Read the real life stories and experiences of freelance writer Mike Gagnon.

We visited Danny last night and he's been getting worse over the last couple of days. He was in so much pain last night that he was barely conscious at times and could barely speak. I'm not religious, but all I ask of anyone who reads this to send their good thoughts, prayers, or what have you out to him. 

Thanks.

Mike 

Posted by: lightning at 14:01 | link | comments (2)

Quick Plug...

Hey folks check it out! I'm at 49,975 hits! Just 25 away from 50,000! Woohoo!

Also you can go buy Dreams in Texture on the website right or click this link to the Booksurge buy page for the book: http://booksurge.com/product.php3?bookID=LGHT00003-00001&affiliateID=A000823

The Main Feature... 

Okay so I promised I'd talk about a porject that I was recently involved with that never got published. Guess what it was? Most of the regular readers will know, c'mon guess...That's right Captain Canuck. Things have been stirring up lately and here's why.

The other day between visiting hours I hit the Owen Sound comic shop for the first time in awhile. There, I saw on the racks several copies of each issue of the Captain Canuck: Unholy War series. Thet's the project that was signed up before mine was. Anyway, against my better judgement I bought all three and read them the next day.

Now I'm not trying to be bitter, "sour grapes"ish, or say I'm the only one who can do a good script, I'm not saying anything near that; but I do have several distint impressions about this series, both good and bad.

The new Mr. Gold is ripped off from somewhere. I Don't remeber where yet. I think from a movie. I will figure it out and update you though.

The art is weak. It's not horrible. It's almost mainstream pro level. I'm sure that Drue Langlois will keep improving as he draws more. With a little practice his art could be good enough to land him a job at the bigger comic companies. I truly hope he keeps at it. I was a little dissapointed with his depiction of the original Cap though.

The script is weak. It's nothing personal against Riel Langlois, I'm sure he's a great guy, but this was the most disapointing thing about the whole series. The whole concept and motivation behind the new Captain Canuck and his allies is not clearly definesdor explained. People just pop up out of the blue to hep him make hero gadgets. A lot of the dialog between characters is choppy and disjointed. Sometimes it's like reading a conversation with people who don't finish a sentence and change topics frequently without any segway. The ending of the series was goofy and a huge disapointment.

Speaking of the ending there's something that ticks me off. That series was written and in production before I started work on my now defunct series. So creator and controller Richard Comely knew all about it. The way that the Unholy Wars series ends makes it distinctly impossible for myself or Comely to have ever published my series. This is because my series was supposed to bring back the original Captain Canuck, but it turns out that's what happens at the end of Unholy Wars and they led up to it for the whole series. What's worse is they bring back the original Cap in a cheesy way. Regardless of the fact that we hard time getting the art on track or that Comely never did his job as editor before he pulled the plug, there is no way that my series could have followed this one. And Comely had to have known that full well the whole time.

It pisses me off, but what's even worse is that I still love the character and want to work on it. Reading the new series made me want to do it even more. No matter how peed off I am with Comely I still love the character, and sadly will probably buy half the Cap merchandise being sold in the ads. It's not that I want to show anyone up, it's that I had a real meaningful story to tell with the character and I really wanted to do something to exite people about him again. I'm by no means comparing myself to any comic book greats on the talent level, but what my series had in mind was to give it a feel like the 1980's Frank Miller Daredevil comics. Truly groundbreaking stuff for the character. The first issue was even done before Mr. Comely pulled the rug out from under me.

Regardless, I may go back and try and settle things and smooth them over just so I can have a shot to tell my story, or be involved in some way with the character of Captain Canuck...

Mike

Posted by: lightning at 15:11 | link | comments

We're going to visit Danny this afternoon. The nurse had him walking for 45 minutes yesterday so that's good. Of course he is still in rough shape and still needs mediacal attention. They are saying they think they can move him out of intensive care by the end of the week and put him in a regular room, so that's good too.

Been getting lots of positive response after my appearance in yesterdays newspaper. I've gotten e-mails, phone calls, in person comments. I've had local people wanting to send me resume's and locals wanting to submit their manuscripts, so it's definately working out.

Dreams in Texture is available as of today! You can buy it at www.booksurge.com or retailers can order at www.booksurgedirect.com. it should also be available on our website at www.openbookpress.com by the end of the day! 

There's been a lot of things lingering on my mind lately about a project I was involved with a short while ago that never got published. A lot. Very mixed. And I'm going ot be talking about this project tommorow.

Dun, dun, du...

Mike

Posted by: lightning at 14:45 | link | comments

Well I'm back to work today. Danny's still in Intensive care and he will be for at least a couple more days. The whole family is pretty shooken up. Thankfully there were no head injuries. He's going to be in the hospital for awhile, but he's going to get better. His ribs are broken, they had to remove his spleen, and he was bleeding internally, but it's all pretty much under control now. Me and Pam decided that we'll go to work today, and tommorow when I have the day off Pam will leave work early and we'll go and visit him again. Everyone is pretty upset, but he's actually lucky, it could have been much worse.

