In this conversation, Matthew Kreke shares his journey as a writer and creator, discussing his transition from video game development to writing novels and comics. He elaborates on his book, the creative process behind his comic, and the differences between writing prose and comic scripts. Matthew also talks about his experiences with Kickstarter for his comic project and his involvement in organizing EffingCon, a tabletop and video game convention. Back Matthew’s latest project: The Night Slayers:
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Summary
In this conversation, Matthew Kreke shares his journey as a writer and creator, discussing his transition from video game development to writing novels and comics. He elaborates on his book ‘Beacon the Hero of Heartland’, the creative process behind his comic, and the differences between writing prose and comic scripts. Matthew also talks about his experiences with Kickstarter for his comic project and his involvement in organizing EffingCon, a tabletop and video game convention.
Takeaways
- Matthew started writing short stories in high school for fun.
- He transitioned from video game development to writing due to financial constraints.
- Self-learning and YouTube tutorials were key in developing his writing skills.
- Matthew used a prequel giveaway to build his mailing list for book promotion.
- His book ‘Beacon the Hero of Heartland’ is a unique take on superhero stories.
- The comic he created is inspired by the idea of paid monster hunters.
- Finding the right artist for his comic was a challenging but rewarding process.
- Writing comics requires a different structure compared to prose writing.
- Kickstarter can be a nerve-wracking experience for first-time creators.
- EffingCon is a local convention that supports tabletop and video game communities.
Matthew Kreke (00:00)
A video game tabletop game convention?
Ryan George (00:02)
Yes, yes, I have that too as well. Yeah, so basically just give me an outline of what we’ll talk about. So we’ll start a little bit about you as a creator, just gonna get a little background on you. We’ll talk a little bit about the comic, we’ll talk about the tabletop convention. I also wanna just get some background on your book, you as a writer too. So yeah, we’ll get into all of that. Cool, all right, so we’re getting started.
Matthew Kreke (00:04)
Okay, I need to go to the bathroom.
Ryan George (00:29)
So I’m here with Matthew Craik. Matthew’s a writer and creator and really happy to have him on the show. I’m sure we’ll talk about some great stuff. So Matthew, how are doing?
Matthew Kreke (00:39)
okay, it’s a little hot in here. But I’m a fan. It’s a town called Watson, Illinois. It’s pretty much the middle of nowhere, to be honest. The closest city is called Mattoon, and even that’s not a major city.
Ryan George (00:42)
Okay, yeah. Where and where are you located?
Okay. Yeah. Meanwhile, like I am in New York. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. I I’m in New York right like in the middle of the world trade center. So kind of like in the busiest, like one of the busiest parts of the country, basically. So, so Matthew, so tell me a little bit. So with any writer, we always want to kind of get an idea, well, any creator really want to get an idea of like your own origin story as a creator. So what got you into into writing and being creative and then also wanting to kind of express that to people and give it, you know, give it to the world.
Matthew Kreke (01:12)
Yeah.
I’m not sure how I came from having ideas to actually wanting to publish them, but I know that my first few things where I tried to make stories was in high school. I started writing little short stories in high school just for my own amusement and the amusement somewhat of my teachers.
classmates, I guess, really never thought any of them would make anything. then somehow or another, I think I heard about Aragon and how the guy who made that was just a teenager when he wrote it. So I thought, well, maybe I could write something that I can actually publish. And my first story was basically a combination of Aragon and Star Trek.
And I gave up on it pretty quickly.
And then… I don’t know, I got into video game development in college, but I realized to do that professionally, you gotta have a lot of money, and a lot more patience than I had, to be honest. I eventually gave up on my prototype when I realized it wasn’t as good as I thought it was on the video game, and then I…
Years later I came up with this superhero video game idea based on Infamous. Loosely. But it would also be based loosely on Superman’s origin. And long story short, I gave up on that but I ended up turning it into a book. Beacon the Hero of Heartland. And yeah, that started actually selling. I’ve sold about 200 copies of that.
Ryan George (03:30)
Nice. So tell me a little bit about that process. Like what made you decide to transition to writing a book? And do you, did you have a creative writing background? Like, were you coming from this from a place of like having a background in creative writing and really getting into it? Or did you have to kind of learn that process of putting something like that together?
