A bit of good news...

Today I finished Writing and Inking Formera Book 2. I sat on how to end the book for the longest time because quite honestly I didn’t know when would be a good stopping point as in my mind the story just keeps on going and going. But I gotta cap the book off at some point and I had some misgivings about how to do it.

The first book was writing with the Web in mind. While it’s true I began the story to be a printed comic book (hence why I colored it), it didn’t really take off until I started posting the comic online at SmackJeeves.com. There, I found a following of people and by the time I got to around 160 pages, I was ready to propose it to prospective comic companies. The first book contains pretty much everything I originally had up online... but this second book is entirely done from scratch.

As such, I began writing the second book in much greater depth than the first. I have a clearer view now of where I want the series to go, and so I began setting up key events that will eventually all come together in the end. The problem with how to end Book 2 came when I felt that I needed closure on some of those events, and as I rapidly ran out of room in the book and time to finish it.

I started to think that I needed just ONE MORE chapter at the end of the book to get closure on the events I laid out earlier, to wrap up the story arc a bit cleaner, and to set up what the goal of the next book was going to be. But in the end, I just couldn’t figure out how to do that in 15 pages. There’s so much to do and no place to put it. I can’t write 2 extra chapters for that would take away from the climax of the story.

After a lot of careful consideration, I finally arrived at what I think is the best solution. There really is one main goal prevailing throughout the book, and at the end it climaxes that story arc. While there are other events set up to play important roles later on, they do not HAVE to be resolved now and I can devote more time to them in a future book. I had to do a bit of rewriting for the end, but very little altering of the artwork. Not to mention I kinda like ending these books rather suddenly. People who have read the first Formera will know what I’m talking about.

So that’s that. I have finished inking Book 2 and now all that remains are to color it and make a cover. With any luck, the book will come out for December as promised.

I still have a lot of work to do on this book, but it is an enormous relief to have the tedious inking process over with. My favorite part of writing the books comes from the actual WRITING of them, in which I sketch out on paper the story panel by panel in pencil. Having to Ink, Scan, Color, Letter, etc... that’s the mundane work I don’t like doing as it sometimes feels like I’m just reiterating myself.