Actually, it has been nearly two weeks since my last update. I upgraded this site to WordPress 3.2 (now 3.2.1) and it is not playing nice at all with Firefox 5.0 or Google Chrome 12.0.742.122.

Some of you know that I have been back in school for the last two years. The class I just completed was more intensive than most and was facilitated by an extremely demanding (read: picky) facilitator, so work on my various projects has been slow. The good news is that I have no class for the next five weeks, so I will  be able to do a lot.

In the past two weeks Geoff and I added a little bit of polish to the chapters in Star Trek Soldiers of Pawns: War and Peace that I finished prior to my last update. I only managed to complete one new chapter and still have to take a final pass through it before I send it to Geoff. That’s it. That’s all I got done. I look forward to picking up the pace a lot during this break.

We’re back! The site has been offline for a few weeks due to technical issues and an unavoidable delay in correcting them, but all is well again…I hope!

During those past few weeks I finished four more chapters in Star Trek Soldiers of Pawns: War and Peace. The first of those chapters was a brand new one—another one featuring Gary Mitchell, whose role has grown immensely as this story has developed. The second spends more time with James T. Kirk and Captain Christopher Pike as they discuss the very unusual situation in which they have found themselves. The third looks at a separate but related situation through the eyes of one of our Klingon antagonist. The fourth returns to Gary Mitchell’s predicament and introduces someone who Star Trek fans will recognize, sort of, and promises to be a lot of fun while developing Mitchell’s character in a way no one has seen before.

I also continued developing some of the Omniverse Productions comics shortly after the site went down, bringing two more titles, Solfleet and Recon 7, much closer to the point where I will be ready to begin scripting. As I posted in Facebook then, Recon 7 has gone through about half a dozen title changes in the process, so I’m not sure what I’m going to call it at this point.

The last two weeks have been even busier than the previous one, so much so that I missed posting last week’s update completely.

Over the last two weeks I completed the final draft of Elsewhen issue #1 and started issue #2. I also returned to work in Star Trek Soldiers of Pawns: War and Peace, completing the chapter following the point where I left off several weeks ago. I have found that the pacing requires I insert a brand new chapter at this point to separate two chapters that should not follow one directly after the other.

Happy Mothers’ Day to all the moms out there.

This last week was a fairly productive one. My biggest accomplishment was finishing my formatting changes to the manuscript of Solfleet: The Call of Duty to meet the requirements of what I hope will be my new publisher, and then sending it off to them. Now the waiting begins, but in the meantime…

I continue to work on book #2 in the series, Solfleet: Beyond the Call. While I am already several hundred pages into it, I recently had massive brainstorm that resulted in my deciding to add a whole new subplot to it. It is going to take a significant amount of work to weave it in, but it will add a lot to the story so it is something I am definitely going to do.

I also returned to the other novel I am working on as a co-author, Star Trek Soldiers of Pawns: War and Peace. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I started easing back into it. I have been away from it for several weeks, so I could not simply pick up where I left off. I had to go back and reread what Geoff and I wrote over the last few chapters to put myself back into the right frame of mind and get a feel for the story pace again. I expect to start moving forward in this one again in the coming week.

Bill Lutz is currently inking the pages for issue #1 of Star Trek Phase-II: The Illustrated Adventures, “Friends and Foes”. I have already written all 12 issues of that story, so the bulk of my work on that project is done. All I have to do is wait for him to ink and for Rob Barnes to color, then I will do the lettering and get the thing released. For those of you who might not know, this is a FREE digital comic book based on the Internet’s award-winning number one Star Trek fan film, Star Trek Phase-II. Bill and I are both part of the production crew and this comic is being done as a supplement to the live-action episodes.

As for the Omniverse Productions LLC properties currently under development…

1. Solfleet: I made a few more notes and have a firm enough direction now, so I can start outlining the first story.

2. The Legend of Khi-Mara: The first 12 issues are already written so I have started designing the main characters of each chronicle in 3D CGI. I finished Anteri and Cleopatra Vasdegahm a few weeks ago and finished Kwon-Lo Chen soon after. This week I finished Aria Castellanos. I realize no one reading this knows who these characters are, but you will.

