Hi friends!
To better help my daughter better understand the world she’s been born into, I’ve recently introduced her to the television show America’s Funniest Home Videos.
All those kids cartoons make it seem the constant threats in her life will be quicksand or lava, but I’ve shared America’s Funniest Home Videos to help her understand that it’s things like unexpected crotch hits and being unsuccessful at boarding a boat that are the real dangers.
America’s Funniest Home Videos was a staple of my youth. I was there for the Bob Saget years. I even enjoyed the (highly underrated) two seasons in which Daisy Fuentes and John Fugelsang hosted. I love the show because I love to watch people fall down. Preferably to music. You really see who someone is when they fall. No one does it gracefully.
But I digress. While I’ve seen hundreds of episodes of AFV (why did they leave a letter out of the official acronym?) and I don’t remember most of the videos I’ve seen over the past four decades.
Except one.
To this day, I still remember the most UN-FUNNY video ever to be played on the show, and I remembered it while viewing an episode with my daughter. They didn’t show this particularly triggering video, but my subconscious sifted it to the surface one afternoon as we watched.
In said video, there’s a family enjoying some time on a boat. An average boat. A fishing boat. As the family laughs in front of the camera, a teenage girl sits quietly on the bow enjoying a paperback book. Then, without warning, her little brother runs up and pushes the girl off the boat. Girl falls into the water. Book follows.
Now, the show’s laugh track would make it seem like you bore witness to comedy gold. But to this day, I’m still angry that video. Falling into water I can handle, but how dare that little skunk of a brother have so little disregard for her book. Once it hit the water, the pages probably warped and became too fragile to turn. Books are never the same once they get wet.
That always angered me, and clearly I’ve been carrying this burden around for a long time. Thank you for allowing me to unload it.
But back to the people falling down thing…
What Happened Last Issue?
Holiday recaps and short book suggestions were abound!
In This Issue:
New Game!
Writing Influences!
February Reads!
Project Updates!
New Game!
After two years of hard work, the video game studio Magic Tavern—where I work, and creators of the hit mobile games Matchington Mansion and Project Makeover—will release its newest free-to-play title on Friday, March 8.
Modern Community
Welcome to Golden Heights, a once-glamorous community in desperate need of your help!
Take up the role of designer as you aid bubbly Community Manager Paige in making over the city and its wacky residents. Save businesses, create beautiful community spaces, better the lives of the citizens, and maybe even help Paige find love!
Revitalize this modern community and restore Golden Heights to its former glory!
If you enjoy relaxing, casual games with fun and wacky characters, this will be right up your alley! Upon release, I may do a special edition newsletter to discuss the process more in depth, but as of right now… I’m tired. (Did I mention I’ve spent two years working on this game??)
Both Project Makeover (which I also wrote) and Matchington Mansion have found huge success in the casual gaming market. I hope our latest effort will follow.
I’m so thankful to my amazing, talented, and collaborative coworkers with whom I spent many hours building this world. Preorder the game now on your mobile device and it will download automatically on the day of release!
Writing Influences
I ask this to all the writers, artists, and content creators in the house: Do you know who your actual influences are?
I mean, seriously… have you ever sat down and thought about who influences your work, and in what specific ways? This is something that I’ve started thinking about as I make the 15-minute drive to deliver my daughter to school or pick her up. Sure, there are lots of writers and creators I love, but the truth is, their work doesn’t always show up in my own.
So whose work does?
Over the next few newsletters, I’ll wanted some of the people who have influenced me and my writing. In no particular order or ranking. Sorry, I don’t play favorites. We’ll start with…
Rob Schrab
Writer/Director
Credits: The Sarah Silverman Program, Monster House, Community, Rick and Morty
While the majority of other names on this list will be familiar to you, dear reader, this entry may be foreign. While Rob Schrab is primarily known for his television work, it’s his comic book writing that inspire me.
Throughout the ’90s, Schrab wrote, drew, and published a quirky black and white comic called SCUD: THE DISPOSABLE ASSASSIN. My little comic shop in Wooster, Ohio got several of the issues and I read them until the staples fell out. Since the comic was essentially “self-published” and hard to get, the shop never stocked all of the 24 issues released. I had to piece the series’ story together myself. It was part of the magic. The day when I was able to read the entire omnibus in one sitting? Mind-blowing.
Scud follows a day-glow yellow robotic assassin (named “Scud,” naturally) who discovers midway through his murder mission that after he kills his primary target, he’ll self-destruct. Despite being a robot, Scud doesn’t want to die.
Rather than kill his target (a horrifying apocalyptic female monster named “Jeff”), Scud maims the beast, puts it on life support, and then takes odd jobs to pay Jeff’s hospital bills. (I mean, come on… talk about something that was just MADE for me!) Along the way, Scud learns what it means to be a human. By the time the credits role on the series, Scud just might be the most humane being of all. It’s a wonderful series about love, determination, fighting for what you want, and not having to follow the role that may have been dictated to you by society. It’s chock full of beautiful moments and characters. I cry every time I read it. And I don’t cry easily.
