Indy Comics Writer

About a year or so ago, the online publisher Virtual Tales accepted my prose novella Hero for publication. It was a big deal at the time; It was the first piece of comic-book type writing I’d ever had accepted by a real publisher.

(By real publisher I mean one who actually pays me money for my book. If you have to pay a publisher — any money at all — then it’s not a real publisher.)

You can order the book online now at Virtual Tales. And I certainly did convince my family members and friends to order some copies. Then something odd happened: I began to dislike the novella.

It’s hard to put my finger on, but when I read it, it didn’t sound like me. Perhaps my writing had changed. Hero, for the most part, is a serious book, almost grim. Most of the fiction I write tends to be more lighthearted. I like flawed heroes who usually come out on top, despite the relative incompetence or lack of ambition.

But this story features characters who murder. It features drugs and gambling and all sorts of vice. So, for the longest time, I ignored Hero. I figured if anyone stumbled across it on Virtual Tales or the other Web sites where it is offered and wanted to buy it, fine, a little bit more money for me. If not? Well, that’d be fine, too.

Then the editor at Virtual Tales contacted me and told me the news: The company was going to turn Hero into an actual print book. He just needed me to go over a newly edited version of the story to search for any mistakes or changes I’d like to make.

So I read the story again — just this weekend, in fact — and something odd happened again. I began to like Hero again. Sure, it’s not lighthearted at all. But that’s fine. There’s no crime in dark fiction, after all. And I could start to hear myself in there again.

So today, I’m fond the story again. And I’m looking forward to Hero making the leap from online prose story to the actual, tangible world of print. To me, at least, print has always seemed more real than online writing.

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