3. Return of the Frontiersmen: As I have said before, this one is Bill’s creation. He is developing it. Beyond that I do not know. If he chooses to, he is free to reply here with an update.

4. Elsewhen: It has been months and I have heard nothing from the company that owns the rights to the games that I was hoping to base this on, so I have decided to adjust the premise as necessary and make it another all-original creation. While on the one hand I am somewhat disappointed because I thoroughly enjoyed the game series, there is a silver lining. As an all-original story, I am free to take it wherever I want to with no restrictions…within the limits of the law, at least.

5. Starship Endeavour: This one is still early in development, as I have been devoting my time to everything I just wrote about above. Based directly on the original Star Trek series, issues of Starship Endeavour will be made available as FREE bonus comics to anyone who buys an issue of one of our original titles.

As always, there are several other projects waiting in the wings. Unfortunately I, too, only have 24 hours in a day.

Lastly, I have posted a call for comic book artists in facebook. It is essentially the same as the one in my previous post here. This call is for PAID work, and I encourage anyone who would like to take a shot to do so. The worst that can happen is that we tell you, “No thank you.” On the other hand, if we like what we see then we will make you an offer and you will have the opportunity to get paid to create art. We certainly have plenty of work available.

During Bill’s visit a couple of weeks ago, I learned some things about illustrating comics that led me to start rewriting the Legend of Khi-Mara comic scripts that I had been working on. This week I finished the rewrites and concluded The Chronicle of Kwon-Lo Chen. With that, the first twelve issues are written.

When I finished that, I started doing one more pass through Solfleet: The Call of Duty to prepare it for a new publisher. That publisher has certain specific manuscript requirements that the previous one didn’t have, so I have to make a number of minor changes and fixes, none of which will alter the actual story. Hopefully this pass will only take a couple of weeks and I can return to my final writing pass on Star Trek Soldiers of Pawns: War and Peace sometime in mid-May and finish that before the fall. Once that is finished, all my novel-writing energy will be poured into Solfleet: Beyond the Call. I intend to finish that before the calendar flips to 2012.

I have also, during whatever shorter blocks of writing time I can squeeze in here and there, started making story notes for the Solfleet and Elsewhen comics, and have started developing the Recon 7 comic. Bill continues to develop his Return of the Frontiersmen comic.

Bill Lutz has completed the illustrations for the all new expanded issue #1 of  Star Trek Phase-II: The Illustrated Adventures. He will begin to ink them next week, and then send them off to Rob Barnes for coloring.

As I said in my last post, I dove back in on that Thursday. However, I found myself struggling and soon realized it was time for a break. Not a break from writing, but a break from Star Trek Soldiers of Pawns. That, too, is part of my writing process. I will work on a single project for several hours every day for weeks or months at a time, but there soon comes a point in time when I have to step away for a little while. I did the same thing with The Call of Duty. In the end, doing that—taking those breaks—makes for a better product. I will likely be getting back to Star Trek Soldiers of Pawns in the next week or so. Read more

Well, even writers get sick. Two Fridays ago I got ill and I had to take a break from writing. Then, just as I was getting ready to dive back in this past weekend, I had a relapse. So it’s been about a week and a half since I’ve made any progress in the novel. Now I have to write two research papers for school this Wednesday night, but come this Thursday I’ll be diving back in.

I finished chapter 28 yesterday. While Gary Mitchell has appeared in several previous chapters, this is the second chapter that really focuses on him and features him. This chapter took a while, not only because real life interfered a lot with my writing time, which it did, but also because Geoff had made a number of changes (for the better) since my previous pass. Combining the best of the old with the new and making it flow smoothly and logically is a time-consuming process.

I just finished chapter 27…again. As I posted earlier—only in Facebook if I remember correctly—when I finished it last week and sent it to Geoff, he replied with some ideas for new material to add to it. Those ideas were very good ones, so I agreed immediately to write in the new material. That’s the way the writing process goes sometimes. A writer (or in this case, writers) can work through several drafts and be nearly finished, and then suddenly have a great idea for new material. Some writers like to make a note and continue moving forward when that happens. I prefer to stop, go back and make the changes, and then continue forward. That is what Geoff and I did here, and we both agree that as a result, chapter 27 is much better than it was.