Fun fact, I once sought out Rob on the internet and purchased an original page of art from issue #12 of the series, the first issue I read, and the same one that inspired—and continues to inspire me—so much. After my wife, daughter, cats, and computer, it’s the next thing I’m running back inside for if my home is ever engulfed in flames.
What influenced me:
Scud is packed with humor, heart, action, unforgettable characters, and established an amazing world where anything was possible. It’s where I got my “nothing is off limits” ethic for comics. It’s where I realized that people can connect with funny characters just as deeply as serious ones. It’s where I learned that there’s plenty of comedy to be found in tragedy. Scud was the comic that made me want to make comics, and what Schrab accomplished with his little book that could is what I aspire to each time I put fingers to keyboard and bang out a script.
February Reads!
Drug of Choice
By Michael Crichton (as John Lange)
On a secret island in the Caribbean, bioengineers have devised a vacation resort like no other, promising the ultimate escape. But when Dr. Roger Clark investigates, he discovers the dark secret of Eden Island and of Advance Biosystems, the shadowy corporation underwriting it...
Did you know that while Michael Crichton was studying to be a doctor, he spent his evenings writing drug store crime paperbacks as “John Lange”? Well… he was. A bunch of these aged novels are being reissued, and Drug of Choice was among them. Now, I really like Crichton’s writing. He’s great at pacing and not getting too caught up in details and description. Drug may not have been the author’s finest hour, but you can see his early strengths and how they were refined further into his career.
Boss Fight Books: Day of the Tentacle
By Bob Mackey
Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer's 1993 time-trotting point-and-click adventure game Day of the Tentacle brought LucasArts' game design to a new standard of excellence with smart puzzles, hilarious characters, and an animation style that harkened back to classic Warner Bros. cartoons. And somehow, they fit it all on a fat stack of floppy disks!
In this definitive oral history as told by the game's designers, musicians, and artists, writer Bob Mackey tells the inside story of Day of the Tentacle's lightning-in-a-bottle production, and reveals how two first-time directors boiled down the lessons of past adventure games into a tight and satisfying game, and how the team grappled with evolving technology to achieve the coveted status of "multimedia" at the dawn of the CD-ROM age, and how a remastered edition brought Tentacle to a new generation of fans.
As I mentioned last issue, I read every release from Boss Fight Books. This month, I dove into one of the publisher’s recent releases—an oral history of the LucasArts point-and-click adventure game, Day of the Tentacle. It was a quick and entertaining read that focused on a bunch of entertaining game developers who made an equally entertaining game. Recommended.
Project Updates!
Unit 44 [Comic Book]
After a bit of a hiatus, Unit 44 is back in production! Artist Aleks Jovic is busy bringing the script for issue #11 to life, and the pages I’ve seen made me laugh harder than when I first wrote them. (Yeah, I laugh at my own jokes. What of it?)
Issues 11 and 12 will complete Season 3 of the series and leave our bumbling Area 51 agents in a veeeeerrry interesting place. Can’t wait share these upcoming stories with you!
Also, a huge thanks to any and all of you who preordered issues 9 & 10. Those silly books will ship out from Alterna Comics in April! If you haven’t preordered yet, hit the button below to grab the issues for $2.25 each!
The Lowlanders Project [Novel]
Unfortunately, nothing new to report here. The manuscript sits, patiently awaiting my return.
Molly’s Oddities [Graphic Novel]
Since my first wave of agent submissions in 2024 I’ve heard zip, zilch, nada! That’s publishing for ya…
2024 SUBMISSION STATS
Submissions: 7
Manuscript Requests: 0
Rejections: 0
No Answer (Pending): 0
No Answer (Assumed Rejections based on posted response time): 0
The Incoming Storm [Young Readers Nonfiction] - Releasing 1/7/2025
It appears that this title will be officially announced in April (maybe May? Soon!) ! I’m very excited. Once the details have been released, I can share all of the fun behind the scenes stuff that I haven’t been legally allowed to say a peep about for the past year.
The Weirdness [Young Readers Nonfiction]
Shortly after the last newsletter went out, we got all the paperwork buttoned up for this new book. I sent the outline to the editor, got a few notes back, and received the greenlight to begin putting together the manuscript. I’m currently halfway through my first draft and enjoying every second.
The Space Case [Young Readers Nonfiction] - Spring 2025
This manuscript came back with editorial notes, which I was able to patch up over the course of an evening. The file was returned and sent on to the copy editors.
This particular project had a very fast turnaround. It’s part of a brand new line of books debuting later this year from Penguin Random House. Wait until you hear who they’ve teamed with! (Sorry, I can’t tell you now no matter how much you threaten to tickle me.)
March is coming at us fast!
I’m Wes Locher. I’ve been writing professionally for more than a decade. I write comic books, video games, fiction, and nonfiction. I write whatever seems fun, cool, and inspiring. I also love helping other writers to demystify the process of making a living through words. This is my newsletter.