Feel The Pain

Coming from the cuthroat world of film and TV, it’s easy to assume the world of publishing is like nirvana. Books are nice and warm and fuzzy, and comic books are comfort food.  In reality, the world of publishing is like being in the mosh pit of a Nirvana show circa 1992. You’re battered about, kicked in the face and occasionally wind up in the “Circle of Pain” where ‘roided up jocks with agression issues pummel each other and anyone who gets in their way.  To be more succinct; publishing is like any other creative industry; the “industry” comes first, followed several miles down the road by “creative”.  Publishers want to make money. They need to make money to keep publishing.  Every writer will have horror stories about their experiences, yet they soldier on, and use those experiences as cautionary tales.

I have yet to experience this first hand in publishing (film is another story — and it takes a few drinks for me to loosen the tongue and spew bile forth).  But the other day I read something that left me speechless.  It’s a cautionary tale, and a warning to anyone in the creative field; that sleazeballs may come in all shapes and sizes, but all leave the same distinctive slime-trail in their wake.

Poor Kelli Owen … all of the details here.  It’s an incredible story.

The Real Thing

And there it is … on shelves as we speak.

I snapped this photo at Midtown Comics on Friday April 13th.  As I was lining up the shot someone picked a copy from the stack, looked at the cover, flipped through some pages, and added it to their armload of purchases for the week.

The cynic in me says “lucky me, happening upon the stack of Mixtape comics the very moment the one person who bought a copy at that store happened by.”  Of course, I got to that store after a couple delays, so the odds are good someone else bought a copy sometime between April 11 and 13.  Then again, on the 11th, I witnessed Forbidden Planet sell out of their last copy of Mixtape.  They’ve assured me more are on the way, so if you’re looking for a copy, and are NYC based, they’ll fix you up.

Did I mention this was all unexpected?

Diamond, the main comic book distributor told the publisher (who subsequently told me) the date of publication was April 18th.  I actually found out through a post on Twitter, where a fan wrote he was thrilled Mixtape #1 finally arrived.  Brendan, the book’s editor and co-publisher, found this out while ducking into the shop down the street from his offices, and was informed by the owner he had new book out this week and that said book was selling.

Hopefully this raises the bar on solicits for #2.  Second issues typically get a lower number, as the general consensus is that issue #1 is the collector’s item.  I also received the final pages for #3 last week, so we have that on the boards too.

[Regarding subsequent issues, I plan on announcing where we’re at with those soon.  We’ll be doing something cool in tandem with them, and as issues 4,5, and 6 are probably my favorite of the first arc, I’m as anxious as you to get them out the door]

To be frank, it’s a strange feeling, walking into your local comic book store like you have countless times before, and seeing YOUR BOOK on the shelf along with the other new releases.  A book you’ve been thinking and dreaming about for the last three and a half years; a book that, with its publication, finally gives me the right to call myself a comic book creator.  At least I think it does — feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

So if you’ve been following my Mixtape antics, I’d appreciate you supporting the book and spreading the word about it.  Mixtape has always been a comic book for people who don’t normally buy comic books.  As I’ve said before, the characters in Mixtape don’t have super-powers.  They don’t fight zombies or date vampires or have crazy adventures.  The aim was to tell real stories about real people — people you or I could have known (or indeed may have known) in High School, no matter what your age is now, or what era you were a teen in.  So far I’ve received some nice comments about the book on its FB page.  One reader wrote “I felt like I was back in high school and I see my old friends in each character.” 
Another said “It more than lived up to the expectations. Memories have been kickstarted after reading issue one and I am currently playing 7″s on my floor from the 90’s.” 
That was really the goal with Mixtape.  To tell stories that prompt them to do stuff like that — drag out the old 7″s, dust off the boom box and those old cassettes, switch from the morning news on the commute to music. To unlock those memories we all bury, and discover we’ve spent the past twenty years or so running away from our teen years, only to wonder why we ran so fast and so far.

On a sidenote, I am talking with a couple local stores about doing a signing. If anybody has any suggestions please message me here.

Rhymin’ and Stealin’

Thirteen years

That’s how long I’ve been writing professionally.  And by professionally, I mean “writing full-time, and earning my living by writing alone.”  Since January 1999 I’ve earned my keep as a writer without holding down a “day job” at the same time.

Thirteen years is a long time.  In human terms, it’d be mouthing off to me and calling me an asshole while they sneak out to smoke cigarettes and listen to crappy music.

But it’s not a person; it’s a passage of time, and it still boggles my mind that I’ve managed to earn a living at it.

This means one of two things: I’m either incredibly lucky or incredibly stupid.

On the stupid side:

I don’t get to take vacations.  Even when I’m on vacation, work is there.

I have to pay for my own health coverage, dental, retirement fund etc.  Factor that into a year where you barely break even before those costs.

