Website: http://incompetech.com
In this weeks show Dan and I return to the St. Louis Science Center for a round table interview with writer/screen writer, David Gerrold.
Sorry about missing the Thursday update, thing have been hectic. The long and short of my progress is things are going well. Chapter two isn't done yet, but is moving along with more ease than I anticipated. When the chapter is done, it's definately gonna need some polish and rework, but it isn't the monumental task I thought it'd be.
That's it for now. More on Tuesday.
I guess the best place to start sharing what I'm working on is in its origins. First let me say, I love super heroes and comics; I've loved them since I was a little kid. I watched the live action Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, Greatest American Hero; and of course I was totally enamored with all the different cartoon series. I began collecting comics when I was in 7th grade and I read mainly Marvel titles. I loved X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants, and pretty much anything else that had mutants in it. I would also pick up anything else that I though was interesting or had great artwork in it. I'd go see, and still do, every super hero movie that came out and buy the soundtracks and just about anything else. I am and have always been a fan of the genre.
So where does bring me with this book? Well the book I feel was really spurred by my growing love for the DC Universe. The characters are so iconic in DC, and they have become world wide symbols of what heroes are. I don't really feel that Marvel is at all in the same ball park. For me Marvel has been giving up on their character's history sinse finding movie sucsess. They've changed character designs to match they way the characters looked on film, and in the Ultimate series they have changed everything completely. So my story was inspired by love for DC, but there will be, udoubtedly so, Marvel influence as well.
The story, I hope, will be an epic; bringing a cast of colorful villains and heroes together for an all out battle. I have finished ther first chapter of the book so far and am currently writing the second. The second chapter poses a lot of writing challenges for me due to the fact that it follows a single character's family history. The character comes from a very normal background, so I'm not imagining a lineage of family heroes who hand down powerful weapons or fantastic knowledge. The chapter deal with everday kind of stuff, but it's stuff that builds great meaning for the character. It's a challenge to convey the ideas and concepts without, hopefully, having people scoff and say, "So What."
I imagine I will be refining this chapter several times in order to get the color and pacing of it just right.
Talk to you all more about it on Thursday.
