27 Saturday Jul 2013
Posted in Services
Interested in connecting with your target audience in a new and engaging way? Have you ever thought of corporate comics? They’re comic strips explaining yourself, your company, product, service or event; written by myself and illustrated by one of the talented comic artists I know.
Learn more about it in my Corporate Comics presentation and then stop by my portfolio to read some examples in detail.
22 Monday Jul 2013
Posted in Self-Reflection
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I attended an interesting business seminar that spent a lot of time investigating each participant’s psychology, who they were, what they were doing, how that connected to their business. One of the most interesting elements was when the person running it asked us to think about our own story and see how it motivates each of us in our particular professions.
I suppose in different ways it’s something I’d been thinking about at various times over the years but I never put it into quite those words before. Why do I do what I do? Well, if you asked me to describe myself in a single word, that word would be “storyteller.” Whether I’m writing comics for Cloudscape, writing copy for clients, even playing role-playing games, I’m telling stories. That’s what I do. Stories fascinate me.
I’ve always yearned for self-expression, always wanted to tell the stories that matter to me and to people who are ready to listen. And I continue to tell my own stories in numerous mediums. As this is my great passion in life, it’s also something I seek to provide other people with. I help other people find their voice, tell their stories, get their voice. I allow them to express themselves, their passion, through their story. Their passion may be a product or a service, a company or a personal identity. Whatever it is, I make certain that it’s being expressed in the most effective way possible.
I tell stories. Sometimes it’s my story, sometimes it’s other people’s. It’s what I do. Because self-expression and expressing ideas, telling stories, is what I love most in the world. I do it because it’s my passion. Why do you do what you do?
17 Wednesday Jul 2013
Posted in Self-Reflection
So I like helping companies and professionals tell their story and I like comics, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that I like using comics to help companies and professionals tell their stories. Comics are a very versatile medium: their combination of pictures and words is concise and engaging, allowing information to quickly, clearly, and compellingly be delivered to a target audience. This can be shown in everything from emergency procedure pamphlets to Larry Gonick’s classic cartoon histories.
I’ve written an underwear ad as a comic, told the history of a comic book company as a comic, and recounted two news events as comics. They were four of the funnest copywriting projects I’ve done and four of the most powerful, as they get the readers involved in the information in a very memorable manner. I’m proud of all my copywriter but my non-fiction comics have an especially soft place in my heart for they’re a beautiful union of my career and my passion. You’ll certainly be seeing much more of them in the future.
14 Sunday Jul 2013
Albora by Reetta Linjama
26 new monsters, one for every letter of the alphabet, each one drawn by a talented comic artist, and each one featuring a bestiary entry, a bio, written by me. Come down to the Monster Alphabet at Cloudscape and take a look; we’ve got everything from Albora to Zoq!
08 Monday Jul 2013
Posted in Event
Waterlogged: Tales from the 7th Sea, Cloudscape Comics‘ 7th graphic novel anthology, has finally gone to the presses, and in a few weeks the printed hardcover books will be shipped to us. It was a project I was very heavily involved on: I wrote two stories, edited five, organized and edited the “Gallery of Pirates,” and copyedited the whole book. Whew! A lot of fun though also lot of work and by the end, very stressful, when tempers were frayed and I was obsessively hunting over the manuscript again and again to see if there was anything left to be changed (my perfectionism rearing its ugly head).
But now I can stop worrying about it and merely wait for its return with baited breath. I think it’s our best anthology so far, combining the strengths of our two previous books (the professionalism and craft of 21 Journeys with the fun and bonus features of Giants of Main Street). It includes stories by both many classic Cloudscape veterans (Jonathon Dalton, Jeff Ellis, Colin Upton, Angela Melick…) and great new participants (Nina Matsumoto, Sam Logan, Lucy Bellwood…). I’m proud to be a part of it and I look forward to showing it off to everyone I meet.
27 Thursday Jun 2013
Posted in Self-Reflection
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“The cobbler’s children go without shoes.”
This is a saying whose truth I’ve been painfully aware of over the last year. While I’ve been busy building my marketing business, working with numerous clients to develop their websites and ads, write their blogs and press releases, I’ve not given my own blog the same attention. After a hard day of writing copy for others, it’s very difficult to then turn around and start writing copy for yourself. Especially when I’m also editing and writing for two graphic novel anthologies, writing a novel, various short stories, and a few graphic novel pitches, editing a couple of TV scripts, and doing numerous other things that I’ve forgotten. And of course visiting numerous business networking meetings to make certain I’m remaining on the radar of local business people.
That said, my trip to Finland, which largely was a vacation, did allow me to take a break from things, for a few moments step off my hamster wheel, breathe, and think about what exactly I could put here.
As a professional copywriter by day and a storyteller by night (well, both of them are really all around the clock) I get involved in a lot of projects, both professional ones and pure entertainment. I’ll be now making certain to use this blog to keep people abreast of what I’m up to, a personal news blog if nothing else. And then, now and again, I’ll also be posting various articles, comments, and so forth. Things I’m thinking about. So both news and commentary, that’s what’s happening here.
