When I was a kid, Captain Crunch cereal did a promotion called “Oops! All Berries” where they sent out boxes of cereal filled with only the berry-flavored “crunch berries” and no regular corn puffs. They made like it was a mistake, but it was a marketing gimmick, and it worked well enough that you can still find “Oops! All Berries”-style cereal in stores today. Or at least I think you can. Haven’t bought cereal in a while.
So allow me to take this time to say “Oops! I totally meant to have a newsletter this month and just plain didn’t have time.” It’s a lame excuse, but the upside is that means I’ve been super busy this month working on my nonprofit and creating comics like the one at the top of this page. I took some advice from comics legend Chris Staros and started working on a series of mini-comics called Secret Operations, focusing on the satirical, self-aware aspects of my writing and incorporating Twilight Zone-style twists to each self-contained tale.
What all that means is while I’m letting Bubblegum-Man fade into obscurity, soon I’ll be making hundreds of mini-comics available to you, my loyal minions. Each comic is about 8 pages and will cost just 3 dollars. A little steep maybe, but after printing and postage costs, I’ll only be making about 50 cents per comic. Let me know if my math is stupid. I’m not the best businessman.
I’ll let you fine folks know once issue 1 is ready to go. Then I’ll start taking orders. Fun times!
In the meantime, I’ve also been throwing around the idea of a vampire novel set in El Paso, TX around 1925 or so. Kind of a weird west story where a Russian vampire fights the Klan. The problem is I don’t know very much about El Paso, the 1920s, or Russian vampires. My local library ain’t much help either since they’ve moved to only being open 2 days a week. The other five days (because God forbid they open on Sunday) are curbside-pickup only. So if you want to do your research at the Roswell Public Library, you gotta head down on Tuesday or Saturday between the hours of 10 and 6. Not a terrible schedule, but I didn’t learn this until AFTER riding my bike 3 miles to try and do some hardcore research. Haven’t been back since that excursion.
William’s House, Inc. is a nonprofit I’ve been working on for almost a year with my pal Chuck. We’re a startup assessment center and temporary housing facility for families in recovery. You can get some more information here, just don’t click any links. The website’s still under construction. We’ve garnered a lot of interest and support from our local community, as well as the United Way of Greater Atlanta. Which is nice.
My fantasy novel Tang of Fate is still being shopped to agents, but I don’t expect much. The concept has been done to death, and the factors that made my book unique aren’t so unique anymore. Which is good for the genre, really. In any case, I think comics rather than novels will be the best medium for me. I’m more of a visual medium kind of person, and as I’ve been informed by my excellent writers’ group, novels are a mental rather than visual medium. I know. Mind blown.
But who knows? Maybe I’ll come back to Tang of Fate someday. Everything always comes back around again. And in the meantime, I’ve still got my short stories, which I’m very much behind on. Here we are at week 20, and I haven’t broken 15 completed tales yet. As Uncle Vinny would say, time to get humpin’.