Table of Contents
Welcome Back (00:00)
Comics
Naked Kaiju Woman (03:17)
From Parts Unknown (05:15)
Fiction (Prose) (10:22)
Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 2 (11:14)
Space Opera Series (14:07)
Sci-Fi Romance (16:09)
Time-Travel Mystery Series (18:45)
Fiction Distribution Plan (20:48)
Games
Trading Card Game (22:42)
Podcasts (24:57)
Very Early Stages
Comic Strips and Verticals (26:16)
Kickstarter Comics (28:16)
Romance Shonen Manga (29:06)
Beyond the Blockbuster (32:42)
This Newsletter (33:52)
All or Nothing (34:05)
Release Info & Updates
Coming Up on the Substack (37:06)
Instant Ink Comic Book Podcast (38:17)
Super Secret Epilogue (38:50)
Welcome Back
Happy New Year!
I generally like to look forward. It's a real problem, actually. I have a really hard time living in the moment, as many would say, as I'm always looking at the next thing.
If I'm on a trip, I'm imagining what the next part of it's going to be like. I'm even fantasizing about the trip home and getting into my own bed - even though I may have been looking forward to that trip for months.
I'm always looking past it.
I do the same with my creative endeavors. Even though I might be in the midst of a campaign, or in the middle of writing something, I'm always thinking about the next project that I could be working on. A way around all this is to plan - and plan very carefully.
I have multiple places that I write things down. I collect all my information, giving myself the opportunity to do that “thinking ahead” and not restricting myself so much, while still being able to finish the task at hand.
It's a small miracle that I managed to get this newsletter out every single week. All that said, I've been really looking forward (wink, wink) to this post sharing everything that I have planned for 2025.
It's gonna seem like an awful lot, and frankly, it is.
The good news is a lot of this is actually grounded in some sense of reality, as I've already worked on a lot of it.
If you looked at this post at the beginning of 2024, you’ll see how much has changed from what I had planned and what I completed.
A big part of that was a lot of those projects were in an early state. I was still hoping to get a lot of work done and a lot of times there were things that were out of my control.
Some of it was entirely my control and it was just a decision that this isn't what I'm going to focus all my time on.
—
So today, I've broken up the post into a number of categories.
Comics being the first one. You're here for Pesto Comics, so of course, let's talk comics.
I'm expanding into a whole bunch of other stuff too. A lot of it's already in flight and just not ready for primetime quite yet — but will be coming out this year.
Yet, there's those other projects that I've been brainstorming, still in outline stages or very early drafts. For those, I put in a category called “very early stages”.
I'll tell you everything I have planned, even the stuff that may not see the light of day.
—
For the first half of the year, everything is very much in progress. Either a readable draft or work that's out there with editors. There is art that's done in a lot of cases.
I'm very excited to share what the slate is. I've been sharing a very small one at the end of every post, which has basically been Naked Kaiju Woman and the various issues of From Parts Unknown, but I have so much more that I'm working on and I'm happy to finally share it.
As things get to a point where I can start nailing dates down, they'll show up on that Pesto Comics release calendar.
I’m excited to share all of the things I'm working on. Hopefully I can get you excited too!
So with all of that in mind, let's get started and we'll start by talking about some comics…
Comics
Naked Kaiju Woman
In seven days, we will be launching Naked Kaiju Woman. That is January 8th.
I always try to launch these around 8am or 9am. It depends on how quickly I can get to my desk in the morning since you need to manually hit that launch button.
If this launch is as big as I hope, I have so much more planned beyond this.
I'll be working with Rafael on the next four issues of this book. He's very excited to get on top of it. I've been slow in getting him issue two, because I really want to make sure it's ready.
The way I've gone with these books is a little different than what I did with From Parts Unknown in the sense that these are one-off stories that have sequels.
Each book has its own self contained story, not so unlike everything else I've written with Crazy Latte Thing Called Love, Unlimited Udo or Stay Cool. Those books are all entirely self-contained. You get a full beginning, middle, and end - where From Parts Unknown is more serialized.
