

Goals are things I have complete control over. "I will finish the script for Tula and the Pirate Witch" is dependent entirely on me. Desires are things that can only be fulfilled with the cooperation of someone else. "Tula and the Pirate Witch will have a publisher by the end of the year," involves Jess (the artist), the letterer, and a publisher to make it happen. That doesn't mean that it can't happen and that I shouldn't hope for it to. It just means that having Tula published this year can't be my personal goal.

So, Goals for 2010:

I want to keep my Internet footprint at least as large as it is now. Hopefully it will grow, but I can't control that, so I'm going to at least continue turning in Robot 6 articles on time and pitching in on other features there when possible. And I'll continue blogging here and at the other places I contribute to. The idea is to maintain the current quantity of material I produce for the Internet while looking for ways to improve the quality of it.

While doing that, I also have some fiction-writing goals. I want to finish the script for the first issue of Tula and the Pirate Witch and stay at least an issue ahead of Jess so that she's not waiting on me. I've also got a project planned with artist Darla Ecklund and the same plan applies to that.

I also need to finish the script for Cownt Tales #2. A goal that Jess and I have together is to get enough pages done that we can pitch the second issue to publishers (Gav and Paul are also on board, but I don't expect that I'll need their pages for the pitch if I include in it a copy of the first issue. I could be wrong about that though). I'm making no promises about having it printed by a certain time. I'd like to find a home for it and there's no telling how long that will take.

I need to work with Jason Copland to come up with a game plan for Kill All Monsters (the post-apocalyptic, giant robots vs giant monsters comic we're doing), even if the plan is to let it sit another year. We've been throwing around some ideas about where to take it, so we just need to solidify those into a real plan.

And Jesse James vs Machine Gun Kelly is still a live project. Hope to have an update on that soon, but I can't make specific plans about it just yet.

I need to rethink my novel. Tula is going to scratch the particular itch my current draft was designed for, so I'll likely shelve that for now and start on something different. I neglected prose in 2009 - which was fine - but I'd like to get back into it now.

That's more than enough, I think. Time to make it happen.

The Importance of Lost

NPR's Linda Holmes (whom I mention a lot in Quotes of the Week) wrote a great, convincing article on how Lost is the most important show of the decade. I won't summarize her argument here because you should read it for yourself and see what an entertaining writer she is.

Movie News: Robin Hood, Doc Holliday, Bone, Avatar 2, and more

Robin Hood poster



The Further Adventures of Doc Holliday



No, it probably won't star Val Kilmer. The universe isn't that kind. But Paramount has bought the rights to a script that spices up the life of the old huckleberry. Incidentally, though I know exactly what they're doing (or maybe because I know exactly what they're doing), I'm really tired of hearing people say that their historical adventure movies are "in the vein of Pirates of the Caribbean."

Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec trailer

Watch all the way to the end. This is going to be Awesome.



Meet your new Ian Fleming





James McAvoy has been signed to play Ian Fleming in a biopic about the James Bond creator's experiences in British Intelligence during WWII. At one point I'd heard that they were going to fictionalize some events to make them more exciting (in the vein of Pirates of the Caribbean, I guess), but I don't know if that's still the plan.

Knight and Day poster and trailer



I try. I really try. But I see stuff like the trailer for the new spy flick Knight and Day and I just can't stay mad at Tom Cruise.

Captain America and Green Lantern movie updates



/Film reports that Captain America starts filming this June (which means we should be hearing casting info soon) and Green Lantern has hired an Oscar-winning crew including the cinematographer from Memoirs of a Geisha, the production and costume designers from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the art director from Avatar. I never thought I'd say this, but Green Lantern ought to be one gorgeous movie.

Bone movie won't try to cover entire story



Sounds like the people behind the CGI Bone movie have the right idea. They won't be trying to squeeze the entire epic into one film. According to producer Dan Lin, they're currently trying to figure out how many volumes of the series to try to fit into what they hope will be the first of a series of films. Lin mentions three or four.

Minor spoilers follow if you haven't read the series

Three would end with the Bones still in Barrelhaven, before things really start to turn bad for them there and the story takes a darker turn, so thematically that makes sense. If they included Volume 4, that would end with the Bones having to leave Barrelhaven which seems like a natural breaking point from a geographical standpoint. I guess my preference would be for ending it after Volume 3. Not only did Jeff Smith tend to think of the series in terms of trilogies, but it would also give the filmmakers room to include more stuff from the books.

Lin also reveals the the movie will be made by the folks who did Happy Feet.

Avatar 2



As if there was any doubt, there will be an Avatar sequel. It could explore unseen parts of Pandora (like the oceans or underworld) or it could take us to some of the other moons around that gas giant Pandora's orbiting.

Your New 007

Found this while I was looking for something else. I'm very sorry.