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Terry Hooper-Scharf

Sunday 4 September 2016

"What Happened To Part 3?" Well, It's All About Perspective

Let's get down to shop talk, shall we?  Someone asked on one of my Yahoo groups (which damn near made me faint as I thought everyone on those groups had died off!) so may as well make things clear.

Due to various problems last year's July deadline for the final installment of the Invasion Earth trilogy -The Green Skies- was cancelled.  I had thought about July of this year but you can guess, from no postings about it, that the book never made it.

It's about perspective.  Firstly, I have a lot of books at the online store including parts 1 and 2 of the trilogy -Return Of The Gods: Twilight Of The Super Heroies and The Cross Earths Caper- and, as noted before, the sales are so small that the UK Tax office laughs when I declare the yearly total. I just do not get enough sales to make the bare minimum to pay taxes.  Whereas, any sale to a US customer means a chunk is taken away in US Taxes.

We have sci-fi, horror, crime, adventure, super heroes, slice of life, Haiku even-illustrated prose and books. Sales, as my old gran might have said: "Sweet FA".

Next to me is the box with over 400 pages of art for The Green Skies -all I have to do is conclude the art pages (about 20 more pages) tidy-up finished art and letter. Done.  But I'm not going to.  Not yet.

Green Skies is going to be the last BIG project I work on in comics.  It is the culmination of a story I began in 1986/87 and, though I never realised it until looking at what I have published in other titles, I have been building up to since that time. I never even realised that The Many-Eyed One had been seen in a previous book -Krakos -Sands of Terror- until I checked something in it for reference. Continuity.

If people are not rushing out to buy vol. 1 nor vol. 2 well, why rush work to publish volume 3? What I've been doing is tidying up other books -Black Tower Super Heroes 2-5 are complete but as #1 sold just one copy feck rushing those out.  But it means that I can build up characters ready for Green Skies.

Green Skies may not appear this year and if I live to see 2017 we'll see then! But I am not rushing it.
You might think that it's all just drawing, lettering and scanning and that's it but I have to buy a pdf converter to make the files to publish those books. That is £160-£200 for a year.  Pity no one has thought to create a free pdf converter for small publisher that does not contain malware or other bugs that screw up your computer -that is a veiled warning in case you think those 'free' pdf converters look worthwhile -they aint.  Nitro and Adobe are safe but expensive.  Like a new computer the expense cannot be justified if no money is coming in.  That simple.

Hey -Anonymous: put all your superb computer skills into helping out the small guy with a pdf converter!

Just a thought.

I have to live and eat and with events blocked I cannot get to places to meet and sell. Again, simple fact. I can't sell then I can't pay bills or eat and I do like to eat occasionally. So I need to find projects outside of comics that have a money-making potential.  The AOP blog is closed because it has not resulted in the sale of one of the "phenomena" books since 2011.  It'sw a waste of time and energy so it goes and those few thousand people a week will need to go find somewhere else for free.  CBO has it's cut-off date firmly in place for the same reasons.

Perspective. No one wants the books then stop the blog promoting them and save energy and time. Comics the same.

I am just not giving a firm commitment to a publication date for Green Skies but I'm guessing that, as with the Darke Child Trilogy, I am going to get occasional emails asking "where's part 3?"  Well, go buy parts 1 and 2 and we'll see!

Things will appear when they appear but in the meantime I need to make money.

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