Matthew Kreke (03:48)
Honestly, I didn’t have very much in the way of proper education for writing. Like I said, I went to school for programming and game development. I did have one class in writing in college, but it was more for the real world stuff. Like, I remember take certain issues in the news and
Ryan George (04:11)
Okay, yeah.
Matthew Kreke (04:18)
try to make an argument whether the news reporter is right or wrong was one of the things I remember. But you know, no real fictional education for writing. If that’s…
Ryan George (04:36)
So how did you educate your, were you able to, how were you able to develop that skill? Or did you just kind of, you just do it and, and see where it let the chips fall with it.
Matthew Kreke (04:41)
I of did it until I figured out how to do it. To be honest, self -learning. I also watched a ton of YouTube tutorials on how to write, and… Well… I also did something called pantsing, which is where you just write… Well… You just write things until…
Ryan George (04:49)
Yeah.
Matthew Kreke (05:07)
how I’m saying this wrong, where you just write whatever comes to your mind and then edit it tomorrow. My biggest problem early on was I would write a sentence, say, think about it, go that stupid and delete it immediately. Eventually I had to learn to shut that part of me off.
Ryan George (05:26)
Yeah.
Matthew Kreke (05:32)
and learn to edit it
Ryan George (05:33)
So now…
So if you have, if somebody was coming up to you that’s like, that’s an aspiring writer, were there any, would you say, are there any tools or techniques or skills that you’d say, like you need to work on this thing before you go out and kind of work on your first published book?
Matthew Kreke (05:53)
I don’t know if there is any tool for them. I do know that if you want to get anywhere in the publishing world, you’re gonna have to probably sign up for some service that will allow you to give away a prequel to your book or some sort of story for free in exchange for you get their email. That’s what I did. That’s how I
managed to get all the sales I got. Most of my fans bought the book after I gave them a free copy on a service called Story Origin of a prequel, not the real book.
Ryan George (06:25)
Yeah.
Got it.
Matthew Kreke (06:40)
but yeah I would definitely install my vision
Ryan George (06:40)
Nice. So you use that to kind of collect emails to then use as part of your mailing list to generate leads. Yeah. And so you found that to be effective.
Matthew Kreke (06:50)
Yes, I have over 200 people on my mailing list still.
Ryan George (06:55)
Yeah, that’s great. you now do you keep a do you do like a monthly newsletter or do you do anything to kind of cultivate that that list?
Matthew Kreke (06:59)
Yes, I do. Like every third of a month I update my fans on what’s going on, on a little bit of what’s going on, but I’ll be honest, I very rarely figure out what to say. I usually just share other people’s books and say here, if you like my book, here’s some books that are either on sale or are free that you might be interested in looking at. Sometimes I…
Ryan George (07:13)
Yeah.
Yeah. So now before we get into, yep.
Matthew Kreke (07:30)
Sometimes I do tell little news clippings from the world of the book, like headline stories from the book as if the world was real. If you know what I mean.
Ryan George (07:48)
Yeah, no, that’s great. Especially if this is going to fans, that’s an awesome way to kind of work with your fan base.
Matthew Kreke (07:56)
Yeah. And every once in a I put…
Ryan George (07:58)
Now question, so before we.
Matthew Kreke (08:01)
Yeah, every once in a while I do send out a form, but those aren’t very effective so far. Sorry to interrupt.
Ryan George (08:08)
Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s, all a process of learning like, you know, what works, what doesn’t, what keeps people engaged. now let me ask you, before we get into your comic, I did want to talk a little bit about your first book. So tell me about what is Beacon, Hero of the Heartland. What’s it about? And why should somebody, you know, just listening to this, go out and buy it.
Matthew Kreke (08:27)
First off, it’s not Beacon Hero of the Heartland, it’s Beacon the Hero of Heartland. Heartland City. Anyway, point being, it is a sort of telling of a story like Superman, but diluted, and I don’t know, my own take on it. Basically, the story is about a…
Ryan George (08:33)
got it. Okay, my mistake.
Got it.
Matthew Kreke (08:55)
a character who is like Superman, but, and she’s never failed before, and then one day, a villain defeats her, and nearly kills her, and kills someone of her inner, that’s close to her. Now she’s devastated, and she retires. And then, a while later, I don’t know how long later really, I don’t remember, but the government
finds her blood, studies it, creates a clone of herself. The clone begins to have a mental breakdown and becomes homicidal, goes on vendetta -fueled rampage, and the real beacon realizes she’s the only one who can possibly stop this clone.
