Hard-Driving Heroes

This is the first comic I got published, and finally available.

The title is Hard-Driving Heroes, and its divided into two sections: a webcomic and a CD (in which my work appears in the CD booklet). A quick note: I'm just the writer. A whole slew of artist have been illustrating the various elements of Hard-Driving Heroes.

This is my first work-for-hire experience, and it has been a bit of learning curve. I have a lot of creative control, but this has taught me a lot about what's expected when you sign on to write someone else's story.

Creative and constructive criticism are both welcome - like I said, it's been a learning experience so far, so I'm sure there are things which need a little work.

Actually, I wasn't approached - I found the job on Deborah Ng's Freelance Writing Jobs a while back. It was the first comic book I'd ever seen posted there, so I immediately replied and sent some clips of stuff I'd done in the past. After a couple e-mails, I got the job.

I guess the moral of the story is to always keep an eye out on any freelance writing job site - they just might have an opening for a comic book writer.

I think it can be challenging following someone else's pacing. I'm just talking about story pacing (although that's some of it), but also they're pace of doing things opposed to yours. I know my employer Vincent is on one hand extremely patient (a must for the webcomic biz) but on the other hand very demanding we have more scripts to fill a bigger archive - and this can be a bit frustrating when you're trying to tell a story effectively more than fill out page after page.

The question I'm grappling with right now is when do I move on to my own book. I just had my own comic picked up by a publisher (which I'll post in a month or two), so the question remains for me - when do I move on to divert more energy to my work. Obviously, it's something I haven't figured out yet.

Most of my writing life, it seems, is one big balancing act.