{"id":32117,"date":"2018-04-18T07:43:13","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T11:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=32117"},"modified":"2018-04-18T07:43:13","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T11:43:13","slug":"michael-moreci-the-origin-story-of-wasted-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2018\/04\/18\/michael-moreci-the-origin-story-of-wasted-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Moreci: The Origin Story of Wasted Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>And here is writer Michael Moreci to talk about his newest comic, Wasted Space<\/strong> — out today from Vault Comics. Go grab from your LCS<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

As a writer, when you\u2019re on the book promotion road, you find yourself repeating things you\u2019ve already said a lot<\/em>. I mean, there\u2019s only so many questions interviewers can ask, and there\u2019s only so many ways you can answer them. It\u2019s just the way it goes. And one of the questions writers most commonly gets asked is \u201cWhere did this story come from?\u201d For Wasted Space<\/a><\/em>, the story is actually kind of a funny one, and though I\u2019ve told it a few times, I\u2019m going to tell it again. Because I like to, but also because there\u2019s more I want to say about this origin story that I haven\u2019t said before. So, here goes:<\/p>\n

Wasted Space<\/em>\u2014my new sci-fi comic that\u2019s a pinch of Preacher<\/em>, a dash of Star Wars<\/em>, and a smidge of Philip K. Dick\u2014was born on Christmas day, 2016. I\u2019ll never forget this day, because it\u2019s hard to shove out of your mind being so unbelievably miserable. I was sick. Sick as a dog. Sick as a dog who\u2019d eaten something out of a dumpster that he knew he shouldn\u2019t have eaten but, being a dog, he couldn\u2019t help himself and now he\u2019s so sick and all he has to show for it is being part of a dumb human\u2019s simile.<\/p>\n

Anyway. I was really sick.<\/p>\n

It sucked, because it was Christmas day, and I\u2019m a dad of two, which means Christmas is a pretty special time around the Moreci household. Any parent knows that we don\u2019t get sick days. There\u2019s no PTO plans. We wake up already on stage, mic in hand, and the crowd is just waiting. <\/em>And your only choice is to put on your best Liza Minnelli face because, sick or not, this show is<\/em> going on. Especially on Christmas, which is, like, the Liza Minnelli Broadway spectacular blowout. It\u2019s a day you not only have to be on, but you especially want<\/em> to be on. But I couldn\u2019t get there\u2014I was that<\/em> sick.<\/p>\n

I did manage to pull myself together enough to see my kids open my gifts. Then I crawled to Walgreens, bought enough cold medicine to tranquilize a horse, loaded up, and slept until it was time to visit my in-laws.<\/p>\n

None of that helped.<\/p>\n

So there I was, driving out to the in-laws, hopped up on cold medicine, and generally miserable about the state of the world. This was December 2016, and I hardly need to remind you what happened just a month beforehand. Things took a turn for the catastrophic, and I was still <\/em>angry\/befuddled\/outraged\/despondent over the lunatic who was about to become the leader of the free world in just a few weeks.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s when Wasted Space<\/em> was born. In the car, sick as hell, my head swimming in cold meds, still reeling from our national tragedy. The entire story came to me in like forty minutes.<\/p>\n

But Wasted Space<\/em> is more than that. Yes, it is very <\/em>much meant to be a book for our unbelievably chaotic and troubling times. I don\u2019t talk politics much online, for my own reasons, but I sure as hell wear them on my sleeve in this story. I wanted to make something that grabbed people by the lapels and gave them a good shake, like Preacher<\/em>, like American Flagg<\/em>, like Transmetropolitan<\/em>, like so many other comics that I adore, and I hope I hit the mark. But buried beneath that story is something more personal, and certainly more intimate, that\u2019s a little difficult for me to talk about.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s rewind to a few years before Wasted Space<\/em>, back to another sci-fi comic I wrote \u2014\u00a0Roche Limit<\/a><\/em>, which came out in 2015 from Image Comics. I guess you can say it\u2019s my breakout book; it was awarded numerous \u2018best of\u2019 lists, it was a commercial success, and it\u2019s currently being made into a pilot for SyFy.<\/p>\n

And I hardly remember writing a word of it.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s an exaggeration, I don\u2019t know. But I was drinking a lot<\/em> during that time, alone, mainly while writing. It was a tradition for me to drink\u2014bourbon being my drink of choice\u2014while I wrote, and I wrote nearly every night. It\u2019s weird, because there\u2019s no episode of drunkenness that stands out in my mind, where I did something outrageous that showed I needed some help. It was just this steady stream of drinking\u2014too much, too frequently\u2014and an overall sense of unhappiness.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t dive into personal details, but suffice to say, eventually, I found my way out; I left my day job and went full-time freelance, I\u2019ve spent more time with my kids than ever, and I hardly drink at all anymore. And though I feel better and happier, I do look back on that time of my life with a lot of regret. I know I wasn\u2019t present in my world, not totally. I wasn\u2019t my best, not anywhere close to it, and I mourn that. I mean, this was a time when I was writing a book that was finally <\/em>breaking me out as a writer, and I hardly remember its creation. It\u2019s just a haze in my mind, as much of that time is.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where Wasted Space\u2019s<\/em> main character, Billy Bane, comes from. He\u2019s a man rotting away, drowning in booze and drugs, who is forced to ask himself the question I had to ask of myself\u2014\u201cAm I better than this? Can I be <\/em>better?\u201d Granted, Billy\u2019s story is a lot more dramatic than my own\u2014a lot<\/em>. But the kernel is the same, this struggle of being awakened from your own crappy misery and forced to make a choice\u2014to do better, to be better, or to just aimlessly wallow.<\/p>\n

Of course, I took that kernel and surrounded it with a blue, beefcake Fuq bot (it\u2019s pronounced exactly as you think!), the apocalypse, and giant red entity known as Legion who likes to smash people\u2019s faces. So, there\u2019s that stuff as well.<\/p>\n

Like my recent novel Black Star Renegades<\/a><\/em> (also Star Wars<\/em> inspired, though to the extreeeeme in this case), Wasted Space<\/em> is a crazy, fun romp. These two books taught me how to enjoy what I love, how to be joyful in my writing, and I\u2019ve never been more happy with the products of my work. My hope is that everyone who reads these books sees the fun in there as well\u2014because as much as we need the outrage over every second of every day, we can use some good times as well.<\/p>\n

Michael Moreci: Website<\/span><\/a> | Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Wasted Space: Vault Comics<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And here is writer Michael Moreci to talk about his newest comic, Wasted Space — out today from Vault Comics. Go grab from your LCS. As a writer, when you\u2019re on the book promotion road, you find yourself repeating things you\u2019ve already said a lot. I mean, there\u2019s only so many questions interviewers can ask, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-8m1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32117"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32120,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32117\/revisions\/32120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}