Ryan George (09:54)
got it. And so that’s where the story. So that’s where the story takes place for the first book. Nice. That’s sounds good. I like I like stories. You know, I’m a fan of stories where you do take something familiar like Superman and take your own take on it because I like that idea of of your your your the world looks familiar. So you’re able to get into it with, you know, understanding kind of the what generally what broadly that world’s going to feel like. And then you take
Matthew Kreke (09:57)
Yeah, that’s the main part of it.
Ryan George (10:24)
people on a ride that they don’t expect or a different ride. But I definitely like that kind of setting. So now what got you into writing comics?
Matthew Kreke (10:37)
Sure, it whatever possessed me to do this comic. know it started out with a desire to do a radio drama or some sort of movie, but when I started thinking getting actors is really hard, you know? So I started thinking about all the, all these things I had around the house like Legend of Zelda the Manga.
Ryan George (10:47)
Interesting,
Yeah
Mm
Matthew Kreke (11:06)
Cool Sack the Night Stalker the comic and the Godzilla comics and I thought why not and So here we have my first comic prototype at least and
Ryan George (11:22)
Yeah, no, that’s
So now what was it, you, was it, so was it that you had a story that you didn’t want to tell in a prose form and, it ended up basically being a comic? Was that basically what happened? Like you kind of had this story? Yep.
Matthew Kreke (11:37)
I’m ready!
think what it was was it was too short to actually be a book. But it was also such a cool idea, I thought, but I couldn’t just get rid of it. You know?
Ryan George (11:45)
Okay.
Nice. So tell me the process like for you. you, you know, we were talking earlier said, you know, you can’t draw a straight line. I’m in the same boat. for you, what was the process like finding an artist, finding the right artist, and kind of collaborate your work on this project.
Matthew Kreke (12:11)
Okay, that’s a complicated story. It all started…um…uh, let’s see, I’m drawing a blank, but…oh yeah! It all started when I found this guy, or I was looking through Facebook, found this guy who is apparently local, who drew a whole bunch of black and white pictures that I thought were really cool, and then he drew a picture of a fairy and I’m like, my god, that’s exactly the art style I want!
Ryan George (12:13)
Yeah
Matthew Kreke (12:39)
I tried to hire him, he didn’t want anything to do with it. Thought it would take too much time. So I took, I more or less took his picture off the internet, said, went up to my friend who I met through a video game tabletop game convention I run called EffingCon and who, this friend of mine runs video,
or makes tabletop games and card games and I said, well, would you be able to help me? I got this picture of what I want this comic to basically look like. Do you have any artists who could basically draw in this art style? And he said, yes, I do. And I, and he’s kind of between jobs. I can have him.
I can have him read your script if you got one and I sent him my script and yeah, it ended up pretty good. Took on a weird manga style, which I didn’t expect. But it’s good.
Ryan George (13:43)
Wow, great, that’s awesome. Yeah, especially.
Yeah. Yeah, that’s cool to find somebody that, you know, to have that vision of, know, and the style that you want and then be able to still get somebody is great because that can be difficult. And sometimes it’s hard finding the right artist. So now I guess another question I have going back to writing, I do want to ask a bit more about this book and what it entails. But what have you found to be some of the differences between writing prose and writing comics? Because, know, it’s one big challenge.
Matthew Kreke (14:14)
You can vote for Cromwell
Ryan George (14:17)
I’m sorry, so like, what are you, what’s the, are there, what are the challenges, maybe what?
Matthew Kreke (14:20)
I’m sorry, I don’t know what the language is, I’ve never heard the word before.
Ryan George (14:24)
Sorry, so what are the difference, what’s difference for you between writing a book, a regular novel or novella and writing a comic script? Like what are the similarities and what are the differences for you and were there any challenges that you faced in writing a comic script?
Matthew Kreke (14:36)
Well, I had to learn how to do that through a template, I found. And, yeah, it’s a lot… It’s got a lot of, like, headlines you gotta place in there, and… Well, it’s kinda similar to a little movie script I wrote years ago, but never made that movie, by the way. But, yeah, I had… I knew a little bit of how to write a script from the movie I wrote. But I…
There were a lot of differences I had to, like I had to put headlines and caps and in those braces. I really don’t know how else to answer that. I was just waiting.
