#129 He Has A Lot

Happy Blog Day Everyone.

Still no normal service...yet.

The ending of Daemon Soul 2 continues to elude me but I'm making decent headway with it as more characters are showing me just who they are.

I've also had inspiration strike me at the most random of times, and while I need to discuss it with my editor, it could solve a bunch of my issues with the second book and lead to an interesting dynamic for the third. Of course, it'll lead to more edits that are needed for the last chapters to make sense but thats about par for the course now. The other inspiration is a bit trickier to describe as it involves various loose threads in my head, and is more about future developments, other than providing Cypher an interesting mirror (to go alongside the other, more twisted mirror that Void holds up to him). To boil it down, the character re-purposes an existing one (okay, he's never appeared in writing and was in a RPG Maker game I was tinkering with ages ago, and a tabletop rpg I was doing.), taking him from the existing archetype and transplanting him wholesale, but losing a certain aspect (promise I'll explain better when the character is in print). I'm in two minds about his name, leaning towards keeping it, and having him absolutely hate it.

In either case, these will inserted into the manuscript after its finished, and I'll fight the urge to make changes now because that'll just bog me down even further.

In other news, I'm hoping to make time to continue Phantom Dawn this week (though, given what I said about Daemon Soul 2 just above, take this with a pinch of salt), I need to make time for it again.

Before I sign off for the week, let's see what Brennan and Riz are up to...

The Comic Tales of Brennan and Riz

Hmmm, I think I needed longer to really get that joke perfect. The original idea was that Riz thought his cheese was in the box but ultimately, Brennan would reveal it was on the side in the kitchen. Fearing that I'd not gotten that across (I hadn't), I changed it to just being the bread in the box, and Brennan reduced to complaining about Riz leaving the cheese out. The joke had well and truly fallen flat.

Next week's is issue 130 though, and if I can pull it off, it should be a fun one indeed.

That's it for now,

Till next time,

Keep on writing.

Peter James Martin

Quick Links

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Volume 1

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Fade to Noir

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Hubble Bubble

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Ominous Orbs

Daemon Soul Awakening - Amazon, books2read

#128 Just Checking

Happy Blog Day Everyone

I think everyone is familiar with the drill by now. There's no Phantom Dawn this week, but as I'm feeling a little bit better, I'm hoping that it'll start up again in a fortnights time, jumping back in to the fight between Kurz and Mason (which started here). 

Whilst I'm still not writing as much as I would like, I'm getting things done and a recent part I've been working on has meant that I had to take a character back to the drawing board slightly to figure out how her powers actually worked. I'd had an idea in my head for them, allowing me to write scenes where she'd looked the part, but the actual mechanics weren't there. If I had just left as is then her powers were incredibly broken and over powered.

The character in question is one Lady Morgana, who, simply put, could make things explode. My rationale at first was that she was doing something with the oxygen in the air, and already you should see the problems with such a power, seeing as we need oxygen to live and that it gets carried around our bodies by our blood. If left, she could literally blow people up without them even knowing what was coming. This works fine at a distance, and can be seen as intimidating to other characters but I need her to be more than that (especially in the future, which is why it's so important to get this right now). The fights would end up very one-sided leaving me to have to show my hand quite aggressively in order to do it properly. I know there's merit in using it to create dramatic tension ("oh snap, how is so-and-so going to survive this!") But the victory has to be somewhat believable otherwise you get things like: "Why didn't she kill him as soon as he opened his mouth? How is this a challenge?". My aim is more to create fights like that seen in the JoJo's Bizarre Adventures manga and anime series, where the author often comes up with ingenious ways to end fights. If I accomplish that remains to be seen, as the character in question will be stepping into the limelight in future books and is only getting started here. 

As it stands, work on Daemon Soul 2 continues apace and all thats left to do is wrapping up stuff...and edits, oh God the edits are going to break me.

Things have seemingly turned around this week in order of content, so let's finish up with everyone's favourite duo.

The Comic Tales of Brennan and Riz

Originally this strip was supposed to be called Chances Are a Million to One (why yes, I have been listening to Jeff Waynes Musical War of the World, how can you tell?), sadly I couldn't back it up within the strip so that's how you ended up with this!

Not sure what the bigger question is though, the fact there's life on Mars or how Riz borrowed money from them...

That's all for this week.

Till next time,

Keep on writing.

Peter James Martin

Quick Links

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Volume 1

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Fade to Noir

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Hubble Bubble

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Ominous Orbs

Daemon Soul Awakening- Amazon, Books2read

#127 Almost Worked

Happy Blog Day Everyone

Not much to talk about again today, but it's not all doom and gloom. I've actually gotten more words down for Daemon Soul 2, which included finally finishing up the chapter thst had been feeling like a slog. I've said this before but it should feel like downhill from here in terms of actually finishing it as now is the point of tying up plot threads (the ones that need it) and laying down fresh hooks for story number 3. The word count currently sits 10k over where I want it, which is a bit concerning, as unlike Daemon Soul 1, there isn't any obvious cuts that could be done. Of course I say that but there is some passages that I'm currently looking at and questioning their worth. Untangling things though make it a tricky proposition to straight up remove. Annoying thing as well is that I still have bits I need to add based on notes I made previously.

Will I be able to get this done?

Time will tell.

My mood is shifting slightly because of this, but it's still early days.

Enough talk though, time to see what Brennan and Riz are doing.

The Comic Tales of Brennan and Riz

First up, sorry about the mistake on the border of the first panel, my finger slipped while inking.

Secondly, I had this idea kicking atojnd my head about Riz trying to send himself places in order to save travel expenses. In fact there was even a line of dialogue cut from this strip expressing that. The idea did raise questions, such as how would he get the box sealed, given Brennan would only help so far. Hence why this strip was designed the way it was. It was a stupid idea for Riz really. Thinking about it, he'd have more luck hiding in someone's luggage, assuming they were going his way of course.

Fun fact: Normally I use the comic stripes full title for the name of the blog, but this is the firsf time I've shortened it. Why? I wasn't sure how the brackets would go as sometimes their inclusion can make things go a bit screwy.

That's all for this week. Hopefully I can keep some momentum going on my writing and fully turn the corner. I'll keep you all updated.

Thank you and till next time.

Keep on writing.

Peter James Martin

Quick Links

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Volume 1

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Fade to Noir 

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Hubble Bubble

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Ominous Orbs

Daemon Soul Awakening- Amazon, books2read

#126 A Bit Dramatic

Happy Blog Day Everyone!

Yes, as you may have guessed, there's no Phantom Dawn this week, breaking a long running tradition (in the sense that I hadn't missed a chapter upload since I started doing it back in January, prologue not withstanding as that was actually already written). I think I explained it last week, but to quickly recap, I'm not in the best place at the moment, and haven't touched a word document since I uploaded the last chapter of Phantom Dawn.

I am trying to ease myself back in, but only a few hundred words, if that. I'll let you all know next week how this goes. I'm unsure if it'll help but hopefully Phantom Dawn will only be on hiatus for these next couple of weeks.

Of course, you still get a new Comic of course (quality not assured).

The Comic Tales of Brennan and Riz

I think we all know someone like this...It should come as no surprise that Riz is a complete drama queen. Don't think it came out too badly (for my standards anyway).

Sadly, that's it for this week.

Sorry for another content lite post, but that's just how it goes I guess.

Till next time,

Keep on writing.

Peter James Martin

Quick Links

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Volume 1

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Fade to Noir

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Hubble Bubble

Malarkey's Imaginomnibus Ominous Orbs

Daemon Soul Awakening- Amazon, books2read