James McGowan Reader Group- Grind and Flow

Hey there!

There’s a particular feeling I often strive to achieve whenever I’m creating stories.  Where the ideas transcend words, and I just go with whatever the characters are doing.

Entering a flow state.

Sadly, I can’t always achieve that.  The mental gears grind more than I’d like.  And honestly, I think that’s also fine.  For me at least, I think grinding is needed to make the times when words flow all the more rewarding.

It’s my philosophy on other up and down phases of life.  Post holiday winter drudgery makes summer vitality and extra daylight seem all the better.

Of course, that’s just me.  Certain loved ones in my life would prefer to skip to fall.

A meandering way to say that I always try to value the whole process, easy and hard.  And know that when times of grind present themselves, I push through them.

There’s always more flow state creation on the other side.
Players of the Game Works in Progress
This month’s writing productivity comes in at Page 257 with 72,700 words for Secret Fronts’ first draft.  That’s an output of 46 pages and 13,100 words for the first month of the year. 

Pretty good, all things considered.  I’ll see if I can keep up the momentum.

Plans are still afoot to release a Repenter ebook collection of the first two novels and first two novellas.  And also The Breakers following that.

All good stuff.

Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month:

Gath:  “Is that misanthropese for yes?”

Quandric:  “Yes. You disrespectful @$$hole.”

Gath:  “You love me anyway.”

Quandric:  “I really don’t.”

Gath:  “Then I just have to love you that much more.”
Recommendation Corner
Radiant Black by Kyle Higgins and Marcelo Costa

This one is a recommendation due to its sheer ambition alone.  I heard the author Kyle Higgins talking on a podcast about his Massive-verse through Image comics.  His log line hooked me.

Power Rangers with adult problems.

It’s in the “tokusatsu” transforming hero genre with others like Ultra Man, which I have fond memories of watching as a kid.  I read the catch-up 16 page comic on www.radiant.black (best use of a non dot com ever), and decided to give it a whirl.

With the 6th trade paperback.  Halfway through the Catalyst War story line.  I do that sometimes.

I didn’t quite understand the objectives of the invaders, or what their win condition was.

But I really dug the dual timelines where the Marshall character went dark and amassed power and the other where he was powerless and his friend, Nathan, was Radiant Black instead.

This is not for everyone.  But I think I’m going to dive into the back catalogue on this.

I love discovering new comics series that I enjoy with a ton of back issues.

Icons Unearthed on Amazon Prime

The Nacelle Company of Toys That Made Us fame has a bunch of limited series on Prime that dive into the back stories of a bunch of movie series.

Some are better than others.

The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars ones had some interesting tidbits of which I wasn’t aware.  Anthony Daniels recollections of working on the original trilogy are especially compelling.  BTW- His name is pronounced “An-tony” without the “H”, which was news to me.

The Batman one was okay, but it really threw the old 60s TV show under the bus to prop up the Burton movies.  Basically saying it was worthless.  I think it has value as a comedy.  And they spent next to no time on the 90s animated series, which is probably the best version of Batman in my reckoning.

So your mileage may vary.  Still, if you’re into multi-part docu-series, you could do worse.
Check Out the Players of the Game Series on eBook and Paperback
That’s all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim

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