Today was a pretty busy day work-wise, so I figured it would make for an interesting AIF post.To give you an idea of what I have on my plate, I’ll run down a few of my regular assignments. I cover Image Comics for CBR. That means, when new solicits (info about comics coming out in a particular month) come out, I pitch a list of interesting sounding ones to my editor. He approves all or most of the list and then I’m off contacting the writers or artists and putting the pieces together. I’m also the main toy guy for Wizard World. Every week I send a list of potential pieces/lines/toys/waves/statues/whathaveyou to my editor, he narrows it down to five and then I get that all together by Friday. I’m also doing several pieces for Marvel.com that require coming up with questions, running them by the editor and then sending them off to the creators.

At the moment I have a dozen articles in the works for CBR. I’ll be turning one in later today, another is waiting on artwork and will be going in soon as well. Four of the twelve I’m working on popped up today and took priority, so I sent out emails to get the ball rolling with those creators. I’ve actually heard back from all of them (it was only two when I wrote the first draft of this post), sent out questions to two and even got answers back from one of them! That means I can get that piece together tomorrow if not later today and turn it in ASAP. There’s another CBR piece that will hopefully be done in the next day or so too.

On the Marvel.com side of things, I turned in my monthly Five Favorite Avengers column today, you’ll have to tune in on Friday to find out who the focus was. I think this might be the earliest I’ve ever had this column in by. I admit, Five Fave is one of those recurring jobs that sometimes slips my mind and other times is just hard to put together because creators get busy, especially with SDCC coming up. I’m glad to have it done, turned in and knowing that the next one will be due well after the big con. I’ve also got a pair of news stories for them that I’m working on. I had turned the questions in to my editor the other day and sent them out to the respective creators. Now, I wait. There can be a lot of that in this game, but I’m luckily busy enough that there’s always something else to keep me busy.

The batch of Wizard World assignments this week also took up a part of my day and will probably take up a chunk of my evening as well. Since I’m a kind of freelance editor for toys and collectibles that appear in the digital mag, I don’t just write them up, but also get images to go along with the articles. That can actually take a lot more time than the writing. This week, however, I lucked out and have immediate access to most of the images. I’ve written three of the five up, have images for four of the five and am looking to finish tonight.

So, not to toot my own horn too much, but today’s workload included finishing a handful of pieces, getting very close to done with two more, emailing four creators about setting up interviews and hearing back from three of them so far, sending out questions for four pieces, gathering some images and setting myself up to finish even more stuff tonight and tomorrow. Between SDCC looming in the near distance and a trip to New England for a wedding this weekend that will mostly keep me away from my “office” (the couch) on Friday and Monday, I’m hoping to power through and get as much done as possible. It’s a lot–something I realize now after typing it all out like this–but that’s not a bad thing. I’ve gone through days, weeks and months when I’ve got nothing going on and that’s far worse. Better to be somewhat in demand and busy than forgotten and bored out of my mind.