Sunday, September 22, 2024
Your plastic pal who's fun to be with
Sunday, September 1, 2024
Refugee from the Round File
I put up a post recently on the Swords & Sixguns Facebook page that contained a quote from actor/composer Paul Williams, wherein he said, "Be careful about throwing something in the round file as garbage" because what you view as a failure might lead to something spectacular down the line. I admitted in my repost that I had thrown out tons of stuff over the years, though I try to do so less often these days. I have a box in my office labeled as an "archive" that contains various drafts of the book, along with flyers and convention lanyards and such. I also keep on my desk the original black looseleaf binder that held all of my work from the moment I first sat down to write my novel exactly 30 years ago today. It still holds drawings and notes and other little things going all the way back to those early days. I could put it in the box, but it sat on my desk for so long, it doesn't seem right to tuck it away.
This sentimentality is a huge change from how I treated my work 30+ years ago. I have no idea how many pieces of paper I ripped up and tossed way back then, but it was a lot. Not just writing, mind you, but art pieces as well. I would get into "I suck so bad" moods and just chuck things that I hated at that moment. This is why I tell people that the 400-page first draft that I wrote longhand was my "final" first draft: all the drafts before it were never finished, they'd just get destroyed or cannibalized for the next iteration that would also get destroyed and cannibalized for the iteration after that, and so on and so on. If my husband hadn't challenged me to "Just keep writing" and crank out 100 pages before the year 2000, I'd likely still be in that same destructive cycle here in 2024.
But there are bits of those earliest drafts that remain intact in the black binder I mentioned. Things that never made it into the published version, yet can't be inserted into a hypothetical "expanded edition" because there's no place to plug them in. So, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of me taking a week off of my paying job to start writing this crazy idea I had in my head, here's eight pages written by early-20s me, with commentary by 50-year-old me interspersed.
Our last page, and our last repurposed scene. You'll recognize the gist of it from the end of Chapter 9, but the impetus and attitude is totally different. In the earliest draft here, Richard just gives up his guns to put J'nath at ease...and looking back at it, this doesn't really fit with who he is at this point in the story. It's the first sign that he can change his outlaw ways, but it's not earned yet, it just happens. In the published version, this happens after he's screwed up multiple times and been tossed in jail by Lermekt H'landa for a while, leading up to him realizing that he's going to ruin this new life as badly as the old one if he doesn't get his shit together. Now the change is earned, now voluntarily giving up his guns means something, and I'm much happier with how it plays out.
I don't recall exactly what I'd written after these pages, but knowing how awful I usually felt about my work just days or weeks after writing it, I likely didn't get much further before the tearing of pages began. There are other bits of scenes I still have tucked away in that binder, so if you like what you read here, let me know and maybe I'll do another stroll down memory lane around this time next year.
Monday, March 25, 2024
I hate [most] Westerns, Part 2 (guest post)
*NOTE: All the posts this month will be written my by husband, Jamin Hillwig, as I do my darnedest to make headway on the published version of my Hex history project. Enjoy!
Monday, March 18, 2024
I hate [most] Westerns, Part 1 (guest post)
Monday, March 11, 2024
What's it like having your name in a book? (guest post)
Monday, March 4, 2024
The #1 Fan's Opinion (guest post)
*NOTE: All the posts this month will be written my by husband, Jamin Hillwig, as I do my darnedest to make headway on the published version of my Hex history project. Enjoy!
Sunday, February 11, 2024
The decision is made!
Since making the decision, I've made some progress in multiple areas:
- I've figured out how to scale up the images I need to 300 dpi with minimal fuss. There's still a ton of work to be done there, but at least I've narrowed it down to a few mouse clicks as opposed to the clunky method I thought I'd be stuck with.
- The Introduction is done, plus I've added three new pages so far to Chapter 1, giving readers a "lay of the land" as to what the comics landscape and Westerns in general looked like at the time of Jonah's creation. Like I said in my previous post, those first couple chapters are a kinda bare-bones compared to the later ones. I'm aiming for at least 10 pages per chapter, not counting images.
- While I don't know how long the final book will be, I can tell you it won't exceed 500 pages, because that's the maximum amount I can do through my printer. Each chapter will have at least two images in it, to be certain, but whether I include more than that -- along with how much extra stuff I can pack at the end beyond the already-written Appendix A and B -- will depend on how much of the page count is taken up by the main text.
- For those curious about dimensions, I'm currently formatting the book at 7x10 inches, since this is as close to "comic size" as my printer offers. The idea is that, when complete, you can comfortably slip it onto your bookshelf next to your Hex trades and have it blend in fairly well (it might also fit into a comic box with minimal fuss, depending on the type you use). Both the paperback and hardcover editions will be roughly the same size...and yes, there will be a Kindle version!
- The Afterword is already complete, and it's not written by me! I asked actor Johnathon Schaech -- who initially spurred me into turning this blog series into a book -- to write some thoughts about playing ol' Jonah, and boy oh boy, did he deliver! He's also sent me various photos over the years, some of which will end up in the book. Plus Seth Albano -- grandson of Hex creator John Albano -- has agreed to write the Foreword, and I'm hoping he'll supply some photos as well.
That's about all I have to report at the moment. Between working on the book and the fast-approaching con season, I likely won't have much time for blogging over the next few months, so in my absence, my husband has volunteered to write a few guest posts in March. We're referring to it as "Assistant Editors' Month", so expect a bit of shenanigans. See you then!