The new edition of the Kincardine News came out last night, the one with my photo and interview in it. It turned out pretty good. Under the circumstances I haven't really gotten very excited about it, but it is a good thing for the business to get the word out. You folks know the drill if you live around here then check it out. If not that's okay. If you have a personal interest in this, you'll probably get a copy mailed to you from me.

Mike

Posted by: lightning at 05:57 | link | comments

HEY ALL DON'T FORGET TO READ THE FIRST BLOG FROM TODAY, WRITTEN AT 00:31. IT'S REALLY THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE AND WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO IT THE REST DOESN'T REALLY MATTER.  

Posted by: lightning at 10:32 | link | comments

This is being finished off now, only because I have the time.

The creation of a theory...

So the other day I was at work. Doing some tedious sanitation crap, when I started daydreaming to amuse myself. I was thinking about Star Wars and hypothetically questioning how I could create a rip-off of Start Wars in order to profit and make money from, but disguise and alter chracters enough that people wouldn't notice that they were a rip-off.

The Crazy Theory...

So I'm thinking about the characters and I get to Chewbacca. I'm thinking, I'd make him talk. Then I'm thinking for a twist that this huge hairy beast would be meek instead of courageous. And that's when it hit me...that's not a new character, that's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz! Following this pattern in reverse led me to a stunning and crazy, but plausible theory.   That theory is...I think that it's possible that George Lucas created Star Wars as a well disguised rip-off of The Wizard of Oz. Take a minute to think about this...the entire core cast and even supporting characters of Star Wars can be easily found to have a very similar counterpart in The Wizard of Oz.

Follow me with this character conversion chart will you;

Chewbacca = The Cowardly Lion

Luke Skywalker = Dorothy

C-3P0 = The Tin Man (aka the Tin Woodsman)

Han Solo = Scarecrow

R2-D2 - Toto

Yoda - The Wizard of Oz

Obi-wan - Glenda the Good Witch

Storm Troopers - The Flying Monkeys

Ewoks - The Munchkins

Darth Vader - The Wicked Witch of the West

The Emporer - The Wicked Witch of the East

Aunt Beru - Auntie Em

Uncle Owen - Uncle Henry

Now how do you explain Princess Lea you might ask? Well very simply indeed! George realized that he had made all the character conversions male, so immediately the story will go downhill because of the lack of a romantic involvement plus the loss of what I like to call the "boob factor". So since he couldn't write a story that was a complete sausage fest  he had to throw in a female character, Princess Lea! But wait you say, this is big news, if you are going to ever to be able to prove this theory all core characters must have an Oz counterpart or the theory is blown to shit. Fine I say;

Princess Lea - Princess Ozma

Lando Calrisian - Jack Pumpkinhead (this was the toughest one and the furthest stretch, I may find a better suit later)

Yeah Ozma, she's from the second Oz story, which would undoubtably been available to Mr. Lucas as well. Jack Pumpkinhead is also from The Return to Oz. Need further proof. Even the settings are a rip off;

Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away - In the past in a land far, far away (Somewhere over the Rainbow)

Cloud City - The Kingdom of Oz

Think about this people! I'd love to be able to ask George Lucas about this in person!

Later...

Mike

Posted by: lightning at 10:28 | link | comments

Well folks, I'm going to have to finish my weblog about my crazy Star Wars theory later. We found out this afternoon that Pam's brother Danny was in a snow mobile accident. He's in the hospital and hurt pretty bad. We went to see him but he wasn't conscious. He's got broken ribs and a ruptured spleen which had to be removed. He's still in intensive care. We eventually had to leave the hospital, and now we are home, but we'll be going back tommorow.

When we stopped to pick Scooter up at Pam's parents on the way home her dad called the hospital and was actually speaking to Danny because he was awake and talking. It's a good sign but he is still injured and will be in the hospital for awhile. If it was any worse he would have been air lifted to a bigger hospital.

Saying this is a really shitty way to end the weekend just doesn't seem to cut it...and I don't know what else to say.

Mike 

Posted by: lightning at 00:31 | link | comments

The creation of a theory...

So the other day I was at work. Doing some tedious sanitation crap, when I started daydreaming to amuse myself. I was thinking about Star Wars and hypothetically questioning how I could create a rip-off of Start Wars in order to profit and make money from, but disguise and alter chracters enough that people wouldn't notice that they were a rip-off.

The Crazy Theory...

