Battle hymn of the independent creator

"The calvary isn't coming. You are the calvary."

I recently finished reading Like Brothers, the memoir-cum-Hollywood how-to from the Duplass Brothers. Their creative ethos is succinctly summed up by the following: “The calvary isn’t coming. You are the calvary.”

After their first feature film falls flat in post-production, the brothers re-conceptualize how to tell a story. They come up with the “available materials” school of film-making, first by filming a 5-minute short of one of them trying (and failing) to record an answering machine greeting. That gets them into Sundance. They repeat until they are ready to try to make another full-length film, completely self-funded, filmed in Mark Duplass’s then-girlfriend’s hometown in Maine, inside a van, and in their NYC apartments. The Puffy Chair ends up becoming one of the first films available on Netflix’s nascent streaming service.

Even when the Hollywood brass comes knocking and they get a bigger budget film into development, the brothers still continue their “available materials” method, making a second film themselves before the first one gets the green light.

“The calvary isn’t coming. You are the calvary” really resonated me because that’s what I have been doing since I started publishing more than a decade ago. I eschewed trying to get a book agent and trying to get a traditional publishing deal in favor of writing and publishing myself. And in the past decade, the number of indie writers has absolutely exploded. At the same time, the tools, software, conferences, groups, and support systems, etc. have grown alongside us. I remember having to format my first-ever short story in HTML and compiling it in Calibre, hoping that it would render properly on an e-reader. I remember scrounging for fiction campaigns that were live during my first Kickstarter.

It’s a completely different world and I am excited to keep creating in it.

Blood of Atlantis work log

Speaking of creations, you can now read Blood of Atlantis issue 2 in digital format via my BackerKit pre-order shop! Or pick up a copy of the physical issue, which should be shipping in the next few weeks.

On the writing front, I finished a rough draft of the script for issue 3. This time around, rather than trying to perfectly format the individual pages, I went for a somewhat quick and dirty method of getting loose descriptions and dialogue down and am now doing a second pass to clean everything up and expand details and descriptions. Here’s a preview:

I’m hoping to hand the script off to Fran Delgado for her review next week.

This is why I am so good at being an adult

Shout-out in particular to Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

You can just open a coffee shop in your driveway

This is literally a small shack in someone’s driveway, between the street and their house, which serves as a little one-man business. In the daytime, obviously, it’s a coffee shop. In the evening, however, it becomes a bar, with some basic beer and whisky offerings. (It’s much easier to sell alcohol in Japan than in America.)

Addison Del Mastro

recounts discovering a driveway coffee shop/bar in Kyoto:

Backyard Coffee And Jazz In Kyoto, Japan

An AI agent was put in charge of an office vending machine. It did not go well.

I would describe myself as an AI “bear,” the above article being yet another reason. Please wake me up when the LLMs stop hallucinating every other second and can do more than convert/extract unstructured data into something useful.

Stuff I read this week

I was on vacation the past week plus the July 4th holiday, so we have a supersize edition of SIRTW!

• Nights, Season One, Part Two: Probably the best comic you’re currently not reading. I’ll reproduce the opening epigraph to give you a sense of this urban fantasy/horror/slice-of-life/coming-of-age super amalgamation: “Florida is owned by Spain. America consists of 31 states. Vampires, ghosts, and other supernatural creatures are common and benign. The Internet is infantile and irrelevant.”

• Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: Two childhood friends become creative partners when they decide to design a video game together in college. Growing up around the same era as the two MCs, I really enjoyed all the video game references (although was annoyed that the dickish professor character did not reveal whether he liked Chrono Trigger).

• The Loss of the Star’s Tranquility: My friend Travis Riddle has a new fantasy book out set in Tobias Begley's Mana Mirror world. What happens when a floating magic-powered hotel cruise crashes into the teeming wilds of the Unclaimed Lands? Nothing good probably! (I just started reading this on Wednesday). As a fan of Riddle’s Jekua series, I am excited to see what he has in store this time!

• Filth & Grammar - The Comic Book Editor’s (Secret) Handbook: I started reading this on a trip 3 years ago and finally turned back to it. Having several produced comics under my belt made the book that much more useful.

Definitely the only person at the beach reading about comics

Assorted Comics

A new ASM volume (with beautiful art by Pepe Larraz), a new Absolute Batman mini-arc (with Friday artist Marcos Martín), the build to the finale of The Moon is Following Us, and an entire issue of splash pages. Plus a cyberpunk/hacker sci-fi tale with a promised 60-issue run.

And that’s a wrap! Tune in next Friday, where I will probably share my spoiler-free thoughts on the double-feature Superman and Fantastic Four movie week I have planned with my friend.