My goal is to get the second, maybe even third issue, of the Naked Kaiju series out in 2025. That is the hope, that Naked Kaiju Woman launches in January, and by the Spring, I'm able to set a date for that second issue.
Mid-Summer, I can tell you when the third one is coming. It may get pushed out to 2026. It really depends on how Rafael's schedule goes, and how much work he's getting outside of what I'm able to give him.
From Parts Unknown
Speaking of getting issues out: From Parts Unknown.
I've said it for months now that Daniel blew me away with not only how fast he is, but how he's been able to maintain, if not exceed, his quality with each issue. Every page he’s sent seems to get better every time.
I can't wait for you to see it all. As of this recording, I'm getting the pages for the series climax. I'm getting the last few pages of issue four that leads into an epic issue five. It starts getting more and more wild in terms of how the action and story beats go.
It gets very exciting. It really tries to pay off everything it set up in those first three issues. I think the fifth issue is a wonderful capper to this whole story.
The goal is to get this whole series out by mid-year, 2025. We're talking June July, you should be able to read the entire story beginning to end.
I know it's always been one of the problems with serialized work from indie creators in that you're limited in how frequently you're receiving issues.
If you're used to a monthly schedule when you're reading Batman or Spider-Man, you're not getting that from the indie set.
Reasonably so, right? It's a lot more challenging when you have one, two or three creators putting these books together. In a way to mitigate that, I've taken on all of the risk and have everybody working ahead so that I can get these all out in quick succession.
This story builds with each issue in such a way that you're not gonna want to miss how it ends.
Pitch Package with Big Time Editor
There’s a project I've been working on very quietly.
I've been working with a very respected editor. Frankly, I'm very shocked she's even willing to work with me. We’re getting a pitch together. It's still in the early stages.
The goal is to pitch to a couple of publishers. She’s helped to shape it into something so much better than what I had in my head. It's something I didn't have entirely whole cloth.
I had an aesthetic, I had a couple characters very clear in my mind and a very basic setup scenario, but I didn't have that full story with the stakes and everything needed for a complete story. She was able to guide it to where it needed to be. It's been an absolute pleasure working with her.
It means a ton. And I think this is going to be, if it gets picked up by a publisher, it's going to be huge. I think everyone who enjoys my work will really enjoy what we're putting together here. And the artists I have. Lined up and hopefully I can get them to commit to something.
If this all comes together, it's gonna be huge. I really hope that comes to pass.
I've put so much work into it thus far that I want to see this to fruition one way or another. If all the publishers pass on this, because it's just not their style or maybe not what they're looking for at that time, I will get it up to that standard nonetheless and put it through on Kickstarter.
The intended crowd for this is the direct market. Either way, if you’re here reading this, you’d enjoy it.
My hope is that you're going to see it on the shelves of your LCS and I'll be begging you talk to your shops ahead of the FOC and all that. We'll see how that goes, but that's a big one for 2025.
More Comics in the "Very Early Stages" Section
I have some more comics projects planned. However, I'm saving those for the very early stages section.
I don't want to embarrass myself and cut a bunch of projects that I didn't fully think out. I'm putting them there as a “these might happen if everything goes well.” You'll see my slate is very full. so it may be me biting off more than I can chew right now.
I'm really hoping to get to all of it but my focus, for now, remains on this pitch project, Naked Kaiju Woman and From Parts Unknown.
Fiction (Prose)
So what's next? Fiction.
When I did the post-mortem for Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 1, I mentioned that I really want to get back into doing prose work and regular fiction.
If you've read any of my work, you know I like to go very pulpy, very fast, very plot driven with deep characters where everyone's terribly flawed. Sometimes I'll throw in a noir ending too, but my goal is to always go very pulpy. It's what I love to read and write.
I'm not a “literary” person so that's how my fiction goes and that's what I'm aiming for. The goal this year is to get not just one, but a handful of series started.
A couple of these are in progress. I am setting up editorial assessments already as I'm working on the manuscripts for each - but not just that.
Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 2
The one thing that's rock solid Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 2. Vol. 1 went so well that I have to do it again.
