Brendan Peveril . net

Okay, so I didn’t get it done yesterday. Here’s the update, though. I’ve decided that Shamus is taking too long to get me the last pages of that story he’s drawing, so I’m just going to go ahead and post the next one.

Death’s Children is written by me and drawn by John Muth. I’ll have regular weekly updates until it’s all posted (four pages means four weeks), and I’ll get the rest of the pages of The Time Traveller posted as I get them.

I haven’t been getting much work done, and I’m going to blame it on emotional issues largely triggered by not smoking. I have been getting some work done, though, most notably in the fields of screaming at artists and sending stories to people who might pay me. I also fixed some issues I was having with a story I posted here a few months ago, so I’ve taken it down. We will not speak of it again, unless someone publishes it, in which case you won’t be able to shut me up.

I’ll try to stay on top of updates, even if it’s just posting a few links now and then.

Also, I’m not apologizing to anyone for posting pussy feet.

You may have noticed that there’s no update for Gone yet this week, and I’ve got an explanation for that. The artist, you see, is busy and not the fastest. On top of that, knowing full well that there was a good chance it would take more than a week for him to get me the next page, I got excited when I saw that first page and put it up right away. Hell, I put it up before it was completely finished.

Anyway, I’ll just tell myself that I’m using this first seven page story as a way to get ahead. Hopefully the second story will be started (by the next artist, I’ve already got a pile of them written) by the time The Time Traveler is finished. There will be some changes to the Gone page itself soon too.

I have a place where I can type things and imagine that many people will read it. Of course, I can also look at the site stats and see that… nobody reads it. It’s like I’m writing this in a diary hidden under my pillow, really. Following are bits of news related mostly to this site.

Here’s something cool. Neil Gaiman’s story How To Talk To Girls At Parties is available both as text and audio here. Gold if you’re too cheap/poor to buy the book it’s in right now, like me.

Work rolls on with A Deeper Shade of Gone and Hallowed. Shamus is working away at that first page, but apparently he’s having a few problems. I’ll post it as I get it. Hallowed is still in script form, but I’m getting closer and closer to the point that I’m ready to start aggressively seeking and artist so I can get a treatment out. Any artists who stumble across this should get in touch with me if they’re interested in taking a look. There will be much blasphemy.

I’m looking at a new short story too. It’s a solid idea, it straddles genres, it’s staying in my head; all of the good things. Now, one way to learn to write good stories is to read good stories, but there’s a problem with that for a beginning writer. To sell a story, Hell, just to get someone to read a story, even if they get it for free, you need to hook them with a killer beginning. I can read good stories by other writers until my eyes bleed, but most of them will be by writers already established as good. Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Theodore Sturgeon, they just don’t need as strong a hook as I do. I’ll read the whole story no matter how weak the beginning is, because I know it’s good. If I find a story by an unknown, though, I’ll not bother to finish it if the beginning is weak, because chances are that the whole thing is.

I’ve got a killer story, with a compelling narrative, a delicious twist, and a startling twist on the twist (which I hesitate to call a meta-twist, it’s more like a re-twist), but no fucking hook.

Anyway, I’m dangerously close to turning this into a lecture on literary theory, and nobody enjoys that. I’m out.

I haven’t been saying much here, I’ve been doing other things, you know, the kind that could lead to compensation of the monetary sort. If you’re good, I could leak a piece or two of my upcoming GN later.

So, I’ve been working on a bunch of stuff that would not be evident if the website were the only impact I have on the world that you’re aware of. I’ll grant that I don’t have much impact beyond this, but… what am I doing with my life?

Anyway, the infrastructure has been put in place for a new source of content! I’ll write reviews of comics, music, whatever, and you will read them. You’ve got no choice, I mean, what else have you got to do? I’ll mostly stick to indy stuff, things you may not have heard of already. I’m not going to say that I don’t like the new Batman title, but, let’s face it, DC don’t need no help marketing.

The first thing you’ll probably notice is the Amazon affiliate link I’ll be putting at the end of the review to make it a bit easier for you to find it if you think you might like to exchange your hard earned dollars for whatever I’m talking about. You should not feel obligated to buy things through me, although I like getting money for not actually doing anything as much as the next guy. If you’d rather support your local shop, that’s totally cool. Buying it from some huge chain is decidedly less cool, but if kowtowing to The Man is your bag, by all means, be that guy.

You’ll probably hear more out of me later.

So, I took a couple of days off for my birthday (yesterday), and I haven’t gotten as much done as I’d hoped. I’m not sweating it, though, as I’ve come up with some massively awesome ideas about fiction, specifically an exciting (to me, anyway) new way to go about the whole storytelling thing. I’ve got some potential collaborators in mind, so some people who read this should expect an email about it soon.

Some of you have noticed that the whole comment thing doesn’t really seem to be working. I don’t know what’s up with that. It will probably start working again at some point, we’ll see. The web-nymph is all over that shit. For now just email me if you want to say something.

Also, since the comments are boned I haven’t been able to add this to the comment to my doom and gloom end of the world post. Jeremy sent it to me, and it ties in with the whole social decay thing going on in New Orleans.

I had to use tinyURL, because the actual URL seems to be the only thing consistently making wordpress lose its shit…

That’s it for now, my head is buzzing with mad fictions.

Just threw up something I thought of at work this morning. Nothing heavy

ed. It’s been pointed out that this makes no sense if I don’t point out the link to the wants page over on the right there.

So I haven’t updated in a few days. This is because I’ve encountered someone who has voiced interest in optioning a screenplay by me, and I’ve been wandering around in a fog mumbling things about fairy tales and writing little notes that make no sense (”Who is at the pokergame?”) on bits of paper and loosing those same bits of paper. I’m not good for much, the prospect of getting paid seems to drop my IQ by about 80 points. Have you ever tried to get anything done with an IQ of 13?

Anyway, the main bit I’m posting about: In the past couple of days I’ve heard good songs from both Guster and Cake, two bands I usually hate. What’s up with that? I guess their latest albums are probably worth checking out.

New year, new website, huh? There’s this blog type thing here, and soon (i.e. a couple of days) I’ll have one or more webcomics so you can be amazed at my writing.

So, originally, I didn’t want this thing to be a blog. I was going to just post essays, or columns, or something, on a weekly basis because I fancied myself a bit of a journalist. Fuck that, though.

End result, I wrote some pieces that I don’t neccesarily hate to death. I’ll post them here as I feel like it, but don’t get used to that shit, I’m not going to keep up with the content-rich, I-think-I’m-saying-something-important bullshit.

The first, and I guess the main comic, will be A Deeper Shade of Gone. What I do is write a pile of short scripts and give them to various artists, giving new artists an opportunity to do a little work and get seen and giving me an opportunity to get my work out here where it’s visible.
It’s all sci-fi too, ’cause I loves the sci-fi.
That’s all for now, I suppose. This all came out a bit more disjointed than I meant it to be, but that’s how I roll, I guess.

By the way, this isn’t my first website. For bonus points try to find the old one and DON’T SHOW IT TO ME.