Wildcat's Writer Weekend

This weekend, I've been more "Bill, the Writer," than "Bill, the Wildcat." It's been a LOT of fun. Last night, I attended the release of the anthology Front Porch Flash Fiction at Velocity Comics. The book included my short story "Cheaters Never Win."



Just as exciting for me as seeing my story in print was being joined in the anthology by two of my friends, Katharine Hearndon ("365 Ways to Cook Chicken") and J.T. Glover ("Sufficient Pangs").

Every copy of the book's first run sold out last night. I hope Sink/Swim Press will release a second run, and if they do, I'll be sure to let you know. Until then, you won't be able to buy a copy.



We celebrated the book release with some of our friends, and my wife and I didn't get to bed until about one o'clock. Normally, we'd just sleep late to recover, but such was not an option. At 5:45 this morning, we crawled out of bed and drove to Harrisonburg, Virginia, for the Write-Brained Network writers workshop. My wife and I are friends of Ricki Schultz, the founder of the Write-Brained Network. She did a great job organizing the event. It included several folks we've gotten to know well through our work with James River Writers: Tiffany Trent, David L. Robbins, David Kazzie and Clifford Garstang. My wife and I also met fantasy writer Jodi Meadows and her agent Lauren MacLeod. Jodi's debut novel Incarnate comes out January 31st. I've really been looking forward to this book which offers a nice twist on the idea of reincarnation.

If the world keeps recycling the same million souls, then what happens if someone is born who's never had a past life? And what happens to the soul who lost the time of its rebirth?

An advanced reader's copy of the book was given away as part of a drawing at the end of the event, and guess who won it? Heh. I can't wait to read it! My webcomic's cat Frank was just as excited.

Incarnate has generated a lot of buzz. What's really cool for me is that this is the first printed copy of Jodi's book which she has autographed. Not only did she make it out to me and my wife, but to Frank, as well.





The prize from the drawing also included something that has me just as pumped. I won a critique by Tiffany Trent of the first ten pages of my manuscript. That will be a great help as I'm putting the polish to my young adult, vampire hunter novel.

In the meantime, Frank has called dibs on reading Jodi's book first, but after a busy two days, we're off to bed. I don't think Frank plans to let our copy of Incarnate out of his sights anytime soon.

Thursday Randomness: The Deadlands

I'm enjoying a bit of a writer's high this year. Two of my short stories will be in different anthologies next month, and just six days ago, I finished the rough draft to my WIP, a young adult novel about a teenage vampire hunter. For today, I'm going to use my "Thursday Randomness" to spend some time plugging one of the short stories, "The Deadlands."



To help promote my story within the anthology Four in the Hole, I created a picture which is inspired by a scene within my story, a shot of Interstate 95 covered in wrecked cars. Yes, when the end of the world arrives, it makes a mess. There's just a small problem here. There's no one place a writer can go to snap a picture of an interstate all messed up like the above picture. Fortunately, I am not just a writer, I'm a graphic artist.

On August 4th, I received the good news in my e-mail about "The Deadlands" being the opening story to an anthology. The next day, the kids piled into the car with me on my quest to build an interstate in total disarray. The part with the kids coming along is clearly the real challenge here, but God bless their hyperactive hearts, they stuck it out like champs. No small task there, because it was a hot day, and all the stuff I needed pictures of was outdoors.

Our first stop was the Hermitage Road overpass to I-95. The kids earned their room and board here, because I couldn't park on the bridge. We went about a block away and hoofed it with my tripod and camera in hand. Ideally, I needed a shot of the interstate without any cars on it. "But wait," you might say, "what about the wrecked cars?" Well, I was going to have to add those in myself, unless I could cook up a way to manufacture a major, mass casualty traffic crash on the spot, and since neither of the kids was willing to jump over to start said chain reaction crash, I was gonna have to add in the wrecked cars later via graphic art magic.

I snapped more than 90 pictures of I-95 and not once was I lucky enough to get a car-free picture of the interstate. Fate did offer me lots of big gaps here and there, so what I did was combine the pictures with the best gaps until I got a relatively car-free picture of I-95.



From there, it was off to find some smashed up cars, and fortunately, I knew the perfect place to find some. Our next stop in this adventure was not a wrecker yard. Oh no. We went to Henrico County's Fire Training facility. Quite a few years ago, I took part in a citizens fire academy, so I knew the Division of Fire kept a bunch of messed up cars out there to practice extracting people who get trapped in car wrecks. Boy, did we ever hit paydirt. Not only did we score messed up cars, but we found a wrecked bus and tanker placed on its side.



Pictures complete, it was back here to my laptop where I cut out the pictures of the cars. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough cars to cover the interstate without reusing a few, but I just changed their color a bit and flipped them around and the like, and more than a week later, even I'm not sure where all the duplicates are in this picture.

Originally, I was going to just have the promotional image be of the smashed up interstate, but wasn't really working for me. I found it looked better when I washed out a lot of the color, so I tossed in an image of what most will only see as some red circle. Obviously, it's not just a circle. It's actually an important element to the story, but you'll have to read "The Deadlands" to find out exactly what it is.



All that done, it was time to add in the promotional elements: the title of my story, a tagline and when it's coming out--which is next month. I made a few versions of this, one to put at the end of my comic strips, another for the side panel of the Lair and of course, wallpaper for computer screens everywhere.



Next week, I'll post the wallpapers for your computers, and I'll offer a little insight into the other anthology my writing will appear in next month. Be sure to revisit the Lair then, and don't forget to catch the next episode of my comic strip tomorrow.

Thursday Randomness: Wildcat in an Anthology!

I've got some exciting news for today's "Thursday Randomness." I learned this morning that one of my short stories will appear in an upcoming anthology called FOUR IN THE HOLE being published by May December Publications.

My story is called "The Deadlands." What is the story about? I won't offer any specifics just yet, but I will tell you that the theme behind this collection was zombies and/or vampires.

As we get closer to the release date, which will likely be sometime next month, I'll drop more details about my story.

For now, here's a look at what I believe will be the cover art for FOUR IN THE HOLE.

The Price of Good Writing

Catch our next episode on Frank Friday. And don't forget to submit your caption for this week's "You Write the Caption!"

Thursday Randomness: Steampunked & Writing Tech Overlords

This month, I'm using "Thursday Randomness" to preview next month's launch of my comic strip's storyline "Frank & Hip Get SteamPunked." The past two weeks have given you a look at an airship that will appear in the story. This week, I'm going with a peek at a character(s) for the storyline.

Every great steampunk villain needs an army of monsters. Well, my storyline will not ignore this important fact. While I won't tell you what the monster is, I'll give you a look at a cutout of it. What is this creature, and how will it factor into the story for Frank and Hip? You'll have to wait to find out, but I will tell you that it was inspired by the "rotters" in Cherie Priest's novel Boneshaker. For those who haven't read Cherie's book, rotters are her take on zombies.



In the name of being random, I'm gonna throw in another plug here for something TOTALLY different. This year marked my departure from James River Writers as a boardmember, but as Al Pacino said so well in "The Godfather, Park III," just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in. I'll be moderating a panel for JRW's monthly "Writing Show," a week from today. The topic and panel I've been given should make for a great time. Up for discussion will be "A Brave New World: How the Web-Savvy Stand Out in the New Digital Era." I'll be joined by that online guru for writers Dan Blank, the lovely and goofy literary networking diva (and self-proclaimed "recovering high school English teacher") Ricki Schultz and engineering/computer master extraordinaireFrank Petroski. We'll be going over all the ways writers can get out there and get noticed online. Can't wait!