I'm going to be opening the call for entries probably in a month or so when I have some time in between Naked Kaiju Woman and the next issue From Parts Unknown.
I know that once I open those gates, stories start flooding in and I hate having people waiting for months at a time for me to read their work.
I'm going to aim to launch it at the same time that I launched the first volume this year, which was a November launch.
That means if I open up the call for entries in the early part of the year, we lock everything down in the summer. That'll give me time to make sure that the book is 100 percent done and formatted well ahead of time.
That was a challenge with volume one that I ran into where I am still working on formatting after the campaign has completed. I always want to have my books more or less ready for print as soon as the money comes in.
Hopefully we surpass what we did with the first one, both In backing and all that but also, the quality of stories and the breadth of stories.
If you haven't joined the discord for Big Smoke Pulp - now's the time. We have some of the authors from the original from Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 1 there along with myself.
Space Opera Series
I like space opera in the sense that it doesn't go too deep into the “science” of sci-fi. I'm not a hard sci-fi guy. I don't know enough to get into the specifics of how everything works.
I don't know if The Martian by Andy Weir, for instance, was scientifically accurate or bunk. I didn't necessarily get into that whole argument. I like space opera because the point is more what is true to the world rather than what’s accurate.
The science only needs to make sense within the world building. The rules that are set up within the world, those are the rules you need to follow.
I like to do a bit of research and make sure I'm not coming totally out of left field into the fantasy side of things though.
I have a space opera story that I've been working on. My goal is to make this an ongoing series if it all goes right.
Lengthwise, I'm actually aiming for novella length.
I know there's a challenge in that sense in terms of the independent author market and doing novellas. They don't tend to do as well as full on novels. The more you can meet the word count expectations of readers the better you're going to do.
However, if i'm being true to myself, I have to stay within the type of writing that I enjoy reading. That’s what I'm going to be best at writing.
That's not to say I won't expand to novels at some point, but I think for, especially for the space opera series, my goal is to make a very action packed, very tight. I think novella is the way to go.
I'll certainly be sharing more as this all comes together.
Sci-Fi Romance
The next is a sci-fi romance series.
It may seem weird. I put sci-fi in there to soften the blow, but the truth is this is more romance than sci-fi. It's sci-fi in the way that The Time Traveler's Wife was a sci-fi.
I've done a post on my Apex anniversary, which is basically saying that I've been with my wife for longer than I've been without her.
I don't think you get there where you've been with somebody that long without being somewhat of a romantic.
I enjoy my romance novels. I read a whole ton of them. I'm not a spicy romance guy. Maybe it's because I've been with my high school sweetheart my whole life that I'm a prude in that way.
I don't have anything against it. You do you. I just can't write it without getting squeamish. Therefore, rather than leaning on the steamy end of things, I'm leaning on the sci-fi end - but it's certainly a romance series.
It's written in the way that romance novels are written today. We start with our main couple, and as we meet their friends in the expanded cast, the sequels will follow them finding their love.
I have no idea how this will do in the market. I'm not a romance writer in particular, but I love the genre.
I'm not doing all of this to make it big in one genre or another. I just want to write what I enjoy. That's the fun of being an independent writer is that you do what you want.
You write to market, of course. You write things that people would want to read, but I don't think putting yourself in a box is a way to have any fun. I could just be writing the same thing over and over but I want to show what i'm able to do.
I think writing a romance series, even if it's tethered to sci-fi to make it somewhat familiar not only me, but my audience, is a way to go.
I don't think you could get the depth that you get in a romance novel in a comic unless there were 40 issues and that's very hard to do as an indie.
I can't wait to share this one with you. It's very off the wall in terms of what you would have expected based on my whole catalog of work, but I think If you read it, you'll see the themes behind it, and that it's definitely written by me.
It's going to be romance, but it's going to be pulpy. That's what I hope you can expect from me going forward. That if I'm writing it, regardless of genre, it's going to be pulpy.
Time-Travel Mystery Series
This time travel mystery series is the first of the novel series that I actually thought up, started to write and outline.
