It's gonna be a busy summer...

No, I'm not teaching Remedial English to Chainsaw and Dave, but I am facing a "Summer School" type situation, in the sense that I wasn't planning on spending the next few months doing this, and it's gonna be a heck of a learning experience.  Plus it'll most likely delay the next couple of installments of my Jonah Hex history project (as you probably surmised, being the first of the month and you're watching Mark Harmon search for his car keys instead of getting your Hex-fix).  What's going on that could derail me for so long, you ask?  Easy: I'm finally going to be publishing my novel.

Okay, I'll start from the beginning.  Over the past few years, I've sent my manuscript out to about 20 agents and publishers, and aside from a nibble here and there, no one's taken a chance on me -- I actually spent most of last year in a funk regarding this.  Then this past April, my husband and I went to Motor City Nightmares, a local horror con, and one of the guests there was Michael Aloisi, who not only co-wrote Kane Hodder's autobiography, but also has his own publishing company.  Being of the opinion that, if Jason Voorhees likes working with the guy, maybe I should approach him with my own work, I talked with him for a few minutes (during which I got ridiculously tongue-tied!) and he told me to submit through the site.  We're still talking back-and-forth via email, so there's nothing concrete there yet, but at least I got my foot in the door.  Then later on at the same show, I got to talking with a local self-published author, and he laid a piece of info on me that made my jaw drop open: going the DIY route is nowhere near as expensive as I thought.

Around the same time I began sending my manuscript out, Amazon launched CreateSpace, which offers an ala carte service for writers, meaning you only pay for the help you need (most other publishing services require you to buy packages, whether you need everything included or not).  When you go through CreateSpace, you get automatic listing on Amazon, plus they can do Kindle, and they only print the books when they're ordered, so no overhead.  There's still some fees, of course, especially since I'd want the book to have an ISBN that I own in case (God forbid!) a large-scale publisher eventually becomes interested, but overall, this looks like a pretty feasible route if Aloisi decides to pass on my work.  I hope he doesn't pass on it, because if I have to go with self-publishing, I'd be handling all the promotion myself, which is a lot harder these days with the way bookstores keep going out of business.  Amazon listings only do so much, y'know.

So that's what my summer's shaping up to be.  If I finally get a publishing deal, then the Jonah Hex project shouldn't be affected too badly, as other folks will be taking care of many of the nuts-and-bolts details that go into publishing a book.  If I go with self-publishing, however, I'll be busier than Mr. Shoop with a roomful of rowdy underachievers, because nearly every decision will be in my hands, and taking time out to make posts about ugly bounty hunters will be the furthest thing from my mind.

Stay tuned for updates, kids.  As soon as I know something, I'll let you know.  In the meantime, practice your obscene gestures so you don't disturb the bloggers next door.

Young Nerds in Love

This is a shade late for Valentine's Day, but that's only because my husband and I spent the day going about town and doing the sorts of things we love to do, topped off with a nice dinner.  And before you start leaving comments about how I'm going back on my word and writing a post about personal stuff instead of pop culture nonsense, you're wrong.  This is sort of a continuation of my "secret origin", so if you want more dirt on me, keep reading.

Back in 1992, I was a senior in high school, and frankly, I was miserable.  Back then, if you were a girl who was into comics and sci-fi/horror and cartoons and toys and had little-to-no interest in what was considered "normal" girly things, you were a freak of nature, just asking to be mocked.  Wearing glasses, carrying a few extra pounds, and having a preference for shorter hair didn't help much either.  I won't go into details as to what they did -- it was mostly verbal and emotional abuse, with the occasional physical fight tossed in to break up the monotony, along with one incident that bordered on indecent exposure -- but I will say that I put up with various levels of it for nearly a decade in four different school systems.  Anyhow, I would go to school every day and endure whatever torture du jour my peers thought up, then go back home and hide in my room and bury myself in the same fantasies that got me ostracized in the first place (I never skipped class: despite how much my sanity was crumbling, I had no desire to be held back and make this Hell last any longer than it had to).  I had two good friends in high school, both of whom were a bit odd like me, but they managed it better, and if not for them, my life would have turned out much differently.  For one thing, I would have never met my husband.

