Gregeration X Newsletter May 27, 2023-Celebrations and Inspirations

After what seemed like an extended season of goodbyes ranging from sports teams senior nights, the last week on campus, finals week, senior activities week including a Baccalaureate, and Grad Bash (Universal’s version of Disneyland’s Grad Night), my youngest son, Logan, graduated from high school last night. I’m super proud of him and my older son, Ethan, who is wrapping up his second year of college. We have a weekend full of activities planned to celebrate. I hope you’re all enjoying the weekend, too.

Last weekend, I took my sons and one of their friends to Comic Con Revolution in Ontario, California. This was small by comic convention standards, but it was only twenty minutes from home, so that was nice. What surprised me most was how much fun I had.

The vibe was more friendly and relaxed than some of the other cons I’ve been to recently. The sheer amount of cosplayers was amazing. On the first day, we had to wait in line for two hours to get a wristband to secure seats in the con’s biggest panel; a reunion of all the surviving voice actors from Avatar: The Last Airbender. The panel was great and the ATLA fans were super nice and the ATLA cosplay was off the charts!

On the second day I watched a panel with Chris Claremont and Marv Wolfman, writers on the Uncanny X-Men and The New Titans back in the 1980s when I first got into comic books. Their stories are arguably the reason those franchises are still popular today. While they are both getting up there in years, it was great listening to them on how to build families in stories, particularly found families such as the X-Men and Teen Titans. It’s always great to learn from masters of storytelling.

My favorite part of the weekend was walking through Artist Alley. Creativity oozed out of the room. Artists, comic book artists, writers, crafters, streamers, and probably others I’m not remembering at the moment displayed their work and engaged everyone who passed by. I bought several items and am looking forward to diving into them this weekend. I was so inspired I vowed to get a table in Artist Alley next year!

Mechhaven Missives

With all the senior activities listed above, solid blocks of uninterrupted time have been limited, therefore so has my productivity. Nevertheless, I’ve started reviewing and applying the notes/suggestions my editor gave me for Rally Point. So far, there’s been nothing major to correct, so I’m hoping once things settle down, I’ll be able to ramp up the review and make more progress.

For Book Five, I have about two chapters completed. For this book I’ll be editing more as I go so that there’ll be less work at the end of the process. I’m pretty happy with the first two chapters, but will be focus on the edits for Rally Point so I can release that as soon as possible.

Featured Authors

This week’s featured authors are Julia Huni, Brian A. Mendonça, and Jay Toney.

The Earth Concurrence

Julia Huni

A hero with big expectations. A daughter who doesn’t want to live in his shadow.

Siti Kassis, daughter of the “Hero of Darenti Four,” doesn’t know what she wants out of life. A lot of her friends are taking time to travel and see the galaxy. But her father wants her to attend the Academy and follow in his footsteps.

Then the Hero is offered one last assignment: take a team to find and explore the deserted homeworld of mankind. It’s a twenty-year mission, and he doesn’t want to leave his only child behind. Siti’s going, whether she wants to or not.