Rounding out a trilogy, fortnightly updates, and lots of links.
A note to begin this week's edition. I'm going to be taking the newsletter so that it's sent out every two weeks rather than weekly. I made this decision for a number of reasons.
Firstly, I noticed that some weeks this newsletter is fairly thin on the ground. With my head in so many editing projects lately, it's hard to layer in updates for projects where I'm not the lead as such. Plus, beyond the process side of things, which I think I've covered pretty well with my chats with Ryan, how much more can I elaborate on a week to week basis?
Secondly, I'm about 2 weeks away from finishing up my practice of putting a one-page short script up at Culture Sludge. That will free up some much needed time to focus more on the newsletter. I'd like to dial back up some of my non-fiction writing (not necessarily comics related) and the newsletter seems as good a place as any to do it.
When writing the Open Contract column I put one out every 2 weeks and it was a nice balance between being able to recharge and gather material for the next entry.
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It's been a quiet week, editing-wise (only two scripts to go through this week) and that's allowed me to spin back up on some of my own writing. Go Home was a book rooted in World War 2, concentrating on how war warps the mindset of men and the nations they fight for. Disconnect (mentiond here previously) is about how war lingers in the mind of those who fought it, following them home in the process. If things go as planned then that should be out there come year's end.
So, the idea once Disconnect was underway was to do a third one shot to kind of tie off the 'war' trilogy. Go Home was the past, Disconnect is the present, and this unnamed third story would be the future. I decided pretty early on that I wanted to explore the inevitability of war, that no matter how far we advance, either looking forwards or backwards in our history, war is always there. Can we ever escape that?
I've been taking notes on it all week and it hasn't quite been panning out. I was trying to bend a concept I'd come up with to tally with what I wanted to say and it just didn't connect. Strangely though, I remembered an older project, one I had researched on and off for about 6 months. With a little tweaking it fit the bill perfectly. So now I have my general structure, my theme and a main character. I'll be fleshing it all out in the weeks to come and hopefully sharing more details as I move forward.
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Finally, some links to see us out.
- Michael Newton at The Guardian on the comeback of folk-horror in Britain.
- A great New Yorker piece/profile on G. Willow Wilson.
- Great interview with Brad Pitt over at GQ. He's pretty candid and introspective in this one.
- Polygon on the 9 panel grid in Watchmen and the latest DC event.
- GQ again. Reid McCarter (who said a nice thing or two about my Kill Screen piece) on the ubiquity of Call of Duty and its influence on the modern shooter.
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Remember, I'll be back in two weeks.
Until then...
Firstly, I noticed that some weeks this newsletter is fairly thin on the ground. With my head in so many editing projects lately, it's hard to layer in updates for projects where I'm not the lead as such. Plus, beyond the process side of things, which I think I've covered pretty well with my chats with Ryan, how much more can I elaborate on a week to week basis?
Secondly, I'm about 2 weeks away from finishing up my practice of putting a one-page short script up at Culture Sludge. That will free up some much needed time to focus more on the newsletter. I'd like to dial back up some of my non-fiction writing (not necessarily comics related) and the newsletter seems as good a place as any to do it.
When writing the Open Contract column I put one out every 2 weeks and it was a nice balance between being able to recharge and gather material for the next entry.
///
It's been a quiet week, editing-wise (only two scripts to go through this week) and that's allowed me to spin back up on some of my own writing. Go Home was a book rooted in World War 2, concentrating on how war warps the mindset of men and the nations they fight for. Disconnect (mentiond here previously) is about how war lingers in the mind of those who fought it, following them home in the process. If things go as planned then that should be out there come year's end.
So, the idea once Disconnect was underway was to do a third one shot to kind of tie off the 'war' trilogy. Go Home was the past, Disconnect is the present, and this unnamed third story would be the future. I decided pretty early on that I wanted to explore the inevitability of war, that no matter how far we advance, either looking forwards or backwards in our history, war is always there. Can we ever escape that?
I've been taking notes on it all week and it hasn't quite been panning out. I was trying to bend a concept I'd come up with to tally with what I wanted to say and it just didn't connect. Strangely though, I remembered an older project, one I had researched on and off for about 6 months. With a little tweaking it fit the bill perfectly. So now I have my general structure, my theme and a main character. I'll be fleshing it all out in the weeks to come and hopefully sharing more details as I move forward.
///
Finally, some links to see us out.
- Michael Newton at The Guardian on the comeback of folk-horror in Britain.
- A great New Yorker piece/profile on G. Willow Wilson.
- Great interview with Brad Pitt over at GQ. He's pretty candid and introspective in this one.
- Polygon on the 9 panel grid in Watchmen and the latest DC event.
- GQ again. Reid McCarter (who said a nice thing or two about my Kill Screen piece) on the ubiquity of Call of Duty and its influence on the modern shooter.
///
Remember, I'll be back in two weeks.
Until then...
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