Good news, everybody! This week, co-writer Kristi McDowell and I will have completed the first draft of our 100 (or so) page graphic novel for Gamer Girl & Vixen. We’d originally planned the story as a 6-issue mini-series, but minds changed, ideas shifted, and now we’re going to have it all in one big, wonderful collection. This tpb is going to sit proudly on my shelf — and hopefully yours too — for the rest of my life, a testament to kicking butt, doing good work and making your dreams come true.

So I thought this week I’d share with you all a little bit about the writing process.

The fan art that won Gemma Moody the job!

I can’t exactly post the entire script on my blog, that would give everything away! But I think I can share a page or two, along with the accompanying art, so you can see how we go from the written word to the drawn picture. It’s a neat process, and I’ve definitely learned so much about making comics just from doing it myself.

So join me after the jump to get a crash course in scripting Gamer Girl & Vixen!

Read the rest of this entry →

As I mentioned last week, the first issue/chapter of my comic, Gamer Girl & Vixen, is in full production. That means my artist, the lovely and talented Gemma Moody, is hard and work cranking out actual drawn pages of a script I co-wrote. I don’t know how often I’ve talked about this on my blog, but I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I can still remember writing fan fiction on my family’s archaic laptop back in the day, cranking out stories that I never knew if anybody would read. But that was years ago, and I haven’t written very much in the intervening years.

So this week, I want to tell you all something: get out there and write! If it’s your dream to be a writer, whether it’s comic books or movie screenplays or young adult novels, stop putting it off and just write it! I put it off for the longest time. More than a decade of my life has been spent not-writing. Last year, my friend Kristi McDowell helped me get off my butt and get writing, and we’re weeks away from launching out Kickstarter to actually publish my own graphic novel. It’s really happening and it feels great!

Seriously, I never knew how amazing it would feel to see pages of my comic come in from my artist. It’s a giddy excitement that more than makes all the work worth it. Check out this collage I put together of some of the great panels she’s sketched so far.

None of these are in order, by the way.

Just seeing my ideas come to life like that is mind-blowing. It’s such an exciting feeling. It helps, of course, that Moody is awesome, but I would imagine seeing any artist whip up my ideas would be great.

So consider this my PSA: Get out there and write. I know a lot of my readers are also comic book fans, and I’m sure plenty of you want to write your own comics. I’m here to tell you that it’s easy, it feels great, and you shouldn’t be putting it off anymore. And if you want any advice, I’m here. I’ll be retelling some more stories about my project in the weeks to come. I’m thinking next week I might be able to share some penciled pages, maybe even some script. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

And as always, please like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or tumble us on Tumblr. We gotta get the word out!

—————–