Black Flag into the 2nd Round

Here is another page form my book proposal to the 33 1/3 people. (This is my pitch for a comic book "graphic novel" retelling of the making of Black Flag's album "Damaged", remember?) Still struggling at this point to find my "look"--I want it to be a little raw, a little Raymond Pettibon. Kinda ugly. But this has too much of the wrong kind of ugly. I tried a new brushpen on this page, and I don't like it, (probably not a good idea to start experimenting with new pens when you're on a tight deadline...).

And I just received good news--they like it! It's into the second round of consideration...along with 93 other proposals (out of 470 some odd...). They say they'll only be able to publish 15-20 of these. They've never done a comic book "graphic novel" before, so my odds are probably pretty long. BUT STILL, I am very happy to make it this far.

The bad part is, my sample chapter is terrible. In trying to get my ideas together and research the subject, I barely got anything down. Out of the 24 pages I'd planned, I was only able to get a dozen on the page--and only a few of those anywhere beyond pencils. And they're very confused! Ugh.

But this is the interesting thing: even with this major impediment, I think two things really helped me: (1), I had a decent idea, (and one with a very readable outline attached to it--so I made it easy for them to imagine what the finished book would contain); but more importantly, (2) they had an extensive list of submission requirements (essay answers to favorite books in the series, what books currently in the market place would be most like mine? how would mine differ? what is your marketing plan for the book? etc., along with the usual CV stuff--and my CV was very weak, never having published either a comic or regular book before, having no university degree, and not being at all involved in the music/music criticism world (this is all for a semi-academic book series that's primarily authored by music critics, music professors, and famous writers/musicians (Jonathan Lethem being the latest...))) and in answering these essay/marketing questions, I think I was able to make a reasonably professional impression. This is probably what kept me off the reject heap--at least for the first round.