Adam Gallardo's Blog, page 8

The Lonely Spaceman

I want to write a short series of postsabout the new comic series I find myself working on. I hope this willprove interesting to someone other than me. Today's installment ispretty much just setting the stage and introducing the players.
Two, maybe three years ago, I stood onthe stage at a Salem Ignite event and I told the audience how much Iloved the Internet as a method of distributing... well, everything. Iconcentrated on comics and I closed with the promise that the nextcomics project I did would be published to the web.
It looks like I'm keeping that promise. I just didn't expect it to take thislong.
I made several half-hearted attempts atgetting a web comic up and running, but there were a couple of thingsthat slowed down the process. The first is that a lot of people stillsee working in web comics as less prestigious than working in printcomics. The second is that not a lot of artists want to work for nomoney up front with no guarantee of money on the back end. And, once I put it in those terms, it's not hard to see why they aren't beating down my door to work on such a project. I woulddefinitely need to find just the right artist for this.
About that: It always helps to knowpeople. In this case it helped a great deal to know Devon Devereaux.Devon is sort of a nexus of cool people (Malcolm Gladwell would call him a "maven") and when I told him that Iwanted to work on a web comic, he immediately thought of someone Ishould contact – his buddy, Matthew Hope. Matt is a designer and hedoes illustrations for concert posters and other things. Devon sentme the link to his web site, Poor Man's Bread, and after pokingaround for just a minute, I knew I wanted to work with Matt. And Iknow on which project I wanted us to join forces. A lot of Matt'swork has a SF feel to it and I've had a SF idea kicking around forseveral years. One piece in particular caught my eye and it's the piece that starts this blog entry. Often when I contact an artist about working together,I send them several ideas and let them choose which one most appealsto them. This time I sent just one idea: The Lonely Spaceman.
Next: What is The Lonely Spaceman?

Like a scene from a (lesser) Tennessee Williams play

As O and I were walking today, we strolled past the following scene:

A YOUNG MAN and YOUNG WOMAN stood on the sidewalk in front of a house. An OLDER MAN stood on the porch.

OLDER MAN: I have rules.

YOUNG MAN: I respect that, sir.

OLDER MAN: Rules.

YOUNG MAN: Yes, sir.

OLDER MAN: I don't -- I don't want to be running a whore house.

YOUNG MAN (earnest): No, sir!

And then, thankfully, we were out of ear shot.

Someone on twitter quoted part of this. I liked it so muc...

Someone on twitter quoted part of this. I liked it so much, I looked up the entire thing. I think it's sort of a lovely sentiment:

"But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?" -Mark Twain

Also, hello, again, Blogger.

Words, words, words

I've really had my head down lately in an attempt to get some stuff done before Baby 2.0 arrives at the end of June/beginning of July. Let's see, there's homework to be done (two papers to write, a bunch of books to read for the next residency); I've started to meet with a friend whom I hope will be the producer of the short film I plan to make next semester, and I've been trying to get a lot done on the web comic I'm trying to get off the ground. The novel I started working on is going to sit and marinate for a while. Something had to give way and that seemed like the easiest thing to set aside.
The web comic is really taking shape on paper. I've never worked this quickly on a comics project. Last week I wrote a pitch document that included character descriptions, a description of the world and the general shape of the story. I also plotted out and scripted the first chapter of the book (26 pages!) and got all of that to the artist. Best of all, he likes what I've written and didn't ask for any changes. This is a rare and magical occurrence. Over the last two days I've worked out a very basic plot of the rest of the first book (in a perfect world this will be a story told in three volumes). I wanted to work far ahead on this project because come the arrival of the baby, I'll probably have to set it aside for a while. I want the artist to have lots of material to work with while I settle into my new life. Also, the more material there is, the easier it will be for me to hit the ground running when I get back to the project. I think I'm at a place where I can leave it alone for a while and concentrate on homework.
Thanks for indulging me and my sporadic updates. As a reward, have a video of Jenny Owen Youngs performing one of my favorite of her songs live. Take it away, Jenny.

Tidbits 5/23

This makes me both sad and joyful: An archive of mugshots of Freedom Riders.
This seems like a worthy Kickstarter project to back: A book of interviews and articles all about a subject near and dear to my heart, comics. If you don't know about Kickstarter, please do yourself a favor and go to their homepage and read about them. There are many fine and worthy projects that could use your financial support.
I've recently subscribed to Rolling Stone magazine (Amazon.com had a special offer), and today the subscription paid for itself by introducing me to the band The Head and the Heart. The video below sealed the deal, but really, I knew I wanted to buy their album after reading the following quote from singer/guitarist Josiah Johnson, "If there's such a thing as a neo-folk movement happening right now, it's simply a reflection of the fact that music has become so negative, bands decided to go in a different direction. We are shamelessly happy."