It was an afternoon in early March, right after school let out for the day.  My friend Jennifer had to pick up something she'd left back in the Drafting classroom, so I accompanied her.  After we got there, she started talking with a guy she knew about whatever project the Drafting students were working on, and while I waited for them to wrap it up, I heard the guy's brother -- who was also playing tag-along that day -- make a Star Wars joke.  Don't ask me what it was, I no longer remember, but I got the reference and I laughed.  This caught his attention, we talked ever so briefly, and then Jennifer and I left.  That was it.  No big hullabaloo, no fireworks, no crossing a crowded room and staring soulfully into each other's eyes.  But I did apparently make an impression on this guy, because he started following me around school...which made me nervous, because the only people who normally paid attention to me were the ones who seemed intent on driving me insane.  He learned my class schedule and would show up outside the door seconds after the bell rang (seeing as how he was two grades behind me and we shared no classes together, this was a pretty neat trick) usually with a new joke or other obscure reference at the ready, probably as a test to see if the first time was only a fluke.  It wasn't, of course, and as I slowly let my guard down, I learned that he got hassled just as much as I did.  His name was Jamin -- which took me a good long while to get correct -- and within a few weeks, I had a third friend.

Then the fallout began.  The kids who preyed upon me set their sights upon Jamin too -- I recall one of them calling out as we walked down the hall, "Hey, which one of you is the guy and which one's the girl?" -- and this scared me so bad that I told him at one point to stay away from me.  But he wouldn't let me go.  By the time Easter break came around, one girl I was on decent terms with convinced us that we should be an actual couple, and we agreed to it just to shut her up.  Not much changed for us at first -- it took until May for the awkward kissing sessions to begin -- but the most important thing to come out of our meeting was that we helped each other survive.  Neither of us was the lonely weirdo anymore, we each had someone to talk to and vent with.  Falling in love was the bonus.

There was a brief break-up (during which time we were still great friends), but we soon realized after trying to see other people how stupid we were and got back together again, finally getting married in 1998.  It's been a wonderful, worry-free marriage, full of goofy adventures and memories that "normal" people would shake their heads at in disbelief, because we haven't changed a bit.  We're still dorky lil' nerdlings that can lean on each other when the real world mocks us for what we enjoy.

Oh, as for what we did on Valentine's Day?  We stopped at some of our favorite collectibles stores and blew nearly 100 bucks on comics and DVDs.  Yes, we got got each other the usual flowers and cards and candy, but we wanted to do something fun too!

I'm famous on the Internet

As I mentioned a few months back, I'm a writer, or I at least fancy myself to be one.  I guess it depends on whether or not you define a writer as someone who gets paid to do so.  If you do...well, then I'm just some dope that's deluding herself.  But if you merely define it by talent and recognition of such, then I suppose that I've earned the title.  I've got fans that eagerly wait for me to put out another story, and I've received notes from published authors that tell me to keep up the good work.  But money?  Actual dollar-amount compensation for all the time I put into the craft?  I haven't made one thin dime yet, and some days I wonder if I ever will, seeing as how I've sent my 300-odd page manuscript off to roughly twenty different publishers and agents only to receive nothing but rejection slips in return.  Yet if you put "Susan Hillwig" into a search engine, my name pops up all over the place, with most entries acknowledging me to be an author.

How the heck did such a dichotomy come about?  Simple: I write fan fiction, a strange little offshoot of the usual sort of fan activity that genres like comics and movies tend to attract.  It's not something that the non-fans hear much about (though TIME recently did an article about fanfic), and even some who are well-immersed in fandom don't pay it any mind at all.  But it does exist, and for the past six years, as I've tried to get my original manuscript published, I've cranked out a score of stories that I cannot legally get paid for.  The short explanation is that, since fan fiction utilizes characters owned by other people, it's considered "fair use" so long as no one makes any money off of said fan fiction.  So I can write fics all the live-long day and be praised to high heaven for the results, but I can't make a living as a writer by doing so...at least not without getting sued.