Ryan George (15:18)
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s fair. Did you find this to an easy transition to writing like comic, a comic script?
Matthew Kreke (15:27)
Rather, more or less. The problem is when you ride your block.
Ryan George (15:32)
Yeah, no
Yeah, but that’s true with anything, right? Like you could, get writer’s block, whether you’re writing a novel or whatever it is. So I guess, so tell me about the comic. What’s the story? What’s the story? And what, and is there, are there any future additions or issues coming out or is it kind of a one shot?
Matthew Kreke (15:53)
Well, it started out… Alright, you asked what it is actually about. Okay, okay. I was gonna give you a whole background on it, but… Okay, where was I? My apologies, I have to go to the…
Ryan George (16:08)
What’s the comic about? Yeah, no, no problem.
Matthew Kreke (16:12)
What were we talking about?
Ryan George (16:14)
What’s the comic about?
Matthew Kreke (16:16)
yes, yes, Basically, it’s kind of an adaptation of Supernatural, but imagine Supernatural if the characters were paid to kill monsters. yeah, this first one is hopefully the first of many if the first one’s popular enough. As in, if it makes enough money to justify a sequel, I will make one.
But the first one will be a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin. The first issue. Me super natural.
Ryan George (16:45)
Now, yeah, yeah, no, sorry
interesting. Wow. That’s it. That’s a great pitch. Right? Like they always say like, what’s your elevator pitch? that’s super natural meets Ripple Silkskin. Sounds cool. So now it’s on Kickstarter currently, right? So what kinds of reward tiers do you have for it? Like, have you kind of, what are you offering on the Kickstarter?
Matthew Kreke (17:09)
Yes.
Well, right now we have, if you pledge at least $5, you get the digital copy and your name in the credits if you want it. And everything above that gives you the name in the credits too if you want it. But our second tier is $10 for the physical copy and the digital copy. But for…
Until we get 50 people to sign up for this, we have a $7 version of a $10 tier, the early bird special we call it, where you can pay $7 and get the physical copy and digital copy. Then we have $20 to get a signature, get the physical copy, digital copy, and a signature.
We have one for the artist and one for the for me, the writer. And they’re separate pledges. Or you can do the $30 tier, which is both our signatures, physical and digital copy. $80 for a custom trading card made by my artist of your favorite monster. And $100 you can get
I forget what was it. Your favorite monster on a trading card. Physical and digital copies. And the physical will be signed by both of us.
Ryan George (18:56)
Nice, that’s good. nice. So now what, what, have you found working with Kickstarter for the first, this is your first Kickstarter, right?
Matthew Kreke (19:03)
Yeah, I’ve met you
Ryan George (19:04)
How’s that process been?
Matthew Kreke (19:08)
Well, it’s been the kind of making me a nervous wreck because I’m at 24 % and I was at almost 25 % started paying for ads got negative one pledges from that so far I mean the only result is one person took away their five dollar pledge I don’t know how that happened
Ryan George (19:12)
Yeah.
Okay, yeah.
Yeah, that’s the, that’s the frustration with Kickstarter. think it’s like, you you get, you make a little progress and then you’ll have those days where like a couple of people get rid of their pledge pledges. And it’s like, why, why would you do this? It can be a little frustrating, but yeah, it’s like, just got to be persistent. And I find that like, it’s like that the challenge of Kickstarter, at least for me, the first time was just, I didn’t realize how much work day to day it was going to be like every day posting and trying to, you know,
Matthew Kreke (19:45)
You know.
Ryan George (19:57)
reach out to people and make sure that you’re out there. Like I’m not the best, I’m not a salesman, but you have to become a salesman with Kickstarter. Now, so you said, have you written any other scripts for this story yet? Or are you kind of waiting to see how things go before you start like?
Matthew Kreke (20:11)
We’re in about maybe a fourth of a script for the sequel, but I’m not gonna finish it until I know that we’re gonna either hit our goal or something near that. Know that there’s my audience for it, you know.
