Odds and ends…

My scripting partner, Brian Pulido is more than a talented writer. He also is a film director and, of late, has been directing some local music videos. I got to go to the shoot for a Calabrese video. Calabrese is a Phoenix-based horror-rock band of talented musicians. Being on set for the shoot was a lot of fun and generated a couple of story ideas that, eventually, will get into something. The video is must see.

Aaron Williams is a talented artist and storyteller who has created a wonderful, independent comic: PS238 PS238 tells the story of a school for the children of superheroes. It’s chuck full of humor and heart and is a fun read. One of the very cool things Aaron has done is to incorporate a character I created, Revenant, into the comic as a mentor for Tyler—the son of two meta-humans whose powers have not yet manifested.

Revenant is an interesting character for me. He started as an updated Batman/Shadow style vigilante that I wanted to write about, then became a character in a Champions game. Ken St. Andre started running Crossover Earth, which was a play-by-mail superhero game where conflicts were resolved through writing stories. I played Revenant and developed a lot of tales. After that I penned a Revenant story for the Superheroes edited by John Varley and Ricia Mainhardt. He also appears in my Dark Conspiracy novels as the character Damon Crowley/El Espectro. He just kind of pops up everywhere, and I’m thinking of taking a couple of the unpublished stories and doing them as podcasts.

I just had a short story come out in the anthology Army of the Fantastic edited by John Marco and John Helfers. The anthology is a collection of stories dealing with elements of the fantastic in warfare. The authors were encouraged to pick out one thing, like Dragons, and figure how they’d be used in a tactical situation. I took a slightly different tack and wrote Wildest Dreams which I consider one of my best short stories ever. It’s been the story I read at conventions for the last year and audiences have very much enjoyed it (‘cept when I had to end in the middle since there wasn’t enough time to continue). It’s easy to find, as it’s the last story in the book.