22 Saturday Jun 2013
Posted in Self-Reflection
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So here I am in Europe for the third time (after the trips to Britain and France that I did many years ago with my family). I grew-up on Norse mythology, so always wanted to visit Scandinavia, though the part of Scandinavia I’m in right now is a little to the east of where I dreamed of. It’s the land of Ukko, Vainamoinen, and Hiisi instead of Odin, Thor, and Loki, the land of the Finns instead of the land of the Norse.
My girlfriend Reetta brought me back to Finland to celebrate the Summer Solstice and meet her family. The Solstice is one of the big Finnish holidays (though in Canada has been largely relegated to Neopagans), where Finns visit a cabin near a lake, barbecue lots of sausages, stay-up real late, and take pleasure in being in the “Land of the Midnight Sun.” It took a little getting used to midnight being light enough to read outside and it remained hard to get to sleep, but it was a lot of fun.
It was great to meet Reetta’s family, great to wander around by the lake, great to lie down on the pier in the middle of the night and gaze up at the gray sky, the darkest it was going to get. One day it was quite windy and I sat on a rock by the water and gazed at the waves the wind created. There was a “primalness” to the whole thing. I felt strongly connected to nature, to the spot where I was, and to everything around me. It was beautiful. We as a culture so often rush on ahead, focusing on our responsibilities, our jobs, our deadlines, that we don’t pay much attention to our surroundings. Sometimes it’s great to just sit there and “be,” be at rest with the whirling world, be connected to where you are, not what you’re trying to do.
BC is no stranger to natural spots like this. I must visit them more often.
05 Wednesday Jun 2013
Posted in Review
It’s a sad fact that fantasy, science fiction, horror, the genres of pure imagination, have become so entrenched in conventions, expectations, and cliché that it’s rare to find a production that’s really something new. There’s only so many shambling zombie hordes, unstoppable knife-wielding maniacs, and feral yet seductive vampires one can watch before they all blend together into a indiscernible melange. But on the weekend, it was my honour to watch what felt very new.
I watched American Mary, the second horror movie written and directed by Vancouver’s Soska Twins (Jen & Sylvia). Actually, I watched it twice.
It’s the story of Mary Mason, an impoverished medical student who takes on some questionable surgical jobs to pay the bills and then gets embroiled in the body modification subculture, using her surgical skills to help people look on the outside how they feel on the inside. She also uses her skills to achieve revenge on the one who wronged her, a vengeance as creative as it is horrific.
American Mary is a powerful production that reminds me a little of Company of Wolves for its imaginative execution, graphic imagery, and decidedly female perspective and a little of David Chronenberg and Clive Barker for its unrelenting body horror and psychological breakdown but is still very much its own beast, a fascinating exploration of terror, desperation, betrayal, and the strange transmutations people undergo for self-expression.
Two things in particular make the movie stand-out. One is the depth it explores the main character’s psyche, making her pain very sympathetic and her fall into brutality very plausible. The other is the movie’s decision to use, as the story’s backdrop, the body modification community, people who undergo surgery to give themselves split tongues, horns, fangs, and other transformations.
I always find explorations of strange subcultures fascinating and the movie manages to walk the line of treating the subculture with sympathy and respect while still using it to evoke strangeness and horror. A stripper who makes her body emulate classic cartoon character Betty Boop, a woman with the features and anatomy of a Barbie doll, twins who enhance their mutual physical bond while giving themselves the forms of devils, and of course the once-human thing that Mary herself works her will upon form a menagerie of the bizarre, the surreal, the very disquieting.
American Mary opens up a new world of horror, one filled with depth and terror, and is highly recommended for any aficionados who are looking for something fresh and new. Though it is certainly not for the squeamish.
26 Tuesday Mar 2013
Posted in Self-Reflection
Hi, everyone:
Yes, it has indeed been almost a year since my last post. In that time, I’ve greatly expanded my career as a freelance copywriter and editor, taken on a wide variety of new projects (which can be seen in my portfolio), as well as networked with numerous people all over Metro Vancouver, continued my work with Cloudscape Comics (our 7th book will be coming out soon as well as a superhero anthology spearheaded by myself) and worked on my own personal creative projects (including some collaborations). Sadly, this has not given me too much time to blog. Hopefully I’ll be able to devote more time to it soon.
Bevan Thomas, not dead and not sleeping. Simply engaged in far too many tasks than a single human brain is meant to handle.
27 Monday Aug 2012
The owner of AGEA Bookkeeping and Accounting Services hired me to edit her website. As English is her second language, she wanted to bring in an outside adviser to make certain that her grammar and vocab were correct and effective and that everything flowed together. I spent many years teaching people essay-writing and ESL, and so have a lot of experience assisting people in expressing their ideas when they lack a perfect understanding of the language. It’s a very positive experience to help people reorganize their ideas and say what they want to say.
I help people to communicate and communication is such a powerful gift.