How Did I Do All That Stuff?
I may ask myself, "How did I get here?"
One of the most frequent questions that I’m asked when people see my history of articles, jobs, etc. is “How did you do all that stuff?” The easy answer is, “Simultaneously.” But it did occur to me that it’s actually a pretty serious question, particularly for students and people trying to break into different fields. So I’m going to lay ALL that stuff out with additional details as necessary. (Warning: This may bore the unholy shit out of some of you, and I apologize. On the other hand, it’s a pretty realistic depiction of all the stuff that goes into a “career” in writing.)
1979 – By this point, I was already awash in Star Wars, Universal Monsters, Godzilla, and comics. This is the year that I got my first issue of X-Men, #125. Life-changing. This, and the later influence of Stephen King on me, planted the seed that I wanted to tell stories. I must say that I was already steeped in music, buoyed by many albums from my dad and his sister and a copy of Kiss Alive II that I got for Easter. Music would be a prime mover of my writing and play various roles in my life.
1991 – Graduated Terre Haute North Vigo High School in Terre Haute, Indiana, where I’d been on the school paper. Huzzah. Over the summer, knowing that I’d be starting at Indiana State University, I approached the advisor of the newspaper whom I’d met while I was at Hoosier Boys State. I asked if I could start writing for the paper since I’d be attending; I think he was kind of amused, because he told me no one that he recalled had asked that before. So I started on the paper. In August, I was officially enrolled as an English major and Radio/TV/Film minor. I’d work at the paper on and off into grad school.
1991-1992 – Worked at Toys R Us, including one maniacal Christmas Eve. That might deserve its own entry.
1992 – Started independently putting on music events on campus. That definitely deserves its own entry.
1992 – I met the love of my life in college. Her name was Becky Marie Jones.
1993-1996 – After interning over the summer for the ISU Public Affairs office, often doing radio segments, I got hired by WTHI AM Newstalk 1480. I was board operator for sporting events and did the news. That included recording news spots for the very popular FM side, WTHI HI-99 (a country station). I worked there on into grad school when I hit an inflection point at which I turned a lot of things upside down.
1995 – I graduated and took an offer for grad school with a teaching assistantship at ISU. I taught freshman English while working on my Master’s in English with a Creative Writing focus. I would technically finish after my third semester, but my official graduation date was May 1997. My Master’s Thesis was a novel (literally).
In this era, Shawn and I formed a band with Chanda Guth called Mirage. It would be another foundational plank in a later webcomic project. You can hear a song right here!
1996-1997 – Old Towne Video! Yes, I worked at a video store after I quit the radio station. Yes, I was compared to Randall from Clerks. Yes, we had an adult section; I once wrote an essay about the weirdness of that.
1997-2000 – My first job out of a collegiate setting was as a technical writer for Howard W. Sam’s in Indianapolis. We did catalogs for tool companies and such. As a job, it sucked. But at least half of the bosses were megalomaniacs. However, one of the good ones would turn out to be author and commentator Andrew Moxon. On the upside, I made a number of friends there, several of whom factor into the next thing . . .
1999-2012 – After writing for my friend Nick’s Comic Kingdom site, I launched ShotgunReviews.com, so named because we covered a wide area of pop culture. Many of my friends worked on it (shoutout here to the webmaster and my longtime best friend, Shawn Delaney), and I primarily wrote about the culture at large, including politics, and comics. It was this that sort of put me on the map locally, and it led directly to me getting work at The Indianapolis Star, Nuvo Newsweekly, Newtype USA, Wired, Street Miami, Pulse at Comicon.com, and two important things in 2004. Funnily enough, I also had a small part in the film The Hangman’s Light during this time, as I was interviewing the local filmmakers and was asked if I wanted to read for a part.
2000 – After HWS, I worked at Service911 for a year, editing online tutorials.
2000 – Becky and I got married. Yay! We also went on a honeymoon to Hawaii and moved into our newly built house all within about 40 days. Don’t do that. It’s fucking crazy.
