Sat down yesterday to assess the year that's just gone by. Did a little music post, and then started to look back over my creative accomplishments for the year. Took me lots longer than I though it would - made me realize it's actually been a pretty good year! First a list, then a look back.
2012 Books:
Alibi Jones and The Sunrise of Hur
Vatican Ambassador - New 2nd Edition
Earthbound Dossier
Good Samaritan: Unto Dust #1
Introducing...Red Hot #1
The Adventures of Alibi Jones: Six Short Stories
2012 Stories:
"Alibi Jones and the Ghost in the Machine" in
Hunting Ghosts: Thrilling Tales of Paranormal Investigation
2012 Columns:
"Cosmic Crackle" @ Comic Related -
Marvel Comics' Thanos
http://comicrelated.com/news/16094/the-mad-titan
Marvel Comics' Guardians of the Galaxy
Part One:
http://comicrelated.com/news/16790/guardians-of-the-galaxy
Part Two:
http://www.comicrelated.com/news/16855/guardians-of-the-galaxy
Part Three:
http://comicrelated.com/news/16856/guardians-of-the-galaxy
Marvel Comics' Star-Lord
Part One with
Chris Claremont, Steve Englehart & origins:
http://comicrelated.com/news/17021/star-lord-part-1.
Part Two on Doug Moench's years w/character:
http://comicrelated.com/news/17937/star-lord-part-2.
Part Three with writer Timothy Zahn:
http://comicrelated.com/news/18390/star-lord-part-3
Guest post on the "Contradictions of Creativity" for the blog Chocolate Scotch:
http://www.chocolatescotch.com/2012/04/74-mike-luoma/.
Not bad. It was a year with some nice, creative high points - a productive year.
December brought a brand new
Alibi Jones
story
"Alibi Jones and the Ghost In The Machine" in
Hunting Ghosts: Thrilling Tales of Paranormal Investigation a
new anthology from
Black Oak Media. This new Alibi Jones story takes place after the new
novel and stands alone as a single story:
http://www.amazon.com/Hunting-Ghosts-Thrilling-Tales-Paranormal/dp/1618760165/.
November marked the release of my new
second edition of
Vatican Ambassador. When re-podcasting the novel this past summer I revised/rewrote about half of the book! The paperback also got a new cover, to match the update my eBook covers received earlier
in the year.
Vatican Ambassador is now big, shiny and
gold! Also delivered a third installment in my look at
Marvel
Comics' Star-Lord for my
Cosmic Crackle
column at
Comic Related, including an interview with
writer Timothy Zahn:
http://comicrelated.com/news/18390/star-lord-part-3
Celebrated wide release
of
Alibi Jones and the Sunrise of Hur in October. When
you self-publish, you rely on your distributors to get your books out
into the retail outlets of the marketplace. I use
Lulu.com for print
on demand paperbacks - they get those into
Amazon. It takes about
a month.
Smashwords.com does most of my eBook distribution.
The various retailers they ship to add titles at different rates,
with the longest also taking about a month. So... about a month or so
after releasing
Alibi Jones and The Sunrise of Hur, I
could finally celebrate it being available everywhere!
October also saw the release of
Earthbound Dossier, a pin-up book filled with the heroes
appearing in
Earthbound Comics' books. I was heavily involved
in the production and release of the book, featuring contributions
from over 20 creative people – it came out really well. Kudos to
Ben Ferrari of
Earthbound for shepherding the project from
concept to reality. It's free – here, have a copy:
http://comics.drivethrustuff.com/product/106128/Earthbound-Dossier
August was a fun month that included attending both
Pi-Con and The Boulder
Triple-A Convention.
Invited as a guest for my writing to
Pi-Con once again, and represented the radio station at the Boulder conference, hearing over 30
different musical acts in 3 days. Also managed to win the
Seven
Daysies Award for Best Hair on a Local Personality,
an "award" from the local weekly newspaper. And all month I
was showing off the new, full-color
Good Samaritan: Unto Dust #1 – written by me, art by Federico Guillen and color by
Ken Lateer, released by
Earthbound Comics on
August 1
st.
In June,
Glow-in-the-Dark Radio
became part of the
Comic Related Podcasting Network. It was an
honor to be asked to join them as they expanded, joining the ranks of
Zone 4,
The Related Recap and more:
http://www.comicrelated.com/podcasts.php.
My weekly rewriting/rerecording and repodcasting of
Vatican
Ambassador was ongoing. I was also working on the new
Alibi Jones short story which has just recently been released.
In May we published my free
eBook short story
"Souverain: The Kid" by
Earthbound Comics, on the 1
st. A free prose story which was originally
featured in the comic book
Souverain #1, this
stand-alone freebie was an attempt to attract new readers. My first column for
Comic Related also
appeared in May. I'd put a piece on
Thanos together in
light of his scene at the end of
The Avengers movie, and it
became my first
Cosmic Crackle for
CR:
http://comicrelated.com/news/16094/the-mad-titan
Updated the cover of
VaticanAssassin in both paperback and ebook with brand new layout and art, and updated the eBook
covers on the rest of the trilogy in March. Time had come. The old,
boring black ones needed spiffing up!
Vatican Ambassador, as I
mentioned, would later get some interior spiffing up as well.
February brought a proud creative
moment, when
Earthbound Comics published
Introducing...Red Hot #1 – art by Rhys ap Gwyn – February 1
st. By the way, Rhys is ready to work on more of the series now, so expect more Red
Hot in 2013!
The creative year that was... good to take a look back. Now, time to take a deep breath and head onward into the future - hello 2013!