Ryan George (20:16)
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, absolutely. And sometimes it’s not even that there’s not an audience just getting, it’s like the process of just getting out there. That becomes such a challenge with any of this. what, so tell me about your tabletop convention.
Matthew Kreke (20:38)
Yeah.
video game and tabletop game conventions.
Ryan George (20:48)
Or is video game in tabletop? Yes, so tell me about that convention.
Matthew Kreke (20:51)
It’s called EffingCon and it happens November 1st and 2nd this year for the 4th time. We have celebrities, have video game tournaments, tabletop game tournaments, we have a whole bunch of vendors, and it’s pretty much the only video game or tabletop game thing event that happens in my hometown of Effingham.
Ryan George (20:58)
Okay.
Matthew Kreke (21:18)
which is basically my hometown because, like I said, Watson is nothing but wilderness that we happen to live in. I don’t know how else to explain it. If we want to do something, we always go to Effingham, their neighboring town. Even if we have to buy groceries, we have to go there.
Ryan George (21:31)
Yeah.
Okay, got it.
Yeah.
Okay, wow. Well, yeah, so I definitely have interest. might pick a brand at some point about tabletop because I’m working on a tabletop game kind of based on like my the Western is about a bounty hunter. And I came up with an idea for a bounty hunting game that I’ve been working through the mechanics and stuff and like, you know, thinking down the road, like once I figured all this stuff out and, you know, get prototypes together how that would go. But so what how many people do you typically have at your convention?
Matthew Kreke (22:05)
Yeah.
I’m not sure but we’ve tried to measure it but every year something goes wrong with our counting. This year we’re going to be selling tickets and hopefully keep an accurate count but every year something goes wrong that messes up our count.
Ryan George (22:15)
Yeah.
Okay, got yeah, no, that’s fair, but that’s to know on your
Yeah, okay.
Yeah. Now, are you, are you bigger on the tabletop side or the video game? I’m guessing the video game end,
Matthew Kreke (22:45)
My expertise is video games, but most of my clients are tabletop games. People.
Ryan George (22:48)
Yep, got it.
interesting. Okay, got it.
So now, and with your clients on the tabletop side, what do you do with them? Like how do you, how are they, how do you assist them?
Matthew Kreke (23:01)
Well, they either sell things or they get to demo their game if they’re making one. And I do not charge people for demo.
Ryan George (23:07)
Got it. Okay, interesting. So there’s
Got it. Okay, wow, so that’s cool.
Matthew Kreke (23:14)
As long as you don’t kill anything.
Ryan George (23:18)
Yeah, that’s awesome. And so, and she said, when, when is the table convention running again?
Matthew Kreke (23:23)
November 1st and 2nd, Video Game and Tabletop.
Ryan George (23:25)
Got it. Awesome. So now, where can people find you on social media?
Matthew Kreke (23:32)
I have, I believe it’s called, I believe I turned my Facebook into Matthew Craik Offer. I know I did that with YouTube, but I barely ever update my YouTube account. I’m hoping to change that soon if I can get consistent days off from my job at Walmart, my day job. But, until then, you’re probably better off reaching out to me at Facebook.
Ryan George (23:40)
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
Got it, yeah. And we’ll keep a link. Do you have a… We can also, if you have a link to your newsletter, we can absolutely post this in the comments, in the links on the podcast and on the YouTube channel for anyone that does want to join your monthly and find out about your book and comics.
Matthew Kreke (24:02)
yeah.
Yeah.
You want me to find the newsletter thing? I’ll have to
Ryan George (24:26)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you can, yeah, that’s fine. You can email that to me afterwards. That’s totally fine. Yeah. But yeah, but otherwise,
Matthew Kreke (24:30)
Okay, never mind there we go
Ryan George (24:36)
And so the best place for people is Facebook then.
Matthew Kreke (24:39)
Yes.
Ryan George (24:40)
All right, awesome. Well, and then what’s the name of your comic again? And how long, how much longer is it on Kickstarter? Just to make sure anybody that is interested has a chance.
Matthew Kreke (24:46)
But I slept and let me check
I don’t remember, it’s 40 in a few days, I believe.
Ryan George (24:58)
Okay, cool. All right, great. Well, Matthew, it was great to have you on the podcast. Thanks so much.
Matthew Kreke (25:02)
Thank you.
Thank you.
Ryan George (25:09)
Yep.