2000 – Notably I started doing two webcomics for a short time on ShotgunReviews.com. They were called Genre (later Genretown) and Manifest Darkness. More on those down the road. Also in this period, I wrote a serialized comic for Blue Moon Comics called Control Zero.
2001-2004 – After Service911 went down, I spent a lengthy time doing contract work and freelance stuff. It was during this period that I did around 100 pieces for the anime and manga magazine Newtype USA; I also wrote for Wired, among others. In addition, I did some adjunct collegiate instruction online.
2001ish-2004ish – I got involved in the Indianapolis music scene by managing Shawn’s band Samsell and playing some in our own comedy band, The Frank Booth Project. These experiences would greatly inform a later project. When Shawn moved to Seattle, this chapter effectively closed.
2004-2011 – Based on my Master’s, teaching experience, and practical experience in journalism, I was hired as an assistant professor at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. I taught English, journalism, film, and other weird stuff. Particularly in the beginning, I was encouraged to keep right on writing in the interest of “maintaining professional currency.”
2004-2011– At Mid-Ohio Con, a chance meeting with Mike Sangiacomo (whom I “knew” online) led to his suggestion that I reach out to Matt Brady about writing for Newsarama. I did, and I did. I started out writing about manga and then pitched a review column. That became Best Shots which ran for YEARS and gave a lot of people a break. I was also captain of Blog@ for a while. I did an insane amount of stuff, sometimes invoicing for 40 pieces in one month. No, there was no cocaine involved, which comes down to a sharing problem (jk). I also got to visit the set of The Dark Knight. We won an Eisner while I was there, which was awesome. I ended up leaving not terribly long after Matt left; my right-hand man David Pepose took over Best Shots.
2005 and 2006 – We welcomed Connor (January 2005) and Kyle (December 2006) to the world.
2005ish-present – One day Matt Brady called me and said to expect a call from Topps. Because of his Newsarama contracts, he couldn’t do what they asked him, so they called me about writing the inaugural series of Halo trading cards. I was in the comic shop carrying Connor in a car seat when I got the call. It basically went, “Have you played Halo?” “Yes.” “All the way through?” “Yes?” “Have you played Halo 2?” “All the way through?” “Yes.” “Sounds like you’re our guy!” So I wrote cards for Halo and Skylanders, and then in 2019 or so they invited me to do a Mandolorian set. Since then, I’ve written about 2500 Star Wars trading cards (seriously).
2006ish-2010 – The entire Fangoria Comics tale could be a Succession-like mini-series. Short form is that I met Scott Licina, was talking about doing stuff for his Midnight Show label, and it turned into Fangoria Comics, which later turned into The Scream Factory (before Shout! did that label). On the books that came out, I was Associate Editor.
2010-2017 – This is a big one. I had befriended Raven Gregory, who wrote for Zenescope. Raven asked me if I wanted to pitch some ideas for Tales from Wonderland. I pitched three, and they picked up the White Knight story. That was my first nationwide release in print. I wrote for them for years. I was regular writer on Grimm Fairy Tales: Myths and Legends, writing the last two arcs on the book. I wrote the crossover Grimm Fairy Tales vs Wonderland and did a bunch of other issues, minis, and annuals, including a book that never came out.
2011-2013—After leaving SMWC, I worked for Yellow Pages Group for two years. Yep, we literally made phone books. I made a few friends there, including Brandon Peters, whom I regularly haunt as a frequent guest on his podcast, The Brandon Peters Show.
2011-2015 – Matt Brady and I cooked up a huge crazy pitch for Nick Barrucci at Dynamite Comics. I talked to Nick at a con and gave him the bullet points. Nick asked me to send it to him, and then asked if Matt and I would be interested in writing a Buck Rogers annual. I said absolutely. While walking to a panel, I called Matt and said, “I pitched Nick and he asked if we’d do the Buck Rogers Annual.” Matt asked, “What Buck Rogers Annual?” Regardless, we came up with a great idea and it came out. That opened the door at Dynamite for me, and I’d do Blood Queen, Blood Queen vs. Dracula, and the Prince Dracula prose novel there.
