Why I hate Iowa

You know what the worst part about living in Iowa is? (Insert random Midwest joke here.) No, it is the damn elections. Despite my decided lack of posts on it here, I am a decidedly politically minded guy. I read my political blogs every day, many by writers I have enjoyed in the past. Usually writers who have not necessarily maintained their fan following, quite possibly because of their out-spoken political beliefs. Which is stupid, I know, but look at the sales of someone like Orson Scott Card who posted on his blog his opposition for gay marriage. This was followed by hundreds of people suddenly deciding to boycott his works. Sure that’s their right and I respect that, but if everyone stopped enjoying entertainment from people they politically disagree with, I am pretty sure the entertainment industry would utterly and completely collapse. It is just a really dumb reason not to enjoy the writings of an author you enjoy. So, yeah, I believe I have good reason to avoid political diatribes.

Now don’t get me wrong in all of this. I like elections, I like the electoral system our country has in place, and I like to vote. Not that I am not one of these “Vote or Die” idiots by any means. I think you should avoid the voting booth like the plagues unless you know who you are voting for and why you want them in office. If you don’t know that, then stay away. I would rather this country’s voting public actually know and care why we are making said individuals are next leader. To quote Peter David, but I digress...

Anyone politically minded probably knows that Iowa is the first state to make its political decision through its January 3rd caucus. New Hampshire has the first primary on the 8th, but we beat them by moving it up even earlier. I honestly hate it too. Why? Campiagn ads.

Back in the mid-January days, I used to hate every four years because of the heavy handed ads over the Christmas period and that was when they tried to cut them back for the holidays. With the caucuses on January 3rd that will be impossible to do and our state will be forced in to (hell, it already has been) a season of holiday attack ads. I am already at the point where I want to punch Ron Paul, Fred Thompson, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and especially Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton right in the face. And one of those people is someone I am considering voting for! (I’ll let everyone out there try to guess who.) And Joe Biden has an ad on like every half an hour. Seriously, who is giving so damn much money to Joe freaking Biden for these things? You do know he has no chance in hell of winning right? At this point I have more respect for Giuliani, McCain, and Kucinich, mostly because most of their money is focuse elsewhere and I don’t have to see their mugs or hear their voices every other dang minute.

So, yeah, I have pretty much made my decision and on January 3rd I at least go place my vote. I am not really sure if my wife will as well as she will be going to the other cacus; with one vehicle it will be almost impossible for both of us to caucus. (Which BTW is why I miss my Illinois primary days where all you had to do was walk in and fill out your ballot.) But I will place my vote and hope for the best: that Iowans aren’t stupid enough to give their votes to the two terrible front runners in our state: Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton. I mean, really? Could we pick worse choices to represent both sides of the political spectrum?

One last thing, everyone should get out there and start studying their candidates of choice. Even outside Iowa, most of the country has only about two months now before their own elections. Go out there, study your candidates, and please vote early and often for them. Oh, and if you really want to figure out my political affiliation, you can probably find it through some of those links over on the side of the page. Be sure to drop me a line on any of them you make your way to though.

Where's Freedom Patton?

So in case no one noticed Freedom Patton did not appear again today. The reason is quite simple: I have decided to put the series on hiatus for the forseeable future.

The Letters From Libertad sequence I am currently working on is just not coming together the way I want it, and the Freedom and Justice arc I had planned after it just isn’t gelling at all.

So Freedom Patton is now on hold. I know I will bring it back whenever I complete Letters From Libertad. I am two and a half chapters in to it (which is half way) so I really see it being done with the next six months or so. I just need to find a way to reenergize the characters as they just feel like they are treading water to me right now.

In the mean time I plan on starting (and finishing) my current projects. I am well under way on Champion City volume 2. I just hit the 100 page mark the other day. I don’t plan on posting it until I actually finish the entire story though, so it will probably be some time mid-year before it starts to post. Epsilon will reach its first climax with chapter 13, then I will start the build for the big battle in chapter 25. I have a rough plan for the series well past 30, so don’t expect it to go anywhere anytime soon.

I have two new projects which I want to get under the way entitled Crimelords and Living Legends. I am still debating which to start first, although I am currently leaning towards Living Legends as it strangely falls in sync with December debuting projects from Dynamite, Marvel, and Image. I started to develop Living Legends as a comic project over two years ago, but my attempts at bringing it to fruition in 2006 pretty much fell flat on their face. Finding an artist willing to work on a project with 18 leads proved to be a bit harder than I thought it would be. So I can at least say I came up with the idea first. My plans are for it to be an ongoing as well so I probably will try to get at least a few chapters done before I make a firm decision.

