NOTES FROM THE EDITOR, part III

2009 - The Push for Prose. That was my intention. But I finished out 2008 by sending a script (our previous post) off to Ape Entertainment's open call for UFO stories. Not expecting much, I began to forge ahead on a new project I thought was timely, if only just so (more on that another time). But soon into the new year, I got a couple of emails that changed things a bit for me.

First, on January 6, this arrived from Joe Pruett (yeah, the guy that puts together Negative Burn and other great books like 13 Steps, The Art of Brian Bolland, P. Craig Russell, and others, and the latest iteration of James A. Owen's Starchild):

Hey, Chris. I'm putting together the next Negative Burn trade right now and would like to look this story over. I can't remember if I have or not. Can you send me a low res PDF to look at?

Joe

This was in response to a follow-up email I had sent six months prior. I am still waiting to hear if anything will come of this, but if nothing else, at least the synopsis I sent to Mr. Pruett piqued his interest, and the thought of being considered for Negative Burn - of which I am a huge fan - is exciting.

Then, the following morning, I received this in my inbox from Troy Dye, submissions editor at Ape Entertainment:

Hey Christopher,

I’ve read your story. I really like the dialogue and tone of the story. I am a little unsure as to why seeing a UFO makes the character do a 180. He wasn’t even sure what he saw or if he saw anything at all. And it didn’t seem like the UFO did anything to him. So I’m not sure I’m sold on the character’s change of heart. I think if you tweak that one part of the story a little bit by having something happen to the character to justify his change of heart, I think you’ll have a nice little story here that we would be interested in.

--Troy

And just like that, I was back to work on the comic script, which was great. This was the first time I had received any type of editorial feedback (in a professional sense) and it made sense to me. I try to be subtle when I am writing, and I worry that - as in this case - I sometimes stray into the obtuse.

Anyway. I got to work and sent off a rewrite the following evening.

More on that next time.