Hello Friends!
Thank you all for the positive responses to our revamping of GWP!We’d been talking for some time that we wanted to refocus on what we really love about our creative endeavors. Like so many of us we’re blue collar comics creators. We need to pay our bills while managing to find the time and energy to bring what’s in our heads and our hearts to the paper and then to you and the public. All that while seeking a balance between the time we spend with our families and loved ones and the time we spend being creative.
Time Management!
Every time we think we have it down something gets thrown in to screw it up. It can make it too easy to lose focus. It can justify stumbling, failure and disappointment. Before Quarantine I said more times than I care to admit “If I could just stay home from work for a month, I’d have this goddamn thing written!” When I suddenly found myself home though with a mountain of time on my hands all I could think about was how I was going to take care of my family during and after this? Be careful what you wish for? I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t also thinking of the cinder block of creative opportunity that had dropped in my lap while I wasn’t looking. Of course, I secured my family as best I could first. I became intimate with Netflix for a few days. I caught up on reading a pile of comics by my bed that I had grown accustomed to using as a nightstand.
After a couple of texts back and forth with Keith we got back to work on Road to Valhalla. That was the first day with less stress and weight off my shoulders. The first day I could see a path though this new nightmare visited upon us. Like most writers my laptop is near bursting with unfinished stories, ideas for stories, and stories that are finished and have never seen the light of day. Comic scripts, screenplays, and Novels. Pieces and parts. I love and I hate my laptop. Then in the grey nonstop Connecticut rain my email started to come to life. An artist friend in Arizona wanted to work on something. I had something for him. A friend from Iran wanted to pick up a story we had to put down when we both got dragged away by other “paying”projects. I had time to sew something up for that. The novel I’d been teasing and lying to for the last year also finally started getting some real attention to it as well. The best part though was when Keith reached out and started telling me all these ideas to revamp GWP.
When Keith gets excited, I get excited! We were struggling with the Con grind and expense. We LOVE being AT the Conventions but getting there and paying for them, it was getting harder to justify the cost for us. We didn’t get into this to just sell prints and stickers. We want to tell stories. There is absolutely nothing wrong with selling prints and stickers or whatever from your convention table but every show year after year we were seeing more and more of that and less and less books on tables or even talk of books at tables. We were slow to get our internet game going but we are remedying that now. Hell, we like the old way. We like making books, going to conventions, pushing the book, pushing the art and sharing with people all the things that excite us and bring us to the shows.
With these changes we’re adding firepower to our arsenal. Going forward we’re not forgetting the lesson’s we’ve learned during this time. We’re doubling down on storytelling. We’re reaching out across the world. We can’t wait to get out there and share what we’ve been doing and the new energy behind GWP.
Buy the book. Take the Ride.
~John E.