Friday, June 29, 2018

Update

So things are still moving along for me.  I have 6 completed pages of Wolf's Howl(lettering and all).  I just approved pages 7-9 for completion so I hope to have them finished sometime next week.  I had a nice conversation with a good friend about setting up a kickstarter and marketing plan for Wolf's Howl a few days ago.  So I am starting to plan that out and hopefully will start posting stuff soon.

Meanwhile I am also working on another comic book series with another artist.  The series is called Heart of Aurora.  The artist is about half-way through the sketches for the first issue so I might have two comic books out by the end of the year.  This artist is a friend of mine so we are having a lot of fun co-creating this series and I am excited about.

There are a couple other writing opportunities that are in the works as well but they are still very much in the infancy stages so I won't post anything about them just quite yet.  I will wait a little longer to see if things take flight or not but either way I am very encouraged by them and hopeful.

Also if you haven't already please check out my novella on Amazon entitled Brandon's Fairy Tale.  And if you did read please feel free to write of review of it on Amazon.  I would love to hear people's thoughts on it.  Currently Brandon's Fairy Tale is only available digitally but that might be changing soon ;). Keep you posted.

Anyone else had a productive month of June?  Feel free to comment with what has been going on with you.  Would love to hear what others are up to.

Friday, June 22, 2018

Tales of the Jedi: Redemption

So one day I was flipping through a bin of graphic novels at a local comic book store and came across an old graphic novel called Star Wars Tales of the Jedi: Redemption.  It was published by Dark Horse Comics about twenty years ago.  The story was written by Kevin J. Anderson.  Pencils were done by Chris Gossett(who by the way came up with the design for a double bladed lightsaber made famous by Darth Maul in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace).  Chris Gossett and Andrew Pepoy did the inks.  Colors and lettering were done by Dave Nestelle and Willie Schubert respectively.  I am a Star Wars fan but I tend to enjoy it more for the Skywalker Saga than anything.  Darth Vadar/Anakin Skywalker being one of my all time favorite fictional characters(as I have mentioned before).  So I generally don't read or watch Star Wars stories without a Skywalker in them.  But I have always loved tales of redemption so I decided to give this book a try.  And am I glad I did.

This story is pretty straightforward.  Before the time of Yoda, Palpatine and the Skywalker clan there was a great war between Sith and Jedi called the Sith War.  The war had devastated the galaxy but eventually the Sith were defeated.  The leader of the Sith was betrayed by his chief lieutenant who himself was a fallen Jedi.  This man's name is Ulic.  Now ten years after the Sith War Ulic has been stripped of his connection to the Force and can no longer wield it(some think his punishment should have been even more severe).  Ulic now wanders the galaxy in exile looking for a remote planet to live out the rest of his days in seclusion.  Ulic is a tortured soul regretting the choices he has made and the gruesome deeds he has done.  He wishes for the release of death.

Meanwhile a young woman named, Vima Sunrider dreams of becoming a Jedi.  But can't find a Jedi to train her.  Through a series of coincidences she learns of Ulic's location and seeks him out begging him to teach her the ways of the Force.  The story then centers on whether Ulic can find redemption with this young girl.

This sounds like stuff we have all seen before but the story takes an interesting approach.  Ulic being cut off from the Force adds an interesting element.  I found the morals and themes of the story very powerful and thought provoking.  I highly recommend this book.  In fact I wish Disney would make Star War spin off movies like this.  The way Ulic is handled shows the grey areas that we can wander into in life which gives a sort of real-world purpose to a space adventure.  Can people who are not Jedi force users still connect to the force?  How do you move on from guilt and regret?  What does forgiveness mean?  These are all questions that are addressed in this story and I feel handled very well.  So if you're a Star Wars fan and especially a fan of Jedi lore then definitely seek out this book.  Also if you are one meditating on past regrets and/or forgiveness this story might speak to you as it did me.  It is fairly accessible even if you are not a Star Wars fan.

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Things are finally moving

So last week I published my novella Brandon's Fairy Tale on Amazon.  Click here if you want to read it.  I want to give my deepest thanks and appreciation to all those who have purchased it and shared it and supported my writing.  Your congratulations and encouragement touched me deeply.  It means more to me than I can express.

This past week I approved the first 5 pages of my new comic book series called Wolf's Howl.  Wolf's Howl is very special to me and I am looking forward to sharing it with you.  I started writing it back around late 2011 and early 2012 but stopped mid-way.  I had lost my zest for writing back then and turned my back on what always had come naturally to me as a passion.  Fast forward to mid 2016.  While I was cleaning out the apartment due to a move I stumbled upon the notebook I had started writing Wolf's Howl in.  I flipped through the pages of my writing and thought the story was good and deserved to be finished.  So I set about not caring what medium or fate the story would have I just wrote what the characters were telling me had happened to them.  I finished that first notebook and nearly finished a second.  It felt good to write again and I started having all these fresh ideas that I wanted to get out there.  So I kept filling notebooks and soon I was going to writing groups.  People started suggesting I try writing a comic book so I came up with an idea for a series and hired an artist.  That artist didn't work out and in March of this year I shelved the idea not knowing what to do.  I started working on this other story about a fairy I had come up with and decided to try and turn it into a novella while I figured out the fate of my comic book career.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that if nothing else I wanted to get that original story called Wolf's Howl out there for better or for worse.  I needed to honor that story for helping me get back into writing.  So I found a new artist and broke that story up into issues and am now working on completing the first issue and can't wait to share it with everyone.  And in the meantime I published that fairy story on Amazon.  So hopefully by the end of this year I will have a novella and comic book out that I can be proud of.  Stay tuned.

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Just released a novella

So I know about a year ago I was writing about making my own comic book and how excited I was and how it was going to be taking up so much of my time.  Well I hit a lot of bumps on that journey over the last year.  It's in the past and hopefully all for the best so I won't dwell on what happened instead I wish to look to the future.

Out of the ashes two new stories have arisen that I feel very passionate about.

Just today I published a novella I wrote entitled Brandon's Fairy Tale.  It is available on KDP on Amazon.  I am very excited about it.  It's short but I hope everyone who reads it enjoys it.  It was a little nerve wracking publishing it because its the first time I made one of my writings public(aside from on this blog of course). It was funny I had recently seen this video with Will Smith talking about his skydiving experience.  He stated that he was terrified up until he actually jumped out of the plane and at that moment all the fear left him.  I haven't gone skydiving yet but publishing my novella kind of felt like how Will Smith described skydiving.  I was afraid and worried but then as soon as I pushed that published button on my computer it was just bliss.  The worries were gone.  I am grateful for the mishaps that happened last year to my comic book because they gave me the opportunity to write my novella and publish it on Amazon KDP.  It was a great experience for me as a writer and a person on this journey of life.

And I now have a brand new comic book that I am hoping to release at the end of this year.  I will start posting its progress on this blog regularly.  I am very excited about it.  It's called Wolf's Howl and I think people are going to like it.  It was actually the story that reinvigorated my passion for storytelling and got me back into writing.  It is very personal to me and I hope I can share it all with you.

In the meantime feel free to check out my novella on Amazon and please let me know your thoughts and what you think of it.  Thank you for sharing my writing journey with me :)