What's next?
Where I chat about what's come before and what's coming ahead. Plus, more free comics to read...
It’s June and I’m done with comic cons and shows until September! Which is weird. It feels like I’ve been go go go since before the release of ThunderBoom and the waters are now finally calming. Not sure how I feel about that. More time for family & friends, activities, and actual writing is a good thing, that’s my takeaway, but still feels odd not to have any imminent events after so long having imminent events!
May…
So I started the month with an event during TCAF, attending the Doug Wright Awards. ThunderBoom was nominated for their Best Kids Comic award, the Egghead, and Saturday night was the night for the ceremony…
Did you watch it? Well, I’ll spoil it for ya - ThunderBoom didn’t win. That honour went to Otis & Peanut, from OwlKids Publishing. Well-deserved, as it’s a great book. All the nominated books were, and I’m glad that ThunderBoom was part of that lofty group.
Later in the month, I went to two smaller comic shows. One at the RA Centre, here in Ottawa - Capital City Comicon, a comics only one day show, with a few local creators (Geof Isherwood, Tom Fowler, Ronn Sutton, Janet Hetherington, and more) amidst the comic mustiness of boxes, bins, bags, and boards. Geof and I talked about sports (Grand Prix racing, hockey & our Habs, basketball, even pickleball!) and creating comics, of course! He’s working on some cool things coming down the line…
And then I followed that up with a two day show in Deep River. First time at the Geekfest and I had a great time. It was awesome catching up with fellow creators J Torres and Dan Collins as well as finally meeting Group Of 7 creators Chris Sanagan and Jason Lapidus.
That brings us to June…and…
I Need a Tarot Reading…
What is next? Good question. My stream of new releases have slowed down. I do have a couple of Markosia releases coming…the second volume of Growing Up Enchanted in colour and I edited another book by Marcello Bondi, this time a cyber espionage thriller called Back-Up. It comes in late July. There are a few Dominion Jack stories AND Dominion Jack universe stories in the pipeline as well, but waiting to see when the completed ones will be scheduled while the others are still in the art stages.
So right now I’m either trying to develop new pitches, either for kids pubs or any other work for hire licensed opportunities, or pushing along developed pitches to new spots. Pitching is fun, putting together proposals and all that good stuff, but scripting is more fun and it feels like I haven’t done enough of that in the last little while. The search for green lights continue…so wish me luck!
Muse’s Motel - Pages 1-4
Muse’s Motel was a book with a green light. Signed a contract and everything. But cutbacks during the pandemic forced a shrinking of the slate of books the publisher was releasing, so we took the book back without it seeing the light of day. This horror fantasy about story creation and collaboration is something Dominic Bercier and I still believe in, and we hope to find a home in order to complete this 112-page tale. For now, I offer you the pages here over this newsletter the next little while to see what’s been done so far. And hopefully it pulls you in like it pulled us in making it…and publishers line up to buy it! :)
That’s it for this month. See, I told you free comics would return. Until next time…