Beautiful Machines

Sometimes I get sad thinking there will never be a photo of me working in front of my typewriter. Then I think, "Fuck it. Faulkner probably wasn't sad that there'd never be a photo of him writing in cuneiform on a clay tablet."
The photo of Faulkner comes from a gallery of authors and their beautiful machines at Dangerous Minds.

Update 4/20

One of the things that thrills me, and frustrates me, about writing is how things I am making up -- things coming out of my own head and which I should know very well -- can so completely surprise me. Case in point: Tonight I began a chapter featuring a new character. A character that I wasn't expecting to show up for several more chapters. A character who isn't even in the outline I wrote out for several more chapters! And yet, there she is, in a scene I never outlined but that seems to make total sense. And is a much better introduction than my outline gives her, too, by the way. Why did I even bother with an outline? I guess I'm more of a "making it up as I go along" type writer...

I hope I continue to be surprised.

Here are tonight's numbers:
Daily word count: 1,129Monthly word count:6,265Novel word count: 6,265

Writing! New numbers!

Lots of writing-related stuff going on at the moment, which is probably how it should be. I guess. Zomburbia is currently with three new readers, and its first reader thinks that I'm a polish away from being able to send it to an agent and then to publishers. My fingers are crossed. I'm working on what looks like will be another novel, numbers for which you will find at the bottom of this post. I've joined a new writing group. Actually, I am the founding member of a brand new writing group which is comprised of me and one other writer (hi, Kate!), but it's gonna blow up, I can tell. On top of all of that, I currently have, what, four comics things in various stages of development. Three of those are with a co-writer (hi, Phil!) and one that I'm writing my self.
That feels like a lot. Probably more than I can reasonably handle. We'll see.
And here are today's numbers:Daily word count: 1,018Monthly word count: 5,136Novel word count: 5,136
I'm well into chapter two and things are developing nicely. I like the main character and I'm having fun developing the world. So that's all good.
Thanks for your kind attention.

Hello, Blogger. I've missed you.

Speaking with Greig Means this weekend (editor and publisher of the excellent Tugboat Press, about which I need to write, I think) it occurred to me that I hadn't been updating this blog much lately. This is for a variety of reasons, none of which need to be gone into here despite the fact that this is a blog and that's usually exactly the kind of thing that is gone into.
Anyway, it occurred to me what I useful tool this blog was when I was writing my novel. I posted my progress every day and if I had no progress, I posted that, too. The knowledge that people were keeping track of those slowly mounting numbers helped to motivate me. I bring this all up because I seem to find myself writing another novel. What I think will become another novel, at least. (My wife's declaration to this bit of news was something like, "Why would you do that?" Indeed.)
I didn't come up with the idea of publicly tracking my progress. In the grand tradition of writers everywhere, I stole the idea from someone more talented and more intelligent than me. Cherie Priest, writer of scary stories and, lately, steampunk novels does just this. I've also noted that just lately, in the last couple of days, Warren Ellis (Ellis's site is very often NSFW) is also tracking his novel-in-progress's growing word count. So I'm in good company, I suppose.
So let me recap, very quickly, my progress so far, starting with the fact that my goal is to write 1,000 words a day.
On Friday, I wrote 1,026 words. Saturday yielded 1,092. On Sunday I had a full day with Oscar up in Portland and I only managed 317 words, but I made up for that by writing 1,683 words tonight which is 2,000 exactly for the last two days. That makes a grand total of 4,118. There. Starting tomorrow, I'll start having a running total at the bottom of each post until I get to end of the first draft.
I suppose I should write just a bit about the first novel, Zomburbia. I finished the second draft and sent it off to three readers. My first reader is going to give it another once-over and two new victims volunteers are also reading it. Soon I will have even more corrections to make, I'm sure, and I'll be able start on a third draft. After that, who knows. Maybe it'll be time to start finding an agent. As much as I'm able, I'll document the whole process here.
Lucky you.

Some things worth reading 03/22/11

Mulholland Books has pretty quickly made itself an indispensable site, in my opinion. Many of its features skew toward the crime genre, but some of it is more general. Here are two examples:
Derek Haas recently wrote an article entitled "Seven Things Novelists Should Know About Screenwriting." I don't think I need to be explain what it's about, do I?
The next day, he offered a follow-up: "Seven Things Screenwriters Should Know About Writing Novels."
"Hollywood Shadows" by Dana Goodyear tells the story of how one therapist helps Hollywood screenwriters overcome writer's block.