I always take a hit at tax time, unlike those who have taxes deducted from their regular paychecks.  Good year or mediocre year or bad year, out comes the checkbook.

I don’t get regular paychecks.  Annual pay fluctuates wildly, but generally you have a very good year, followed by two to three lousy ones, which evens out the good year and plays havoc on any retirement savings or investments.

On the lucky side:

I haven’t had to be up at a specific time to commute to a job where I’m required to work at an assigned task for an assigned number of hours, since late 1998.  That’s right; most days I’m still in my pajamas three hours after you started work.

I work my own hours, at my own pace, on my own schedule.  If I want to go see a movie, or play video games, or read comic books, I can do that whenever I feel, because it’s all technically part of work anyway.

Flexibility of schedule gives me freedom to actually live my life while I work.  It also affords me opportunities I wouldn’t have otherwise.  Were it not for that flexible schedule there’s no way I ever would have met my wife.

I get to earn a living doing what I’ve wanted to do since I was seven.  Top that.

I am actually working in the profession I studied at University.  Top that too.

So yeah, despite the hassles that come with the job, I love what I do.  I will never do anything else.  I don’t aspire to direct movies like a lot of screenwriters, because the writing part of movie making is, for me, the most enjoyable (and frankly there are far too many mediocre writer-directors out there).  Plus, I hate waking up early and call-times on movie sets are in the 7:00 am range.

But every year around this time (i.e. Tax Season) I always seem to stop and take stock of how far I’ve come.  I remember the first time I got to list “writer” as my occupation on my Tax return – it was both awe-inspiring and frightening.  Awe-inspiring, because I had made it, and at a relatively young age too ( like, within three years of graduating).

Frightening, because I always worried if this was it – that things will collapse or go downhill and I’ll be forced to slink back to an office job after a brief moment in the sun.  Hell, it could still happen, and what’s frightening about that is it’s been so long since I worked an office job I’m pretty much unemployable.

My first year as a pro was, until recently, my best financially. In that year my income tripled from the year previous, I was able to pay off my remaining student loans, register as a business, get a bigger apartment, get an agent and a manager, and be what I’d wanted to be since kindergarten … amazing.

The following year I earned half the amount of the year previous.  The year following was worse.  The year after that was great.  Things picked up and while there were other dips and rises, I figured “hey, it’s just a like a roller coaster so I might as well enjoy the ride”.  It’s still a rollercoaster, but over the years I’ve figured out how to weather the ride.

First; keep moving.  Be like a shark, always on the prowl. Don’t take a moment to rest on your laurels.  A break here and there is okay, but don’t let it run for too long.  I’m talking a week at most.

Second; keep seeking inspiration.  Get away for the weekend or a week, take in some new surroundings and stimulate your creative centers.  I capped off a very busy 2011 with a week in Paris, and found myself rejuvenated on returning home.  You don’t have to go that far — Philly is fine.

Three; avoid self-reflection.  Avoid taking yourself too seriously.  Don’t spend weeks retooling an old project.  Finish it, send it out the door, and move onto something new.  Otherwise you sink into stagnation, and that’s creative death.

Still, that feeling, that it’s all going to end, that the work’s going to dry up, that I’m going to find myself back in the same dead-end job I was in before, never really goes away.  I’ve come to see it as extra motivation to keep pushing hard at work; to keep busy, to keep working on a variety of projects across a range of mediums.

I’ve got a movie coming out later this year, and am going into production on another.  There’s also the matter of a top secret project I’m in the early stages of, with someone I’ve wanted to work with for nearly twenty years.  There’s also MIXTAPE, of course, which is the first genuine passion project I’ve had to see the light of day.

But with each year that goes by, and each time I list writer (and since moving to the US – “Independent Artist”) as my occupation on my taxes, I realize; it is what I do.  It is who I am, and I won’t stop doing it until the pen is pried from my cold dead hand.

The Good, the Bad, and the Apocalypse

February 2012 set a record for numbers of visitors to this website.  I trust it’s because I’ve been updating it with greater frequency than previously, all detailed in my “screw this internet garbage” post.  I know it’s also because of MIXTAPE, which was unfortunately delayed.  On that front I should have details on the new publication dates for stores and iTunes in the next week.  Or not.  Bear with me.

But amidst all the MIXTAPE happenings and goings on, it’s easy to forget that I have a day job, which happens to be writing movies and TV.

Movies like this:

I co-wrote it, it aired on SyFy, and scored huge ratings.  Like, 2.14 million viewers huge.  It got big ratings around the world in face.  Reviews were … well, not that bad, overall.  Hint: If you’re expecting hard science fact from a movie called STONEHENGE APOCALYPSE, I don’t know what else to say than “it must be wonderful there on your world.”

