Signs of Portents took a terribly complex and irrational journey from pen to page and finally to publication. The initial concept came about in 2008. Yeah, I know. Ridiculous. Image Comics’ ShadowLine imprint was looking for a companion book to their Bomb Queen title and were looking for pitches.
Being an overly ambitious fellow, I sent eight. They were horrible. Piddly little paragraphs like an elevator pitch more than a full blown, professionally constructed pitch. I did no research into Bomb Queen or anything else ShadowLine was publishing. Not a single smart move taken. It amounted to bupkus. Shocker.
Greystone, however, was one of the them, but not the same as the book you now have adorning your shelves.
Take a look at the original pitch:
To the outside world Soriya Greystone appears to be the epitome of normality. Married to a man bringing home a middle class income. Two kids, the apple of her eye. And a house in the suburbs. The typical housewife.
Wrong.
In the city of Portents, darkness lurks around every corner. Creatures, demons, and more, all wait their turn for a chance at breaking through to our reality. All that stands in their way is the Greystone, occult detective.
Working with Detective Greg Loren and an unusual arsenal of occult artifacts, Greystone uses her peculiar talents to solve supernatural crimes and keep her family safe and unaware of the true dangers of the city.
Like I said, horrible. No surprise it went into the slush pile we call life. But I came back to it at the end of that year. I was trying to figure things out as a writer and my focus remained comics and script writing. So I pulled out my pitch and wrote a four issue mini-series. I even came up with a title – Signs of Portents. (Progress!) After writing it I searched high and low for an artist but the process quickly fell apart. That’s how my writing was at that point.
So I had a script but no way of producing it. Back to the slush pile.
Getting closer to publication… by inches.
Soriya and Loren refused to leave me alone. They plagued me for years to the point where I wrote the sequel to Signs of Portents just to get some release, some closure on their world. It served to do the opposite.
In 2013, having left the working world to take my role as All-Star Dad, I pulled out my old script and set to work. I wrote the first prose draft of Signs of Portents in six weeks. I was on fire. (Sometimes literally. Raising kids is tough.) Everything I had sat on and shoved away since 2008 came roaring to the surface and the book took over.
Then nothing. Again. (WHAT AN IDIOT.)
I didn’t have a next step. A plan. A goal other than to make it work. Traditional publishing was as much a mystery as taking it all on myself. So it sat. And I wrote other things. New worlds. But Portents called me back.
It always calls me back.
Making 2016 the year for publication.
Eleven Ten Publishing came about in January of this year and I wanted the perfect launch product for it. There was only one choice. So I edited the holy hell out of Signs of Portents. Then a real editor made it readable. Kit Foster Designs added the window dressing to perfection and here we are. Publication of Signs of Portents is only two weeks away.
Easy peasy.
Plans don’t always come together but some deserve the extra time and effort. Some sure as hell demand it. Signs of Portents is definitely one of them.
I hope you agree.
Thanks for reading.