However, I think it needs a little more research because the time travel aspect of it. I didn't want to give myself homework and I did. I usually try to write things that I can do off the cuff and follow up with research to fill in the gaps.
This one, I've put myself in a corner where I have to do some research before I really dig into the writing.
I really love the main character of this series, and I think based on how strong that character is, I can easily transplant this into a comic series as well. I initially thought of this one as a comic series, but I really want to establish the character and the time-travel mechanics in depth. I can then have that spin off into comic series once I’ve setup that context.
I'm thinking a little broader in how this series will play out. Because of that, I put it last on my list for releases this year as it still needs the most work.
This is the project that I'm working on the side, while I the other two series going full steam ahead because I want to get those out as soon as possible. This series, I'm really honing and trying to make a good sense of it.
Fiction Distribution Plan
In terms of distribution of all these series, my goal is to always start on Kickstarter. That may be a challenge given the backlog now between From Parts Unknown and Naked Kaiju Woman having nearly monthly launches.
It'll be hard to squeeze in a novel or even a novella series in there, but I'll see what I can do.
Worst case, I may have to set a secondary account up so that I can separate the comics from the novels. I prefer not to do that, but we'll see what we can do.
If I have to shorten the time in between and have a couple of campaigns in fulfillment at the same time, so be it.
Kickstarter will have some really cool exclusives, like hardcovers and things that would only be available through Kickstarter. Shortly after, there would be a release on Amazon, Kobo, Google Books, Apple Books and so on, going wide after a Kickstarter. This make it so the Kickstarter will almost be like a pre release.
Rapid release is the name of the game this year.
My goal is to get as much as I can launched- and to those of you that support everything I do, I'm going to test that a bit this year!
The good news is: if a wrestling comic book isn't for you, we'll have something totally different with mystery.
If space opera isn't for you, we'll have something totally different in romance.
I'm not trying to please all audiences. I'm trying to please myself and all the different things I'm into. Being able to tackle all of these things simultaneously is keeping me very motivated to get it all out to you.
So 2025: very exciting.
Games
Trading Card Game
I'm putting together a TCG with a very good friend of mine, Danon Hennessy.
I don't want to share too much about this one. It's still in the very, very early stages, but we've done a playthrough of the game and it plays really well. We've refined it quite a bit. We probably have a couple more playthroughs in our future as we expand the game with more players.
We'll see how that all goes before we really start ramping up and getting into production. At that point, we can start sharing how this game is played and what it all looks like.
I see how healthy the gaming space is on Kickstarter and I just didn't want to be left out. I had the right partner in Danon to reach out to about it.
We have worked on projects together for decades now, and I think this is one of the biggest ones we may have done. I'm very excited for how it's all coming together, and if not for the physical distance between us and how difficult it is to actually get time to be in a room together it would probably be a lot further along.
That said, it's giving us a lot of time to mull over it and make sure that we're putting together the best possible product we can. We’re aiming for mid-2025.
Danon is the games guy. We’d likely be launching this under his own Kickstarter account and you can find a lot more out about him with his business: Dice and Development.
If you saw us in Niagara, hopefully you picked up his card. He's doing some really cool things.
I think we came up with something amazing and I really can't wait to start showing everybody it and getting people playing. Hopefully we'll go to some board game cafes out here and the gaming shops to get this in everyone's hands. We really want people to jump aboard this game.
I wish I could share more but not my place. I just wanted to let you know that something big in the gaming space is coming out and I'll certainly be sharing a lot more as we nail things down.
Podcasts
The Instant Ink Comic Book Podcast will continue to be going strong through next year.
I'm starting to get a lot better at getting it all edited and getting ahead of the game. If I'm being entirely honest, the podcast is a lot of work to put together. I don't have any regrets about it, but it's a little more than I suspected it would be.
That said, we're so far ahead in terms of us recording and episodes coming out that I'm getting a little bit of relief as I'm able to put all this together in my spare time. Hopefully, if we're doing it right, this momentum carries right through the end of the year.