Crimelords is a concept that has been floating around my head for well over a decade. It dates back to at least 94-95 when I was creating characters hand over first in high school. I still have notebooks sitting around the house with hundreds of issues worth of one to three line plots for years worth of comics. In fact, just about every character in Epsilon takes their name from those old plots. Trust me when I say that I won’t run out to character names anytime soon! But I digress....

Crimelords is a hodge podge of a few different story ideas from those days, and would focus on the bad guys of a new locale in the quadrant universe: the city of Valhalla. Valhalla has a rich history already developed and Crimelords will cover only about a year worth of it. This one would run about a year or so by my calculations.

I am also working on how I want to continue My Name Is Charon. I have the basic plot ideas of where I want it to go all formulated, but I still am not sure how I want to lay it down on paper. More Charon will be on its way though, rest assured.

And this doesn’t even take in to account my three planned comic projects: Arc which has issue one current in the art stages and issues 2 through 5 in various stages of writing; Out For Vengeance, a fun little piece of meta-fiction reintroducing the first hero in an eighty year legacy to the world; and Bombshells which will mix my love of pro wrestling, attractive women, and superheroics. Expect to see more on Arc sometime soon with Bombshells and Out For Vengeance following quickly behind.

All that and I am brainstorming the return of Pulp Empire as well. More on that as it progresses, so stay tuned right here for more on that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just a quick note to say Happy Turkey Day all! Hope everyone has a great day with their families or loved ones, and Metahuman Press will be back next week with more of the best super-powered fiction around!

Fun in CR

So, just in time for Thanksgiving, the portion of Cedar Rapids I live in has come under a water advisory. Apparently a busted pipe allowed soil to get in to the water supply and now we are under a boil advisory until at least tomorrow morning at 8 am. My answer to this was simple: boil some water and go out and buy a 12 pack of Aquafina. No big.

But oh the people of Cedar Rapids, despite all kinds of information in the article itself, decided to start to panic and we have proof of it on local news station KCRG’s web page. The article itself is here for anyone who wants to enjoy the hilarity. Some great examples of the stupidity of America are as follows, and this doesn’t even include all the people thinking that some kind of conspiracy to keep this information from the people of the city may have occured.

Today at 2:52 PM CONCERNED wrote ...
WITHIN THE LAST 10 MINUTES THIS BREAKING NEWS HAS SPREAD LIKE CANCER HERE AT WORK PANICKING ALL WHO HEARD THE WORD....MOSTLY BECAUSE WE HAVE BEEN DRINKING THE WATER ALOT WITHIN THE PAST FEW HOURS...WERE WE TOO LATE? ARE WE ALL GONNA DIE? OMG HELP US!

Anyone else ever wonder how some people still don’t understand how to turn a caps lock button off.

Today at 3:42 PM SARA wrote ...
SHOULD I LET THE WATER COOL DOWN BEFORE I DRINK IT?

I’m not even sure what this one means:

Today at 3:48 PM Love This City wrote ...
Mr. Prosser and his puppet coucil will probably only want to repair only 90% of the break with their 10% unrelenting cutback. Just have to buy property and give tax abatements rather than provide for needs of the greater number of citizens,

And someone might want to let him know that sentences generally end with periods.

Today at 3:50 PM caz wrote ...
Yep it's 3:30pm and I just heard. Why so long getting this out. Did all the city personal take a early Thanksgiving. My whole family has been drinking water all day. Oh my god are we all going to be sick on turkey day!! Thanks for the delayed warning

Oh, look, someone else who can’t CONTROL the VOLUME of HIS voice:

Today at 3:53 PM UNHAPPY CAMPER wrote ...
HEY EVERYBODY, THIS HAPPENED AT 7:30 THIS MORNING AND WE WERE ALERTED AN HOUR AGO? ARE WE ALL GUINEA PIGS JUST TO SEE HOW FAR THEY CAN PUSH IT, ARE WE STATISTICS TO USE FOR THE FUTURE? I DONT THINK SO! WE PAY WATER BILLS AND DEMAND BETTER SERVICE!!!