You'd think the lack of monetary gain would scare off writers, but it doesn't.  There's all sorts of crazy things that fans do simply for the love of the genre, and that's where my involvement comes in.  I wanted to write a story that filled in a very large blank in a certain comic book character's history, namely Jonah Hex and his ill-advised trip to the future.  I had a very solid idea, and I knew DC most likely would never resolve the problem of their own volition, so I stepped up to fill in the blank.  The result was The Long Road Home, and it pretty much sealed my fate as it relates to fanfic.  The overwhelmingly-positive response encouraged me to keep going with this thing, so I wrote another Hex-related fic, then expanded into other DC Western characters, and before I knew it, I'd made a name for myself in this non-business, one that now seems to be inexorably linked with Jonah Hex.  I'm not complaining about that, mind you, but I don't think I really expected this outcome when I sat down to write my first fic.  To be sure, I never expected this, either:

No, that's not some Photoshop trickery, it's an actual panel from Jonah Hex (vol. 2) #34, wherein Jonah decides to leave his old life behind and live under an assumed name...and Hex writers Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray decided to tip their hats in my direction by giving him the alias of "Hillwig".  I just about fell off the couch when I read that panel, and my husband (who has no real love for the character) went about for a week or so occasionally muttering "Mister Hillwig" with a smile.  That's not to say that other fans haven't gotten their names slipped into the series (I can think of about a half-dozen guys that I know fairly well who've been given that honor), but it's the way it was done here that tickles me so.  Over seventy issues, J&J have had Jonah use an alias on two other occasions: once as "Albano" (who created Jonah Hex along with artist Tony DeZuniga) and later as "Fleisher" (who wrote Jonah for about 15 years straight and established almost his entire history).  So forgive me if I'm reading too much into it, but having Jonah use my last name in such a way feels like J&J acknowledging me as a person who's contributed something of import to the character.  It's not money, it's not a byline, but it's the closest I've ever gotten to payment for my work.  Trust me, permanent enshrinement in the Jonah Hex mythos equals some serious coin in my heart of hearts.

Anyways, that's about all I have to say regarding "real fame" versus "Internet fame" and my place in it.  I realize the latter may be fleeting, and it doesn't really mean a dang thing to the world at large, but I'm having fun with it while I can.  And for those of you who are now interested and want to see what exactly I've been doing to earn things like name-drops in comic books, look over to the left and click on some of the entries under the heading "My Bibliography".  I apologize in advance if reading any of it curtails your work productivity (I've been told I have this effect on some readers), but if you like it, please send me an email.  Especially if you're a publishing agent, 'cause I've got something with a more profitable angle just sitting here collecting dust.

There's a first time for everything, and I reckon this is mine.

I've been debating about doing one of these blog dinguses for a couple of years, mainly because it seems like everybody else is yammering away in public forums except for me.  I don't do Facebook or Twitter or whatever other social network invention has sprung up.  I'm an introvert most times, and I only really reach out when I feel like I have something to say that isn't just noise.  I'm also a writer (or at least I'm trying to be), so when I do say things, I can be a tad long-winded.  That's an up-front warning, kids.

Overall, though, I'm a fangirl.  I can quote from various corners of pop culture without blinking an eye.  I can walk into a comic book store and not look lost, and am equally comfortable at a horror movie convention (though there are some aspects of the genre that can make me feel faint...I'm not so good with blood sometimes).  And I can even recognize things that haven't been popular since my parents (and possibly my grandparents) were in school.  This isn't a matter of studying, mind you, it's just that stupid junk sticks in my head.  That's my superpower, if you will.  I probably couldn't tell you what I had for dinner last night, but I can identify at least half the members of the Legion of Super-Heroes (both pre-Crisis and post-Zero Hour variations).

So that's gonna be the main thrust of this blog.  Me poking at various and sundry aspects of comics and movies and what-have-you, along with the continuing adventures of my attempts at getting published.  I promise to never talk at length about my job or my family problems or some other mundane subject (not unless it's relevant to, say, my latest trip to Motor City Comic Con).  If I get boring, feel free to tell me so in the Comments section.  Also, bear with me as I learn the ropes of this "blogging" thing.  The appearance of this page is probably gonna change about a half-dozen times before I get it that way I want it.

That's all for now.  Go look at something else on the Interwebs for a bit while I'm busy redecorating.