I’ve been meaning to get my characters posted here for awhile. Here are a few from the upcoming “Jhomm: Shell of Stone” story.

Yep, this ugly brute is our hero, Jhomm. He’s out of his element and misunderstood, like most monsters. He’s not from around these parts. Good with a sword, though. He visits a village to help them get their fishing operation back up and running, but finds a whole lot of scary trouble instead.

Every main character needs a good impact character, someone who really shows off the main character’s strengths and weaknesses. Callis here has a lot going for him, but man, is he snooty. He runs the village. He’ll keep Jhomm around as long as possible to help Callis get what he wants.

Indarelle may work for the man (Callis), but she thinks Jhomm makes a lot more sense. She’s the bravest person in her village, but she’s tired.

Cranst doesn’t believe in much, especially not the brutish swordsman from the distant north who has invaded his village. Talking about Jhomm, of course.

The only reason Jhomm went to the village at all is because Rubberlip, the owner of the village’s fishing operation, promised a couple of sacks of coin. Rubberlip lives richly, but is poor in spirit and character. Plus, he has a really hard time using silverware. His fingers are too chubby.

The Jhomm website will have more stuff like this. Just wanted to get it out there for now.

I’ve made more progress with my little “Jhomm” project than any other comic I’ve tried to create before. Still, I’m woefully behind my schedule and I don’t think I’ll have a finished book in time for the SPACE con in May. It’s time to start thinking creatively about what I CAN do. Some of my thoughts:

A.) A pamphlet with an excerpt from “Jhomm: Shell of Stone”, the bigger story. Maybe a nice action scene. I just don’t know if I should try to sell an incomplete snippet of a story. Unless the art was really good, I would feel cheated out of a buck or two. My art chops are not up to speed yet.

B.) A pamphlet with a new Jhomm story. I like this idea, but it was so excruciatingly difficult to come up with “Shell of Stone”, I’m intimidated by the task of coming up with another story, even a short one.

C.) No pamphlets at all, just buttons or badges or cards or stickers promoting the upcoming graphic novel. Boring.

I’ll decide something soon - probably option B, if Inspirato’s quarrel strikes true.

Oh yeah, there is a website for Jhomm in the works. I can’t give you the link yet, but you might be able to figure it out. In the words of my high-school-self when responding to my art teacher, “It’s not finished yet!”

After asking a friend for feedback on my little adventure story, he replied “I wasn’t crazy about it.” He went on to explain, giving me some great concrete examples of his displeasure.

Here’s an odd thing: I really liked hearing that. Of course I would have preferred that the story changed his life, blew his socks off, made him change his religion, etc. But the honesty of his reaction was like a signpost that I’ve been searching for everywhere, pointing me back to the initial excitement that made me want to write this story in the first place.

Writing sucks. It’s tough. Ideas that came so easy and were so cool at first become lost in a haze of plot structure and thematic development and character archetypes. I needed some honest feedback to help me get way above the story and see it objectively again.

I consider myself really lucky, because I had not just one friend help me out like this, but FOUR! Four unique points of view from people who are willing to spend some time trying to help me along. They helped me take the blindfold off, squared my shoulders and kicked me in the pants to move forward again.