2011— A few months later, Matt and I successfully pitched DC Comics on a Batman story that ran in the 2011 Batman 80 Page Giant. Called “Short Straw,” it gave me and Matt the distinction of actually writing two massive pop culture characters in the same year, which I think was frankly beyond both of our imaginations as kids. One of the editors on that issue was the excellent Janelle Asselin.
2012-? – With artist Sarah Vaughn, I launched the Sparkshooter webcomic. It’s a deeply personal work that I hope to finish someday. You can read it on the Sparkshooter FB page. Sarah did the first two issues with Ben Olson; Enkaru Other Worlds killed it from #3-13; Kate Frizzell did #14 and 15; Malik O. Smith did #16. Two issues remain, and we may yet lock it down. Soon after, I also did the side-story Solo Acoustic with Ben Olson; it’s on FB, too.
2014-2016 – YPG laid off a bunch of us in December 2013. I spent the first three months of 2014 writing Prince Dracula for Dynamite (yay, advances!), then I picked up substitute teaching work, adjuncting for Ivy Tech, and taught English and professional communication practices as an adjunct for a medical trade school called MedTech.
2016-2018 – I took a job teaching high school classes for JAG (Jobs for America’s Graduates). JAG is a tremendous program that is currently receiving an unholy screwing from our nightmare presidency. It and its students and teachers deserve much better. But after this, for reasons not related to the JAG folks, I decided that I would be done with teaching for some time.
2018-Present – When I decided to look for something new, the first ad I saw was a staff writer for The Saturday Evening Post. I didn’t know that the Post was in Indy! But I applied straightaway. And while Becky, the boys, and I were at Great Wolf Lodge in Cincinnati, I got a call offering me the job. I later went from Staff Writer to Senior Editor in charge of the kids magazines, and then became the Executive Editor on all three (kids and Post). About 500 of my articles have been posted on the website; in addition to other things I write for print and online, I write a comic in Jack and Jill with art by Merrill Rainey that’s in its fourth year.
2019 – I wrote a short story collection of mostly horror called Inhabited. It’s on Amazon.
2024-present – In June of 2024, I heard from my pal, Steve Hayes. I met Steve through the Indianapolis music scene where he was (and is) in the band The Common and spent some time running IndianapolisMusic.Net, which was a hub of the scene. Steve worked for Wiley, who publishes the Dummies book. Steve reached out about a thing that turned out to be Marvel Comics for Dummies. I wrote that, it came out in early 2025, and I went right into X-Men for Dummies, which came out in December 2025.
2024-present – Shortly after the Dummies opportunity presented itself, I was diagnosed with cancer (fuck cancer; cancer sucks). I’ll bore you with those details later, but I’ve had a shitload of chemo, two surgeries, and a bit of radiation. I am currently holding the line, but damn, it is exhausting in the mental, physical, and emotional categories. My wife is a fucking super-hero, though, and has done everything in her power to drag me through it. My sons are awesome, and I was delighted to be reminded that I have an incredible support system of friends and co-workers. The Post people have been outstanding. I told the Dummies team as soon as I had info I could share, and they couldn’t have been better. The fact that I had my regular work and the Dummies book actually turned out to be a great thing. In November of 2024 I was actually working on the Post mags, Marvel Comics for Dummies, and 300 Star Wars cards at the same time. I didn’t say I was always smart. But I did get that shit done, even with cancer. Did I say “Fuck cancer?” I did? Well, fuck cancer anyway.
So what does it all mean?
Writing on any scale doesn’t just happen. It is hard, hard, never-ending work. Finding work is difficult. Pitching sucks, especially in comics. Rejections abound. Luck and timing and connections can help you to an insane degree, but not always. People around you don’t always understand it. In the thick of November 2024, I was doing my day job, and then pounding out the other stuff at night, occasionally setting an alarm to switch what I was doing to keep each job moving. When I take a job, I am determined not to let anybody down. Especially not the people who are kind enough to read the words.
Any questions?