General side story notes
So I’m not doing Writer Notes on From Scratch and Strange Someone. Both of them I don’t really have much to say and after how sparse the notes on As We Were ended up I didn’t think it would be a good idea to go through them page by page. They are both rather light and don’t have much over all connection to things. It leaves them as mostly shallow but fun. So here’s just the thoughts I do have on those two stories and some unfinished/unused ideas.
Strange Someone was the first venturing off into having more stories in the Sorcery 101 world. I knew I wanted to do more with Jeff and Connor. I tried to be subtle about the werewolf thing so if someone hadn’t read Sorcery 101 they could be surprised. The story wasn’t supposed to be too complicated and a good new entry point for someone. The time it was made Sorcery 101 was at page 500ish. That was making it hard for it to get new readers. It was also the first time I worked with someone else. So I learned about working with other people on things. Also at that point I realized the one thing writing wise I wasn’t getting practice on was endings. So I wanted to work on wrapping up a story successfully.
From Scratch was a story originally meant to be drawn by someone else who backed out and ended up too busy. I try to write stories to suit who the artist, I don’t know if this one 100% lines up with Jose’s strengths but it turned out well. I did a lot of looking into the 20s before writing it. It gave me some ideas for stories that didn’t end up panning out. Again I mostly did something straightforward and light. It also helped get the ball rolling on one of the hardest parts of selling stuff at cons, having a new book every year.
I had two big unfinished comic ideas.
These are ones I had outlined and started scripting. There were others but they were more kernals of stories not actual stories. The first was a story about Aaron becoming a vampire. It was about a closeted Aaron meeting and being attracted to Asagi while there was a subplot about Aaron’s wife feeling ignored and neglected. She starts an affair with Seth while Aaron is spending time with Asagi. I wrote two chapters that I was pretty confident about, but once I got to Aaron realizing he was attracted to Asagi at the same time he learned Asagi and Seth were vampires and it got hard to write. I mostly didn’t know how to go further, without getting preachy or heavy handed. It’s all still “canon” to Aaron’s backstory but I didn’t feel like it was a story I personally should be telling.
The other story is the story about how Brad became a werewolf and met Ally. It’s basically a prequel to Sorcery 101. It is the story that made me eventually realize I had outgrown the Sorcery 101 world and had outgrown it. I don’t think it was bad. But between looking up 90s pop culture reference and trying to make sure I didn’t contradict Sorcery 101 and explain to another person that Sorcery 101 doesn’t take place in our world I started to rethink doing it. I wrote the whole thing and was about to write a second draft to push some themes I saw popping up to make them more obvious and deliberate. But I never finished that second draft cause I just realized I wanted to do something different. Then I started working on The City Between’s first book Fame and Misfortune.