Fan Fatale

My friend Sherin has created a site to discuss (and, let's be honest, promote) her work. It's here, but the URL is www.fan-fatale.com. Give it a look; her stuff is real good and those of you who like urban fantasy will get a kick out of it.

No Pitch Like a Rejected Pitch

Y'know a few posts back how I had been working on a pitch with an artist?
We got rejected.
Bummer, man.
But it's a fact of life: most pitches are rejected.
So what now?
We're picking ourselves up and moving forward. I have a ton of ideas and my artist friend seems to like what I've got, so we'll keep at it. With luck, I'll actually get back into doing comics on a freelance basis.
Which would be way cool, as supplemental income would be real handy right about now...

Comic Book Memories: FIRE FROM HEAVEN

The other day at Ye Olde Local Comics Shop (aka the LCS), someone asked me about FIRE FROM HEAVEN, the WildStorm mega-crossover event of 1996. Their fundamental point was: "I have no idea what happened in that story."

Well, I was there...

We had an offsite editorial meeting in early 1996, led by Jonathan Peterson. JP was our editor-in-chief about then and had it in mind to do a really big story to tie up some loose ends. Such as:

• whatever happened to the Kherubim and Daemonite spaceships that brought these two races (and their millennia-long war) to Earth?
• what was the source of the Gen-Factor, the biochemical that turned Team 7 (and their kids) Gen-Active?
• who were the parents of the Gen13 kids?

And we had a few other things we wanted to "reveal" or accomplish as well...

• Spartan's origin
• Backlash's origin
• a traitor in the StormWatch ranks (which was a story I got to write, btw, with one of the bloodiest on-panel deaths the company had had to date)
• who's stronger: Dane or Battalion? (another story I got to write)
• killing off Cyberjack from BACKLASH and Miles Craven from WETWORKS
• who is Kaizen Gamorra really? And what connection did he have to Spartan (as alluded to by Emp in an early issue of WildCATS)?
• launching DV8, Warren Ellis' "dark Gen13"
• and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. If you care to know the answers to the above, you can follow the first link to the Wikipedia entry and find out all the dirt.

Anyway, we covered two or three white boards in a hotel conference room with character names, notes and arrows linking them together. It seemed exciting at the time, this feeling of "okay, that guy is REALLY this other guy and he's doing this because..." and so on.

Needless to say, it was a struggle from the beginning. We were supposed to release the books on a set schedule, but WildStorm had never been a particularly punctual outfit--so delays meant that a) momentum and b) coherence were sacrificed as chapters were told out of order. Don't get me wrong, it had the elements and did have a lasting impact on WildStorm's titles--there were concepts introduced and back story laid out--but it did suffer from shipping and scheduling problems. For example, we didn't even tell the end of the story in the second bookend; it was in Deathblow #28.

As I said above, I got to write the StormWatch issue wherein Flashpoint is revealed as a traitor. Why Flashpoint? He was a jerk, he had a history of clashing with Battalion, and nobody in our office had any trouble imagining he was secretly working with Kaizen Gamorra. We hadn't laid any real groundwork for it--heck, he blows a hand off the four-armed Brutus in the same issue wherein he's outed, which is kind of weird if he's working for Brutus's sponsor (Gamorra)--but we liked the idea of having an "enemy within" as StormWatch gets into the fray. There are a lot of things I would have done differently in retrospect but that final Battalion/Flashpoint fight was a good one and helped establish Battalion as a ruthless enemy.

Apart from that, and the Battalion-Dane throwdown in #36 (which was fun, since I was editing StormWatch and WetWorks both, so I knew the characters pretty well AND got to use the joke "Your name is Jackson? Mine too!" for the first time [Steven Grant used it later, when he was writing WetWorks]), those two issues of StormWatch weren't all that good.

If I had it to do over again, I would have framed my two issues as a history lesson taught to a group of posthuman kids by the last surviving member of that era's StormWatch. We see the highlights of what goes on, the back-and-forth in flashback, a couple more heroic deaths (we could've sacrificed a couple more characters at that point)... and end with the reveal that Fuji was the one teaching the lesson and he's the only one left of that group, some 200+ years later. But that's what I would have done, or maybe should have done, not what I did. Oh well.

We did do a real nice job on the FFH trade paperback-- it was pretty much the last thing at WildStorm I ever touched, and my name was removed from the credits (kind of a vindictive little stroke from Mike Heisler, I'm guessing, the two-bit rat bastard), but I did get the book through production and up to print before I got canned. If you ever have an interest in reading the story in one shot, give the collection a glance.

Blogging the London Trip- Day 1

It's really nice having an entire day to get ready for a trip before you leave. Our flight out of Dulles was at 10:20pm Saturday, which meant we would get a ride from Super Shuttle at about 6pm. Kat thought that was crazy-early but I said that between security and everything else, it might not mean hours of waiting.

It did, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, we got on the plane before 10pm, a British Airways flight, to find that the air conditioning was out of commission. The temp inside was climbing steadily as more passengers embarked, which meant the Cadbury chocolate bar I bought got melty real fast. Kat and I did our best to ignore the heat but... you can only ignore so much.

We got airborne by 11pm and the air conditioning kicked in once the big engines were going. That was a relief. We found, however, that our overhead lights weren't working at all; this meant the pilot had to reboot the entire system, which meant the TVs were down for awhile. Argh.

Landing in Heathrow, we got through the gate, cashed some US money for UK currency, and then waited for our tour group's bus to show up. Turns out we missed one (must not have heard them calling our names) and caught the next one, putting us into London around 1pm Sunday. We saw a huge mob of soccer fans in the street at one point, shouting in support of Manchester United (who beat Chelsea in a very close match in Moscow last week). We were a bit taken aback by the intensity of their demonstration.

