About The Site

I have to have paper with me at all times. I am a constant note taker. At work today I had to keep myself busy for a few periods so I was taking notes about my latest story idea. This story just keeps growing.

It started with a locale.

From there I got a main character. This kid has changed slightly each time I’ve thought about it all, but he’s relatively still the same, just developing more flesh around his initial skeleton. I find that character notes will always help me understand the entire story better. My first short story that I wrote simply stemmed from character notes that I penned on a short flight. Character is important in my reading and that comes through in my writing, I hope.

I now have supporting characters, which I am fine tuning. I am working out how they all intersect and fit together. Who they each are.

I now have a backdrop. I have taken a small story about one person in one location and set it against a global terrorist attack. But, this is no terrorism story, it is very much focussed on how society then deals with the aftermath. I don’t want to make it a 9/11 alegory, because in my head it isn’t. It is about people and how they cope. What they turn to and what they do. A concept addressed back in Lord of the Flies, well before terrorism became the backdrop de rigeur item to have in your story.

I find myself constantly thinking about this story and loving it. I was talking to someone about the process of starting a story. It’s like there are jigsaw puzzle pieces in my head and I am slowly putting them all together, but I don’t have the box. Sometimes I get a few pieces to click so then I have to step back and see what I am creating. It’s no paint by numbers, it’s not that certain, it’s more like Michealangelo looking at a block of marble for weeks discovering what he was going to carve out of there.
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I have received some art for my Fate proposal from Justin Greenwood. I say that name now, but I swear to God and Judas that when I mention that name in a few years that people’s heads will turn. I will be selling my art on eBay, high price for his name, discount because it’s from my writing, ha. He has sent me three pages and they look amazing. I’ll even link to one, but just one, here.

Fate - Sample Page

The causal stinkbrown’er might not completely understand the context of the page, but I promise you that Justin took my tinny little words and made pure art out of them. His panels look so polished and I am so happy and proud to have him working on my shit. I’ll get his art tattooed on me if we get picked up, you heard it here first!

The kicker to top it off is that he is such a genuinely nice guy. It’s a pity beers cannot be shared from the US to the Land Down Under. Perhaps one day we’ll share a panel at a con. One day.
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I just bought Jason Aaron’s The Other Side mini series. I’m looking forward to reading it, I got the floppies on eBay for a steal. I have heard so many good things, and it got the Eisner, so it must have something going for it. I’ve read the odd piece of Scalped which has impressed me, and I do want to pick up his Ghost Rider issues, but probably waiting for the trade on that one.
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I’m still trying to figure out why there is a stigma around comics, both reading and writing them, but comic movies are perennially the ones to turn the box office into walking napalm. Why can’t you pick up Batman from the local comic shop but you can go see the flick a couple times? What’s up with that? I don’t think I’ll ever understand the stigma there…ever.

Posted on September 11th, 2008 by ryan
Filed under: Writing, art, comics