Tune (Part 1 of 5): Just a Little Ditty

The main project I’m working on is a comic book, something I’ve never done before, but wanted to do since I was a kid. Now, finally, the pieces are falling together.

About a year ago my brother and I were working on the beginning stages of our second Flash game. (The first game was never released (link), even though my part was done – my brother got a full-time job and had to focus on that. Hopefully, someday, he’ll finish it and I can show it to you.) The second game never made it very far past the initial planning and design stages – it was an overly ambitious project for two people – a fully animated game with five different chapters. I wrote the general story outline for all five chapters and the full script for the first.

However, things fell apart when my brother (Jay, if you’re reading this – it’s cool, man, I understand) and the script for the game just sat on my hard drive until recently. I’ve been reading a lot of comic books lately and I realized that the script was a good fit for a comic: it had snappy dialogue, an interesting backstory and plot, and the general scene description was already there because we intended to make cutscenes and scripted sequences.

So, after adapting the script (taking out the player choices, beefing up the story and removing some scenes that were player driven), I laid out the panels and text with In Design to get a feel for how the thing would look. That part is all done now. The next step is to create the art in Illustrator and slip it into the panels. I’m not an artist by any means, but I’m serviceable in Illustrator.

Still, it will probably take awhile: the comic has thirty two pages with an average of four panels per page (some have more, some have less). I’ve done seven panels so far and that took as many hours. With about 120 panels left to go I’m looking at about a solid month of work if I can manage four hours a day spent on artwork. It’s more likely that it’ll take me more than a month. But even after seven panels I’m getting better at drawing in illustrator, so that process will probably speed up as I go along and refine my technique.

If it turns out well and people like it, I may end up doing all five parts as comics, depending on how long it takes to do the art. I don’t want to give away the story, but it relates to a family secret and a gang war on the moon. It’s sci-fi. I’ll probably release some more teaser images as the process goes along, because I’m so excited about the project and want to share it with people.

I intend to release it for free on my site as a PDF or CBZ (probably both), but I’ve also looked into printing a few copies for family and friends though comixpress.com. Their rates seem pretty reasonable for printing just a few copies. I’ll also probably put the comic on Scribd and distribute it via bit torrent on Mininova.

Tune is gonna be awesome. I can’t wait to finish it and get it out to you. I seriously can’t contain my excitement – I’m practically vibrating with it. Or maybe that’s just caffeine. Time will tell.

s.k.

The second project I’m working on is a novel. This novel is unrelated and completely different from Disappearances.

This book is a first person account written by an unrepentant serial killer as awaits lethal injection on death row. The killer’s name is Simon Kassidy. His narrative relates the story of his killings and is periodically interrupted by an editor who comments on the killer’s account. The editor is a fictional version of me: a version of me who lobbied the courts to get Simon’s story released, a version of me who slowly cracks under the strain of editing Kassidy’s coldly logical madness, a version of me that is darkly exciting to write.

The novel is coming along – I’m sitting at 55k words and 20 chapters right now. It feels a little over halfway done and is the best piece of writing I’ve done to date. The book is tentatively titled s.k. after the main character, Simon Kassidy, but that might just be a project name in my head that gets changed later. My intention with this project is to try again, at least for awhile, with the agent/query nonsense or maybe send it to a small publisher. I haven’t decided yet. Either way, I will probably also release the book on my site for free.

This book is turning out great – it overcomes all the failings of my previous novel – the plot is quickly paced and more focused. The writing is tighter, with some snappy prose in places that I’m really proud of. But most importantly, this is a book that doesn’t let anything get in the way of a good story. All the “personal lessons” nonsense that I needed to write into Disappearances isn’t there – its story first, “big” ideas second. Plus, it’s sexy as fuck. It’s gonna rock.
Thanks for reading!

-m.

P.S. Look for a new short story, Madeleine’s Children, to be released here in the next few days. It’s a sci-fi story about a scientist who clones his wife’s DNA to create super soldiers. His wife, of course, is livid. That sounds a little cheesy (all sci-fi summaries do!), but it’s really kick-ass – shiver-inducing, heart-wrenching, and quietly desperate. The cover/teaser image will also give you a taste of the art style I’m refining for Tune. Look forward to it!

Disappearances tells the story of a young man mentally disconnected. Early one morning he’s awoken from a restless sleep by a plane crash outside his apartment window. Rushing down to the scene, the young man is unable to find anyone – no people, no rescue workers, no survivors. He is alone. Everyone he loves, everyone else on the planet as far as he knows, has disappeared.

Frank’s task is to listen to the young man’s story, help him discover the secrets behind the disappearance of everyone he loves, and most importantly, to reconnect the young man with the rest of the human race. But before the young man can do that, he needs to learn the most important lessons about himself, his father, and how to move forward with his life.

Download the PDF from my site

Please help me support digital self-published books by helping me spread this around the internet. The book is freely available from my site, from Scribd, or Feedbooks.

I’m also considering Smash Words – not because I want to make money on this (though I wouldn’t mind), but to reach an audience outside the typical self-publishing sites. That’s something for another day, however. Preparing this for publication is the reason behind my long absence on this blog and it wore me out. I want to get back to business as usual before taking another step like that.

Thanks for reading! I hope you like the book!

Disappearances tells the story of a young man mentally disconnected. Early one morning he’s awoken from a restless sleep by a plane crash outside his apartment window. Rushing down to the scene, the young man is unable to find anyone – no people, no rescue workers, no survivors. He is alone. Everyone he loves, everyone else on the planet as far as he knows, has disappeared.

Frank’s task is to listen to the young man’s story, help him discover the secrets behind the disappearance of everyone he loves, and most importantly, to reconnect the young man with the rest of the human race. But before the young man can do that, he needs to learn the most important lessons about himself, his father, and how to move forward with his life.

In preparation to launch a new title, there is an endless list of preparations after the story is finished – extensive editing and cover design are first among those. I’ve listed people I’d like to thank in the Author’s Note after the novel, but there is one more person I’ve recently added that I’d like to personally thank here: Levi Montgomery.

Levi Montgomery, aside from being a self-published author and blogger, is also a photographer. I originally approached Levi in hopes of finding a fitting cover photo for Disappearances. He told me that he was interested in helping me, but would first have to read the novel before he knew if he had a suitable photograph. Thus, I sent him my novel and held my breath.

Barely a few days later, Levi responded to me. He’d already read my book in that short time, and although he regretted he did not have a fitting photograph for my book, he sent me a list of every single typo and error he found in the novel. In short, Levi provided another edit of my novel for me. He asked for nothing.

I’m completely blown away by the amount of work Levi put into editing my novel and I can’t thank him enough. Once Disappearances is released, if you like the work and want to contribute to those who made it happen, you can support Levi through purchasing his work, which he sells on his site. If you’d like to support me, you can help me spread my book around the net. But please buy a one of his novels from him, too.

So now I’m in the final editing stages of the work, trying to tease out extra awesomeness from Levi’s suggestions. I’ve also created the cover for book, though I’m still tweaking it. Instead of going with a photograph, as I originally intended, I decided to go with this design:

(clicking thumbnails opens larger images – warning: big files!)

I feel like it conveys the sense of the book in a way that a photograph could not.

Please check back soon – Disappearances will be a big release for me, my biggest so far, and I can’t wait to serve it up, all hot, awesome, and willing.

Thank you for reading.