FCBD and Vikram Chauhan

Just a quick update on things before I post my monthly report for last month later this weekend. Its been a somewhat hectic couple weeks, and I haven’t been able to collate all my writing data as yet.

Anyway, moving on.

This past weekend was my first Free Comic Book Day, or FCBD for short. It is a global event and comics publishers all over put out a handful of comics that are free of cost for readers. Print or digital, they are absolutely free (the stores still have to pay though, so keep that in mind!). All I can honestly say is that it was a downright blast, at least as long as we don’t consider my Iron Man 3 experience on the same day, something that is best left to my review, which I’m hoping to get done this weekend.

My local bookstore of choice had a fair range of titles on offer by the time I got there, although they had already sold out on a few I had really been looking forward to, such as IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dark Horse’s Star Wars, Top Cow’s Aphrodite, and 2000 AD’s Judge Dredd. Pretty gutted really, but I did manage to pick up a few interesting titles, one of which happens to be an Archie’s Digest, a comic I have not read in YEARS. Possibly an entire decade at the least!

Nostalgia crits!

Here are the books that I picked up this weekend, including a couple trades for graphic novels that I’ve had a blast reading in digital. Money well-spent as far as I am concerned.

Left to right, that’s an X-Men spoof poster by somebody someone, Batgirl Volume 1 by Gail Simone, Witchblade Volume 1 by Ron Marz, Demon Knights Volume 1 by Paul Cornell , Green Lantern: Rebirth by Geoff Johns, Thanos Rising #1 by Jason Aaron, FCBD: A World of Archie’s Digest, FCBD: Marvel Infinity by Jonathan Hickman, FCBD: Superman #1 by Geoff Johns, FCBD: Valiant Masters, and FCBD: Valiant 2013.

Lots of fun titles those. For those interested, you can check out my review of Batgirl Volume 1 here, and the one for Green Lantern: Rebirth here.

Now, on to other things.

I finished the second-pass edits on Dharmayoddha last month and sent the novella out to a few beta-readers. Response has begun trickling in and so far its all been quite positive, with a few minor niggles here and there. I am pretty confident of the project now. This is, I think, just the right boost that I needed, and I can’t wait to hear back from everybody, and then begin the third-pass edits, fine-tuning things as and where they need to be, and there are few for sure, no doubts about that.

Also, I just finished the prequel story to Dharmayoddha, tentatively titled Dharmasankat: Crisis of Faith. It clocks in at 5,130 words exactly and I’m really glad that I finally got it done. The short story is intended for the Manifesto UF anthology by Tim Marquitz, and the submissions window for that closes on the 15th. I’m hoping that I can get it polished in time for the deadline, but the fear niggles that I left this off too long, and that it might not be ready.

If it is not, well, then, I can consider other avenues. Hopefully. We’ll see how that pans out.

But now, I’m pretty damn excited, being in a really good place with my writing.

Write on!