Showing posts with label Journey Planet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journey Planet. Show all posts

Thursday, April 22, 2021

How Heavy Is A Hugo Award or What I Have Been Writing Lately?

 Ever so often I remember I have a blog and decide I should write something for it. I usually give out to myself but lately I have been doing a lot of writing elsewhere (that I am immensely proud of) so I thought I'd pop on here and let people know what I have been up to and where you can go see it.

JOURNEY PLANET

Always a delight to contribute to and now nominated for a Hugo Award for 2020 stuff. I am going to slightly brag about being part of it (in an ever so small way). My 2020 contributions are in:

I covered Magical Places in a previous post so I won't retread that. 

My contribution to The Future of Policing was a look at the NuWho alien race called the Judoon. I'm a big fan of the design and they are probably my favourite aliens from the Nu seasons. However, my lasting memory of my contribution to this issue will probably always be asking myself "why didn't I do Robocop??" (FYI - Nobody did Robocop). Reading the issue itself, I noted that multiple people covered my favourite author Philip K. Dick. I'm in the middle of reading "Flow My Tears" so I can excuse myself from not thinking of that but then Kenesha Williams covered "Minority Report" and well... suffice to say a writer's life is full of regret. The issue has an interesting variety of subjects for the science fiction fan.

The Star Wars issue covers everything after the Return of the Jedi and I instantly thought of the Dark Empire Trilogy, which is the comic book version of the new trilogy. Even though it is no longer canon, it is still worth checking out for Cam Kennedy's art alone. My piece may be a gateway drug to more Dark Horse stuff so be forewarned. On alternative topics, I could have covered the Crimson Empire trilogy, another excellent series, but I have no regrets. It is also worth reading. That one could actually be adapted to fit into the new Marvel continuity and the TV/movie universe. It has an interesting angle.

I have already completed one piece for 2021 which I will talk about when I can.

GCN MAGAZINE

In January I decided to reach out to GCN to see if they wanted an article on Irish queer comic creators. They liked my piece and I have worked on a variety of topics since then. I find it a more freeing than ICN which is more hampered by the Irish restriction (which is not a bad thing) and it has led my to take more notice of queer creators and media. This has been helpful as I try to figure out what I want to do with my own creative writing (more on that in a bit). 


My pieces so far:
I have another piece already in the queue and am constantly come up with more ideas (mostly to do with entertainment) and GCN seem to be happy to go with what 

COMICS

I am working on a story for an anthology that was funded through Kickstarter. The script is done and now we are at the art stage. I'm having great discussions with artist Brian Burke (who I worked with on my first comic book outing years ago). I am also working on my own longer length comic. It has always been my plan to work on a science fiction book but several influences have lead me to decide to make it a more personal work. It is in the research stage as I look at what other queer creators have had to say to see if I can come up with something a bit different.

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Monday, September 21, 2020

Journey Planet 51 And Reflections On Writing


Journey Planet 51 was released in August and features my latest contribution to the magazine. However, I only noticed it was out in the last few days (Facebook never seems to show you the posts you need to see). Anyway, I thought I'd write about it and my writing, or lack thereof, in general. Working with Journey Planet came about through my friendship with James Bacon and the fact that he seems to enjoy my writing on Irish Comic News (I certainly enjoy his). With that in mind, the first subject was a great fit for me: an issue about Judge Dredd. James asked for a review of Michael Carroll's Judge Dredd story The Third Person. (Check out Journey Planet 39 to read that one. I'm pretty happy with it). Cut to a while later and James sent me on the topics for some upcoming issues. I reply with a few ideas, they were given the green light and I went about writing the first one. This ended up being If My Calculations Are Correct, The Fairy Tree Did It for their Magical Places issue (the aforementioned issue 51). It didn't take me more than a day or two and a few drafts to get it done. In completing that and working on some others, it made me realise some things about me as a writer: 1) I need a deadline and 2) I need limitations set down, be it subject or length or whatever. (Note: this causes a lot of downtime for Irish Comic News where I talk about what I want and have few deadlines)

Jump back to a few years to when the Comics Lab were doing regular meetings in the Liquor Rooms. For those unfamiliar with these meetings, they involved talks from creators, some creative games involving everyone in the audience (most if not all of the audience were creative types) and a chance to chat with new people. On one of these evenings, they announced that there would be a Comics Lab Anthology called Specimen. Each story would have some connection to that title and would be three pages long. With those limitations, my brain kicked into gear and I instantly came up with an idea. Over the years at conventions, and even more so at the Comics Lab, I had gotten to know writer / artist Brian Burke so I decided to ask him to draw my story. I dropped him a mail and, since he hadn't come up with an idea yet, we started working on my idea. Working with an artist meant, in my mind, creating harsh deadlines for myself. We went back and forth and pretty soon got it all worked out. It was so strange. Even though he had far more experience, he took all my ideas on board, while at the same time adding to them. We ended up not really even having a script. It was all in e-mails. So my first story was done and published... kinda. Our story appeared but my name did not. So if you have a copy of Specimen, mine is the one with Brian's name on it. The point of this story being that if I'm given constraints like the subject, story length or having to get ideas to the artist, my brain works better. This held water a couple of years later when I did a comic course. The result is I now have another story written that may see light if the right anthology shows up and I find the right artist. I'm pretty confident it is good as I got Hugo Boylan to have a look and he helped me polish it up. If you are looking for an editor, hire Hugo!

Back to the now. So, as I have said, Journey Planet 51 was about Magical Places. When I read the subject, I instantly thought of fairy trees. Growing up in Ireland, you would read the odd story about roads being diverted to accommodate them. Silly stuff? I'm not a superstitious guy but, on this particular thing, I would air on the side of caution. Maybe it's genetic or just deeply routed in the national (and my) psyche. Anyway, the story in the piece is true: I heard that DeLorean was brought down by a fairy tree and the story came from a tour bus driver. Upon reflection, I may have heard before but I can't be sure and I think the tour bus aspect is fun. Being a science fiction fan, I had to write about this story. So I did a bit of research on the DeLorean company and tried to find more online about the tree, and there was more. I'm actually a little proud of that story. It's fun and it fits in with the rest of the magazine. They picked some lovely photos for the issue and there's a nice picture of a faery tree for mine. I better go work on some more and maybe e-mail an artist on a story idea I have.

http://journeyplanet.weebly.com/journey-planet/journey-planet-51-magical-places

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