Arriving at our hotel--the Riverbank Park Plaza--we settled into our room, then changed rooms (we were close to the train track behind the hotel). Our hotel was right on the Embankment, with a terrific view of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, with reasonably convenient access to the Vauxhall Tube station. (I'll add pictures and links to this post tonight, so you can see what I mean.)

Our only schedule item that evening was seeing our friend Mike Carey at a pub near Tottenham Court Road. We headed out a bit late (after 5pm for a 6pm meet), found that Vauxhall Station was closed for maintenance, scrambled to figure out how to get to Tottenham Court Road, got there about 6:10, and then asked nearly every third person on the street how to find a pub named The Angel.

Nobody knew. Go figure.

Eventually we found a police officer and he produced a pocket map, which showed us we were about four blocks from our target. Kat insisted we buy that very map immediately, then we made it to The Angel... at 6:45. Mike was getting ready to go (or so it seemed to me), but we settled back in, got a round of pints (half-pint for Kat), and talked.

Don't know about you, but I like talking and it seems Mike does too. We covered X-Men (especially Charles Xavier [currently the feature character in Mike's X-Men: Legacy series]and Scott Summers), Felix Castor, writing in other media, travel plans, restaurants and sights of interest, and a dozen other topics--including a very cool writing project Mike is on right now. I won't say more about it because it's his news to reveal, when the time is right, but Kat and I wish him the very best. He's a great guy, a good friend, and we hope to see him again soon.

Mike had to get home, so Kat and I wandered to Rules, a restaurant Mike had recommended. (It happens to be the oldest restaurant in London; it definitely has that feel of genteel antiquity and the service was matchless.) We had a fantastic meal-- Kat said it was the single best meal she had in London-- and made our way home around 11 or so. It had been an exhausting day but well worth every minute.

And on Monday... our first tour. Stay tuned!

Reviving BPD

Hey folks,

A lot of you know that I am a co-founder and frequent contributor to Bugles Planet Daily, a humorous blog aimed at comic books and fandom generally. The site had languished through Fall 2007 and into the new year, partly because our core group of contributors weren't, um, contributing and partly because those of us running the show had other commitments (including our own writing).


Well, I've gotten back in harness on BPD, so if you haven't read it lately, check it out. I have up new posts on the Skrulls' take on Secret Invasion, a note on the passing of Dave Stevens (the creator of The Rocketeer), and a bit about Booster Gold and Blue Beetle reuniting with an old friend. There's more in the works--including a big group interview on the TV show AMERICAN HERO and an interview with blogging superstar/ace Jonathan Hive.


Give it a glance and let us know what you think. Our ears are always open.

Updates!

Hey everyone!
Seems like I've been offline awhile but I've been plenty busy... and there are posts to come explaning all of it, believe me.
First, a short update: I'm fine. The kidney stone issue appears to have been resolved (for now), though I'd like my doctor to confirm that. I'm drinking more water and trying to cut down on caffeine and dairy, both of which are not good for that particular affliction.
Second, had a fantastic time seeing my aunt and uncle out in Colorado last Thursday. We don't get to visit nearly often enough, and I even learned a good deal about my dad's early years-- stuff I'd never heard before. Gonna have to post about that.
Third, the kittens have gotten BIG! Kat and I need to post new pictures. Chrissy is still skinny, Janet is still a tank, but they're full-sized now and I probably shouldn't call them kittens any more.
Last, still working on my novel. Sherin and I are committed to a six-month program to get our first novels done, which is eminently doable. We just need to stick to it.
Hope all's great! So comment and let me hear how you're doing!

Writing!

I'm taking a few things with me this weekend-- notably a bit of writing from two projects I have bubbling along.

The first is a section from a book (first of more-than-one) called The Black Key: The Last Eldritch. I might post a little here once in awhile but would like to wait until I'm further along to do more than announce the title. It's an epic fantasy.

The second is less developed but a lot of fun so far. (Kat noted I've used a LOT of profanity in this one, so anyone with delicate reading sensibilities might not want to give this one a try.) The working title is Mirabilis and begins with the narrating character dying in an alleyway from a rather savage neck wound.

Anyway, might be fun to show some writing around and see if anyone is interested in taking a look. They're meant to go to my friend Susan, who's an agent in NYC and agreed long ago to send out anything novel-length that I complete. However, if there's any writerish gatherings at WFC, I might trot these out and see if anyone likes 'em.

Upcoming Projects

Hey everybody!
There's always a lot going on-- Bugle's Planet Daily, f'r instance-- but I'm also revving myself up to do a big project. Most of you know I've been a writer (and got paid for it!) since 1986... but I've never gotten very far writing a novel.
Well, I'm working on it now.
My deadline is World Fantasy (November), and I'll be turning in a finished novel of 60k words by then.
The protagonist's name is Dexter Knight and he's a 12-year old who's just starting to realize how different he is. He's got some big challenges ahead, not to mention solving some family problems with very major implications for his hometown.
Gonna be working on it as much as I can, but I know I'm a pretty fast writer-- with luck, I can hammer out two drafts before the deadline.
If I post only once or twice a week, you'll know why. In the meantime, I'll post bits and pieces from the book as I get them done. Read 'em and let me know what you think!
I'm also hoping to wrap up a short story I started a couple months ago, which has grown into a sprawling story that's way bigger than I expected. It's "The Gray Cloud of Somber" and I'll post that here once it's finished.
Take care and be well!
Drew