So I'm thinking about the characters and I get to Chewbacca. I'm thinking, I'd make him talk. Then I'm thinking for a twist that this huge hairy beast would be meek instead of courageous. And that's when it hit me...that's not a new character, that's the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz! Following this pattern in reverse led me to a stunning and crazy, but plausible theory.   That theory is...I think that it's possible that George Lucas created Star Wars as a well disguised rip-off of The Wizard of Oz. Take a minute to think about this...the entire core cast and even supporting characters of Star Wars can be easily found to have a very similar counterpart in The Wizard of Oz.

Follow me with this character conversion chart will you;

Chewbacca = The Cowardly Lion

Luke Skywalker = Dorothy

C-3P0 = The Tin Man (aka the Tin Woodsman)

Han Solo = I'LL HAVE TO FINISH THIS LATER, HANG IN THERE!

Posted by: lightning at 14:02 | link | comments

Hey Super hits...

Hey folks check out the hits on the lower left corner below the links. I'm slowly creeping up to 50,000 hits on this here blog! Woohoo!

The theme song I mentioned the other day for 32 no-points was the littlest hobo!

Keep an eye out later for my weekend blog containing a crazy thoery!

*Poit*...

Mike

Posted by: lightning at 04:36 | link | comments (2)

 Stuff...

So my interview with the local newspaper just ended and it went very well. We talked about Open Book Press, the new Dreams in Texture book coming soon, the website, and Booksurge. It was awesome and I even gave the reporter some samples from the book. I hope she uses them. If you are in the area keep an eye out for the article in next weeks "Kincardine News".

The office got finished in time and is looking as close to top notch as I can get it right now. Things are looking good, and now I just have to catch up on all the business matters that I put aside while cleaning.

I got work started on a hardcover coffe table book we're going to put out later this year. It's an art book with the working title of "The Art of Gerard Gagnon" it's a collection of art in various forms done by my grandfather. Great stuff indeed.

At some point I have to get started on a company manual that will be given to all of those working with Open Book Press in a freelance or contract basis. I'm starting work on that today before I go to bed. Back on midniights tonight so I hope I can get somewhere with it quickly.

My hit counter on this blog isn't working today for some reason. That kind of ticks me off because it was creeping closer and closer everyday to 50.000 hits, so I definately wanted to keep an eye on it. Oh, well, I'll see if I can get motime to fix that.

Well I think I've procrastinated enough for today, gotta get back to work so I can sleep and then go to work. No rest for the wicked I guess.

*BAMF*....

Mike  

Posted by: lightning at 11:28 | link | comments

Workin' Hard

Well, I'm still hard at it. Still cleaning this office. It's amazing the amount of shit one can amass over the years. My book morgue is now full again, mostly from freebie comics that were laying around in boxes in here. Those will get taken care of at this years cons I'm sure.

I've got this place nearly looking respecatable so I'm almost done. Then I just have to do the rest of the apartment.  

All the files for Grafenveer are off to Booksurge, so there should be more news on that as well as the impending release of Dreams in Texture soon.

Being in publishing a lot of the stuff you amass that is later thrown out is in paper form, so I've made sure that all the paper i'm throwing out goes into the recycling. There's all kinds of stuff, papers, mail, submissions, freebie books, botched printing, stuff that just isn't necessary anymore, tons of different things. I think I've honestly saved threee trees this week. I say that because those public shred bins say that 3 trees are saved for every bin. If that's true I'm sure I've saved three trees.

The interview for today got postponed until tommorow, which is what I expected when I looked outside this morning.

Well, I gotta get this place cleaned so I can get back onto more importnat work

TTFN...

Mike 

 

Posted by: lightning at 15:13 | link | comments

Clean-up

Well Life is better today, as it turns out the massive snow storm caused my midnight shift to be cancelled last night, so I got to stay home with Pam. YAY! And I also got to sleep! YAY! And I'm not in at work again until Thursday night! YAY! So I have a lot of things to be happy for.

Today has been a non-stop day of clean-up and catch-up. I shovelled snow, did laundry, got some important business stuff done. I also got the majority of the cleaning and organizing needing to be done in the office done today so that it doesn't look like a pig pen when the reporter comes here to interview me tommorow.

I also got some packages put together and a few sent out. Jay will be getting another one from me soon. Hi Jay. Anyway,  I also went through some old comics I bought on eBay and never sorted. Turns out that I had a small stack of doubles and unwanted comics so guess what I did? I donated them to the Comics4Kids charity. The package is off and they'll soon get my donation. The comics go to children in hospitals and Shriner's Lodges as well as into early childhood literacy programs. This charity serves Canada and the U.S. I might even see if there is a way that I could become more involved. You can find more info on them at www.comics4kids.org

Until tommorow I'll just keep movin' on..doot doot de doot do dooot de dooot.....(Name the TV show theme that line is from in the comments section and I'll give you 32 no-points)

Mike

Posted by: lightning at 17:21 | link | comments (3)