Monday, August 11, 2008

DragonFUZE #25

Well, about one month has passed since my last creative update. Thing is that I just don't know if I can be bothered any more. With a baby boy, a health scare for my wife and me looking for new work, well there isn't much time for writing. Even if there were, is there really a point anymore? I have so many projects that I have started: DragonFUZE, HellGrunt, Scratch and Tikki's Giant to name most of them, but the chances of them being finished and published remain slight at best.

Having said that, opportunities continue to come my way. Just the other day the editor of MangaQuake (which is where Tiki's Phayrie was published) contacted me looking for new stories of mine to publish in their magazine. I pitched I Hate You and I am still waiting to hear back about that. I hope I get the green light for that one because of all my work, I am really keen to see that story published. I think IHY is the strongest thing I have written, it's highly original and has a great twist. The story is also very moving/ disturbing and I strive to have a strong emotional under current in all of my work. So, I hope something will come of IHY and MangaQuake; more news on that when I have it.

As for Tikki's Phayrie the same publisher (Future Quake Press) is interested in doing more Tikki stories, and I have another offer from a small publisher to do a Tikki comic, so it looks like I will definitely have a home for Tikki's Giant if I ever get it written, drawn, etc.

That leaves HellGrunt and Scratch. I really don't know if I am invested in either of these stories. I have put a lot of work into HellGrunt already and have even comissioned a logo design. I have a committed publisher... So, what's the problem? After more than a year of working on this idea, I still can't find a unique voice for the book and I think that is a major problem. This story is a cliche, a blending of Hellboy, Underworld and other bits and pieces of genre culture. Sometimes that isn't a bad thing, as long as you can come up with a unique angle, but the point is that I can't. I haven't got anything in this idea that is different or unique and that I think is the problem.

As for Scratch I have an interested publisher and a committed artist, but the concept remains so vague in its formulation that I don't really know if I can get 10 pages out of it. I mean, I am sure that I can, but again, what is really unique about this story? The truly unique part of it is how dark and twisted the story will be. This tale is even darker than IHY and also involves a suicide, but it is much more graphic and disturbing than even the previously mentioned story. Writing IHY was more confronting, debilitating and painful that anything else I have committed to paper/ screen. I don't know if I can go through an experience like that again, but I will have to go to some very dark places to write Scratch. My hesitancy to do so is a large part of why this work remains incomplete. At only 10 pages, this should be a breeze to write, but I need to confront a lot of darkness to get this story out of me and I just don't know if I can carry that at this time.

DragonFUZE and Tikki spring from the same creative well and I intend to explore these characters for the rest of my life. I am working on a new comic story Tikki's Giant (which I hope to pitch to MangaQuake in the future) and there is always the larger tale that the two fit in to. Of all my work, these are the stories that I really want to tell, but the emotional investment in them is so great that it is almost like I fear writing the words in case I do these wonderful characters and concepts a diservice.

I am not giving or asking for answers in this post. I am just wondering aloud as to where my creative path will take me, and if I really want to travel that road at all...

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