So yeah, I’m a writer, and currently what I’m writing as my day job is movies.  Two of ’em as a matter of fact; one sci-fi, one fantasy (with a third on the boards, depending on which way the wind blows).  That’s my bread and butter, really.  There’s also the matter of the third (a horror) due in theaters sometime this year.

Well, in New Zealand at least.

I am ridiculously fortunate to be able to do what I love to do, and actually make a living off it.  People would chew off their own arms to have the life I have, even the ones who gave negative reviews to Stonehenge Apocalypse and RoboCop: Prime Directives.  I realize this, and accept it with a great deal of humility.

Writers are notorious for their ability to bitch about how their work is received and reviewed.  Sometimes we’re justified, sometimes we’re not, and we’re not always right.

But ovies are a collaborative process.  There’s no way around it. Movies take a lot of time and a lot of money, and involve the efforts of hundreds of people, from the cast and crew down the line to the distributors and marketing people.  One of the things about doing MIXTAPE as a comic series was its streamlined nature.  I write the scripts, the editor gives notes and suggestions, the artist draws them, I approve everything, and that’s it.

It’s been said that nobody ever sets out to make a bad movie.  That bears repeating:

Nobody sets out to make a bad movie.

True story.  Years back I was watching some TV talk show about movies, and it was one of the worst circle jerks I’d ever witnessed.  The general gist of it was “it’s better to be critically acclaimed than financially successful”.  One filmmaker who’d had some degree of both said he’d rather have the critics on hsi side than the audience.  I wish I could tell you what he’d done recently but (big surprise) he’s fallen off the map.

Because how does one define “bad”?  If taste is subjective, why does one person’s voice take precedent over another’s?

Another true story.  Years ago I was listening to some radio call-in show right around Oscar time (you know, the months-long industry circle-jerk that culminates in the awarding of a bronze statue of a naked dude).  People were calling in and naming their favorite films, and among the usual suspects – Star Wars, Gone With The Wind – some dude, without a hint of irony or dishonesty, chose Bloodsport as his all-time favorite movie.

If you’re unfamiliar with Bloodsport, this’ll jog ya:

Yeah, that one.

Thing is, this guy was completely sincere — this was his favourite movie.  And know what?  I make movies for that guy.  I respect that guy more than someone who picks Dr. Strangelove or The 400 Blows as their favorite, regardless of whether it is their favorite film, or just the film they know is the “correct” answer. I don’t know who this dude was.  I don’t know where he lived, or what he did for a living, but I can see him on some rainy weekend cracking open a beer and saying “fuck it, I’m watching Bloodsport”.

Guys like him are in the majority too.  They’re what keeps the movie biz going.  Not the critically acclaimed art-films, but the meat and potatoes that keep the engine running.  I’ll take one of those guys over a hundred self-proclaimed intelligensia any day of the week.

So, for filmmakers aspiring or otherwise, take heart when you consider the odds.  Of the estimated 6,840,507,003 people on this earth (and given that we know at least one of them thinks Bloodsport is the greatest movie ever), then it’s a certainty at least one who thinks Stonehenge Apocalypse is the greatest thing ever committed to celluloid.

And yes, that makes me damn proud.

Teenage Riot

Okay, so it’s MIXTAPE month ‘round these parts, meaning February is the month that Mixtape finally hits finer comic shops everywhere.  We’re also going to have a digital version of the book available through the iTunes store to read on your tablet or other mobile device.  The “digital version” of Mixtape will also include a bonus playlist that you’ll be able to purchase through the iTunes Store.  Both will be available on February 29th.

My preferred version of Mixtape remains the physical book.  It was conceived as a monthly, as something you purchased at your local comic shop (still probably the closest thing you get to a record store these days), and it just feels right that these analog stories are read in an analog format like a comic book.  Most towns have at least one comic book store, so it should be readily available, assuming they ordered copies. Not everyone did, so if your local shop is one of those, let them know you want it, and we’ll get copies out to them.

But, some people don’t have a comic store in their town.  Some people would rather buy and download the book to read right away.  So, we’re aiming for that particular market.  I’ve seen the digital version and it looks amazing on tablets.  You can really appreciate the level of detail in Jok and Gervasio’s art, and you’ll find lots of “easter eggs” scattered throughout.

The playlist was an idea we’d been entertaining for a while.  Originally we wanted to have links embedded in the book that you could click and hear a 30 second clip of the particular song.  This may happen at some point, but for now, the playlist is just a list at the end of the issue.  If you’re reading Mixtape, chances are you have some, if not all of the songs anyway, but they’re a fun addition to the book – and somewhat integral to it.  These are the playlists I listened to when writing, and Jok listened to when illustrating, and is built around the main character featured in that story (in Mixtape #1’s case, Jim).

For non-digital readers the playlist is available on the Mixtape YouTube Channel found here.