Hey everyone! First off thanks for all of the great discussion about my last article about giving up webcomics. I hope everyone knows that what I was not saying is that webcomics are not something people should do, but the heart of it is to stay focused on making a great product and story. Let the way you share your story with the world be something you do later, when you are either done or quite far along in creating your book. For me it was finishing all of volume 1 of this series and now I will begin the process of sharing it. If a publisher does not pick it up, I will move to self publishing and hope the series gets picked up with book 2 and 3.
As most of you know my first goal is to find a traditional publishing home for my book. I have been actively pursuing that now for about a month and some of the results are still coming in. Some are disappointing, some are disappointing but really encouraging, some there’s a possibility things could happen still, the rest is just silence. It’s such a roller coaster of emotions. I wish I knew how to handle it better, but my emotions often get the better of me and a rejection can really sting. I always remind myself though that that means I care and if I care then I should keep going no matter what. No giving up!
Nonetheless I feel really confident in the book that I made. I know I gave it my best! Then I will have to give the next book my best as well! And we’ll keep going, getting better at the craft along the way.
So I have been spending some time trying to determine what I would spend the next year or so on working on while all of this sorts out (trying to get a book picked up takes MONTHS! Best to have something to keep yourself busy on). I wanted to pick up Adamsville and start up on book 2 but with so many variable out there it didn’t seem very wise yet to really throw myself into the production on it just yet. I had one script idea that was really starting to come together, when my oldest daughter rediscovered this little guy:
For those who don’t know, KEVIN AND THE LIGHT OF DESTINY is a webcomic I began maybe 2 or 3 years ago. I got about 45 pages in and decided it best to set it aside while I focused on some other things going on and decided to make ADAMSVILLE first. Well as I am waiting for direction on said book, KEVIN seemed like a great place to pick up. The ground work is laid in pretty well for the book and I am working on getting the rest of the script ironed out. The goal with it is to finish it by the end of the year. Which will roughly equal 80-100 pages of work left to do.
The original script for the book was very bloated, even though I enjoyed it very much when I reread it. I want, however to make this a more compact story and, so there is a lot of work to try and find the important elements of the book and bring them together without it feeling contrived or rushed. Wish me luck on this.
If you haven’t been introduced to Kevin, go check out the webcomic site and view the original webcomic pages. They’ll pretty much stay as they are, but I plan to re-ink them to get the look consistent.
Adamsville hasn’t been forgotten. I have a treatment for book 2 that I am very happy with, but again, just wanting some clarity on what will happen with the book before I decide to plunge my way in head first.
Awesome! How exciting!