Hello, Internet, my old friend, I’ve come to …
Um, yeah. Okay. I couldn’t help it.
I’ve got a lot on my plate, but I couldn’t be happier about it. If you are curious enough to find out about what is going on in our lives, here is a post from Benita on her blog that explains it all very well. It’s been an interesting but satisfying time.
Why do I not have a Patreon account? I’ve considered it many times, because I believe my art would gain some traction there. The thing is, however, is that I also spend a lot of time of writing and publishing, so that means extended times without doing art. I go through periods where I post stuff all the time, and then long periods where I’m away from art and working on books. Being a generalist in this way has slowed my career down, but I cannot help it. I could not give up writing or art. I do both. Both crafts go back to my origins.
Lately I’ve become enamored of the old, old mystery man, the Shadow. I’ve read all the comics I can find with him in it, and luckily there are quite a few. I’d love to be able to write and draw some of his adventures, but alas he not in the public domain. Still, it would be a awesome to do so.
A few comments about the Shadow. He more Batman than Batman, but a meaner, more lethal version thereof. The Shadow is not to be confused for a nice guy. Second, his powers are extraordinary. As I’ve read, I’ve seen more and more cool tricks he has, far beyond “clouding the minds of men.” Dynamite is the current publisher for this character, and I recommend checking these comics out. I have collected a good number of the old Shadow novels, but I have not read them yet.
I have a lot of plans for business articles and art how-to articles, and in fact I’ve already written a lot of them. I have not published them here yet, however, because they may be syndicated at a new website called Shoutfyre. Nothing is set in stone yet, and I want to make sure that this new venture is going to happen, so that is why I have not posted more business related stuff here. I will certainly keep you up to date with how this all develops.
I plan for the story-collection Story Studios Presents Changing of the Guard to be published as an E-Book on December. Here are a few notes on its progress:
- It’s complete, and edited, and looking spiffy.
- Scrivener and it’s compile tools have been marvelous for simplifying the unjustifiably hard formatting duties. So, the book is 80% formatted, but I’m taking it over to MS Word for final tweaks.
- Then comes the book launch. I know so little about how to do this correctly. There is a high learning curve, and I’m going to have to negotiate that. I’m not sure even where to start.
- At the same time as I try to climb that curve, I will be formatting the book for print. Some of that work will overlap with the E-Book formatting, so that should not be as difficult (I hope!)
- As usual for Story Studios, I plan to publish the print version through Lightning Source.
Okay, news about this website. Again, I will present it in list form because that’s how I think in real life.
- The target date for turning this site back into a store of my goods is January 1. Now, a month and a half out, that seems unlikely. I guess the takeaway is that I intend for it happen relatively soon. In the meantime, keep purchasing Story Studios stuff at Amazon, Drivethru Comics, Indy Planet, and Comixology.
- Those sellers aren’t going away, because I’m happy with all of them. What I want to sell on this site is more specialized stuff, such as sketch cover variants, original art, posters, etc. and so forth.
- I’m feeling my shoulders tighten up as I consider all the marketing efforts. Baby steps, baby steps. Indie empires aren’t built in a day!
- I should also mention that I had plans to include all the tools that I use as affiliate links on this site. It would have been a nice way to make a little cash. As it turns out, most of those tools have no affiliate system, or systems that are so restrictive to sign up for as to not be worth the effort.
- Then, having abandoned that version of the affiliate idea, I decided that I would promote all those tool through an Amazon advertising server. Maybe this will happen, maybe not.
Is that enough for this post? I think so. Besides, I have work to do on the front of my house, so…