It should be a lot of fun on the podcast this year. If you're interested in being on the podcast, just shoot me an email and let me know. You don't have to be a comic writer or artist. If you have a very deep interest in comics or even just literature and writing and pulpy stuff, by all means, come be on the show, even if comics aren't your bag!
Check out the podcast and see how we do it. We will hold your hand in getting a page created if it's not something you're familiar with. We'll make sure that we get something awesome done together so don't be afraid to join us.
Very Early Stages
Comic Strips and Verticals
Let's talk about the stuff that is way too early to be talking about, but I'm gonna do it anyway: the very early stages stuff.
Last year, I committed to doing a comic strip and then quickly realized that I'm not where I want to be as an artist. You saw I had some fun with Inktober. That was me doodling.
I wasn't really putting time into making things look good. I was just doing enough so that I could get the page out. Even then, time got away from me and I didn't finish Inktober this year.
That's my concern with starting a comic strip.
I've been doing some stuff on the side. I've been working on it, but it's not something that I can commit and say is definitely coming out. I see all the fun that's happening on GlobalComix with verticals. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that format.
I don't necessarily love the format reading wise, but I'm liking the experimental nature of it. It seems to be very popular, and I want in.
Originally, I was aiming to do comic strips like the old newspaper, Garfield-style comic strips. Now, I'm into trying vertical. I've already been thinking about how I can do it a little differently, that it's not just going to be a strip in a vertical format.
It'll be something made for the platform, but that takes a lot of time that we'll take away from these other projects. You can see my plate's pretty full. So although it's on my list, it may not be something that I'll make it to in 2025.
I have three series fully-written for a year's worth of episodes just sitting there and waiting for me to learn how to draw. (I actually had an artist that I was working with and that kind of fell through as there was some complications and just getting a hold of them.)
I would love to get these strips out there soon, whether in vertical or strip format. There was a fourth one, outside of these, that I announced as “Working (After) Life” in last year’s New Year’s post. I might use that to experiment first.
Long story short: this is very much in the “we'll see” category, but my goal is to, at some point experiment with comic strips and verticals.
Kickstarter Comics
As far as doing traditional comics on Kickstarter, I have one idea I've been developing but it's still so early and I'm still not a hundred percent on it.
I wanted to do a body-hopping type series, not as serious as an Altered Carbon or Old Man's War, but I want to do something in that vein with that concept.
Of course, with the way I think of things, it always ends up being a little stranger and a little sillier. It's very early stages. I'm still not even locked down on the characters, but it's an idea I really want to explore.
If I get a new series together by the end of the year, it may be this one. It's January. who knows if this one makes it out of the idea bank. I have a whole bunch of other ideas that I'm developing, but this one seems to be the furthest along, yet still not far enough to commit and say I'm definitely following through with it.
So we'll see if this one comes to life.
Romance Shonen Manga
Another idea that’s off the usual path is a romance/slice-of-life Shonen manga. I mentioned how I really enjoy the romance genre and I was talking primarily about novels in that, but I also really enjoy the manga that's being put out in this category, especially the Shonen level.
Like I like the really long, drawn out “will they, won't they - oh my god, she touched my hand in issue 40” kind of thing. I have an idea that's in that vein. Maybe I won't take that long to get to to the point - being an indie. It would be cost-prohibitive to drag things out too long.
But I really love the vibe of the whole genre and that feeling of finding your first love. I mentioned I've been with my wife since high school, and I'm always looking back at that time when we first met, and when it was all still new, very fondly.
I think Manga does it almost better than anyone else.
I wanna dip my toe in that. I have my characters, I have a very loose outline, but I haven't really dug into this. We'll see how it all comes out. I don't know if Kickstarter would be the home for it. Maybe it fits better on Globalcomix as a weekly and then it gets collected on Kickstarter?
It's still too early to tell. The reason it's in the early stages is not so much the story. I think I have a good handle on that. It's how to make this work in the marketplace.
If I were in a position where everything was super profitable and I had some money to play with: This would be on the “it's happening” list. However, to do it right, I think I need to invest quite a bit and I'm not in a liquid position given every campaign I've done thus far has not crossed that line into the black quite yet.