This one scares me because I think it is from an elderly person, who honestly, should really know how to spell better than this.

Today at 3:55 PM Verry concerned wrote ...
I cooked a lot of food' what now do I have to start all over. I just found out about this. My sister called me and told me,will my pet's get sick too. and what are the side affects. does it affect people on meds or diabets

Wow, and those are just highlights from the first 45 minutes of the article being up. I can’t help but shake my head. It amazes me sometimes how stupid humanity can be. Everyone have a Happy Turkey Day.

In the meantime, OMG, I’M GOING TO DIE!!!,

Metahuman Press Update

FYI, folks. Metahuman Press is taking the week off for Thanksgiving. Hectic schedules have kept me from producing my own story for the week, but I will be back with Freedom Patton next week as well as the regularly scheduled Comic Book Hero. Thanks, and later days, all.

Very Interesting Invincible

So damn that Kirkman. He again tantalizes and teases me with a very spiffy piece of preview art and by Jim Lee no less. Now he just needs to get off his rear and actually get these issues out already!



Original article

NaNoWriMo and Other Updates

So I continue to work my way through more Champion City volume two. I am at about 20,000 words at this point which puts me a little behind the curve as I should be at about 24,000 or so by now. I hope to catch up with my writing over the weekend but even if I do keep up at my current rate I have to say that I will be happy with an output of 40,000 words. That’s damn impressive IMHO.

I have a few other projects I am working on getting up this month too. You can find the newest chapter of my Epsilon saga right here. I will have the next chapter of Freedom Patton up next week. This will begin the much shorter Letters From Libertad feature that makes up a break from the first novel-length story and the next one, which is tentatively titled Freedom & Justice.

My apologies to Mean Streets fans out there. The project has sort of fallen by the way side in favor of my continued work on NaNoWriMo. I promise I will bring it back next month though.

Nanowrimo

So I’m feeling better now. Not 100% by any stretch, but at least back on solid foods and holding everything down. Not quite so exhausted constantly either.

Yesterday I mentioned I had another project I was working on this month and it's made to coincide with a little thing called National Novel Writing Month (or Nanowrimo for short). The concept is pretty simple. You take all of November and try your best to write a complete novel in that month. I tried (and failed miserably) with an ill-conceived science fiction project last year, but this year I decided to stick with something a little more near and dear to my heart.

So I’m writing a little project called Champion City volume two.

Anyone who has actually been reading what I write since the Wei Empire days knows that Champion City was my first super-hero fiction project and introduced Freedom Patton along with a couple dozen other characters. I am already working on expanding and rewriting large chunks of that work to make it both more readable and more solid a piece of fiction. Volume one was literally my first fully realized piece of long fiction, and it definitely showed it in places. Hence, the revision.

But as I started the revision, I also realized I was ready to get the next project rolling and Nanowrimo was what it took to convince me. Seven days in and despite the illness I am already over thirty pages in. That’s all hand-written by the way. The goal is 50,000 words in one month which probably won’t even get me to the half-way point of my story as I am already a respectable 7500 words or so in. A little behind the curve, but I figure if I can even average half that every month after this, I could really start unleashing the insane flow of fiction floating in my head out upon the world.

Just a few thoughts on the subject. You can expect Champion City volume two to hit the main page some time next year, probably about the same time I bring the revised version of volume one (hopefully) to print.

And yeah, I really meant to mention this before the end of October so I could encourage everyone to give Nanowrimo a try. That being said, I personally don’t think Nanowrimo needs to be in November. Why not make every month your own personal Nanowrimo? It couldn’t hurt could it.

Yuck

So, I've been striken for the past few days with a case of some kind of stomach virus flu which really came to a head today, which was spent alternately between the bed, the toilet, and on the floor sitting in front of the toilet. Not fun, and unfortunately, rather time consuming, as I accomplished absolutely nothing but a lot of vomiting and less pleasant forms of excretion.

Which means I am behind from the past couple of days on just about everything. Getting the next chapter of Epsilon ready, working on issue 2 of Arc's script, working on my new project for this month... pretty much everything. I am starting to feel better now, but I doubt Epsilon will be ready for tomorrow. I will make sure to post it within the next week however, probably a full week late along with Rick Considine’s next Comic Book Hero chapter. (Fingers crossed for that.)

Wish me well if you don’t mind, and I’ll hopefully be back to fighting form in the next day or two.