This one waits for either a sustainable model or some campaigns that overperform, allowing me to invest in this a lot better.
Publication
Short Stories
This is a very big, broad category. I fell off doing this regularly as I was focusing on trying to get everything done for the Kickstarters and going to conventions.
I still got a couple of articles out there last year. I didn't spend much time doing short stories. And I spent a bit of time doing short stories. The ones I did do, I threw in as stretch goals in the first volume of Big Smoke Pulp.
Thanks to all of the wonderful backers who just kept hitting those stretch goals - those short stories found a home. That wasn't my original intent though. My intent was to try to get in other people's work and submit those short stories everywhere I could.
It’s’ something I want to get back to.
The wonderful thing about a short story is you can have something done in a weekend, if you focus. Focus is hard, but, in theory, I could get these things done quick.
Hopefully, it'll give me a bit of a break from writing all the novellas, and novels, and the comics, and all that other stuff I'm working on.
Articles
For the articles, there's a online publications that I'm a huge fan of.
I want to start querying more to get articles on their sites. The big goal is to expand my profile, get my name out there, bring more people into this tent, and hopefully all these projects will just grow and grow from there.
Beyond the Blockbuster
One of the places I'm going to start experimenting with is Medium.
I hope to find some consistency in doing so. I have one publication that I'm going to put together called Beyond the Blockbuster.
This is focused on talking about the business of movies. Not just movies in themselves, but the business of movies.
I like that platform quite a bit. There's a lot of cool stuff.
I find a lot of the articles there are a little bit cannibalistic in nature - mostly articles about writing on Medium.
You do see a little bit of that on Substack too. Some of the most successful Substack writers are people writing about Substack.
My goal is to use that platform to write about my interests which I don’t get to do here. It’s very much an experiment. We’ll see how it goes. If there’s an interest for it here, maybe I do it as a Substack instead - or in tandem.
Speaking of…
This Newsletter
This newsletter, of course, will continue to come out weekly - and for free. I'm going to keep working ahead where I can. Some things are time sensitive, but my goal is to always have something in the hopper to send you every Wednesday at Noon.
All or Nothing
That's what 2025 looks like. Last year I went with a theme of “New Year, New All of Us” It's super corny. Forgive me for it. I was really thinking about reinventing myself as this “Kickstarter guy” and as a comic writer. That was my goal.
I write comics and everywhere I went, I was actually calling myself a writer and I had books to point to. It was something that I had always dreamt of doing and, although I had a couple of books out there that did really well in Unlimited Udo and Stay Cool, my goal in 2024 was to really get my name out there, to have people think of me when they see the work and have it all coalesce as one.
I think I achieved that, mostly. There's a lot more to go, but I’m very happy with how that's all happened. I think the theme worked, although I don't really think it did anything.
What's the theme for 2025?
You can see how big the slate of things I want to do this year is. That's for a couple of reasons. #1) I'm making up for lost time. #2) I put so much money and time into this and this is the year that it needs to start paying off.
I don't need to break even on everything I've spent. I would consider a lot of this “an investment”. All the prior campaigns I’ve done are an investment for me to get here. The goal is this year to cross that threshold to where this business becomes sustainable.
If it wasn't for my day job, none of this happens. There's no way that I could continue putting out books and lose money every single time I do it, even though they're doing well and I'm clearly building an audience.
2025 is where I get to cash in on all that investment I made in 2024. This year is all or nothing. I'm going to put my full effort into having these books sell and doing everything I can to get my name out there.
I thank you for listening. I know this was a long one, but it'll be a long year that'll feel very short with all the stuff I have planned. I'm so happy you're here with me and here's to having a wonderful 2025.
Release Info & Updates
Upcoming on Substack
January 8
Let's Get Naked (Kaiju Woman)
A comic series with nothing to hide.
January 15
The Magic of Dictation
A writing hack for hacks like me.
January 22
Taboo and Kickstarter
Do you need to do an NSFW book to be successful?
Upcoming Appearances
Pesto Comics Release Calendar
Instant Ink Comic Book Podcast
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