#micropress

[wbmc666]

June WBMC: Bagel Butch by @catter-bug

Happy Pride month, my little wiggle birds! June's issue is Bagel Butch by Alieha Dryden! This 16 pg zine celebrates the queer elders who inspire us by offering a glimpse into our own futures- futures that others have tried to tell us don't exist.

Bagel Butch is being published in a limited physical run, available ONLY during June 2025 from the WBMC! It has a gorgeous color cover and blue body pages printed with black ink- how lovely!

The Wiggle Bird Mailing Club is a t4t micro press that publishes a new zine from trans and queer authors every month and mails them to you! Join at just $6 to get our monthly zine and a free print!

Follow and support Alieha! https://catterbug.wixsite.com/drydenart IG @catter.bug Tumblr @catter-bug

[misterfoghatswildride]

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[bryszket]

The ASCII peen is back. QUERY by Zilla Novikov, is such a heartfelt, funny, sad, screwy little punch in the gut. I cannot recommend it more highly if you're querying, thinking about querying, a writer, love a writer, or just want to have a 1.2 hour readable laughcry.

We have SIX special print versions of QUERY still available (and a handful of our other small books, including CORRUPTED VESSELS by @flameswallower and IT HELPS WITH THE BLUES by Bryan Cebulski. When you buy a special print copy, you get: to circumvent Amazon; really pretty paper and ink quality; recycled paper for the interior AND cover; a book that is locally printed and hand-shipped (by me!) to you, wherever in the world you may be. <3

GUESS WHOSE BACK

BACK AGAIN

QUERY WITH AN ASCII PEEN ON THE COVER IS BACK (in print)

TELL A FRIEND (reblog)

[elvenking42]

Favorite book you read this year? :3

Oh that's such a hard choice! I'm not much of READER reader like I used to be, so the few books I DID read were some of my absolute favorites ever! If I had to pick one though, hmmm

I think I'm gonna go with the Ocarina of Time Manga!

This year was the first time I EVER played the game (and yes I know I'm SUPER late to the party) and I was so enamoured with it, I really did have a good time. It's nice to have that cultural context to understand why Zelda fans speak so highly of such an old game. I picked the manga up on pure chance only about a month ago. I've actually never read a manga cover to cover before. I sort of avoided them in middle and highschool when they were accessable, so what little I understood about the medium came from my friends. But I found it to be really fun and engaging especially considering I already like, knew the plot. I talked more at length about the book itself with my buddy who suggested it, but what I found most interesting was how much it differentiated itself from the game. Though it retained most of the major plot points that made the story good, it opted to ignore other elements entirely, even radically changing the personalities and motivations of some charecters. I found it pretty interesting to compare side by side. It's also been incredibly useful as I slowly chip away at my own little fanzine to the game. Also I'm literally just scrambling at this point to find ANY official Ganondorf material. OoT Ganondorf is probably my least favorite of any iteration but I still find him charming

I need to put him in a plastic bag like a goldfish at a carnival and shake it around like a maraca

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

Big Sale Announcement! tRaum books, a queer micropress with a lot of trans books, is currently having a huge sale on their itch page! All 1$ or less!

This includes (only mentioning the ones I've read so far, but I'm sure the others are also great!):

Eusect by C.L Methvin, a body horror/gore anthology. MAEJ by Dale Stromberg, a huuuuge epic fantasy novel with some of the coolest linguistic aspects I've read in a while with a trans woman MC. Love/Aggression by June Martin, tvst with two trans roommates making each other lives hell. Something's Not Right by yves., a short story collection of queer speculative literature. Corrupted Vessels by Briar Ripley Page, which asks the question: What if three trans people started a cult in a decrepit house in the forest? Most Famous Short Film of All Time by Tucker Lieberman, about transmasculinity and ghosts and godesses and philosophy. Also huge and very great.

You can also get all of them in one bundle for 20$ here.

[garadinervi]

Jim Johnstone, Write, Print, Fold and Staple. On Poetry and Micropress in Canada, Gaspereau Press, Kentville, 2023 [room 3o2 books, Ottawa]

[cartoonistcoop]

ShortBox Comics Member Interview: Violet Kitchen

Throughout the month of October, the Cartoonist Cooperative will be sharing interviews with members of the Co-op who have a new comic available at the ShortBox Comics Fair 2024! 

NOTE: The Cartoonist Cooperative is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way formally connected with ShortBox.  

Today’s spotlight is Violet Kitchen and their new comic for ShortBox, Allodynia.

We’d love it if you could introduce yourself and tell us about your background in comics.

Violet Kitchen: I’m Violet, or Vi, and I’m a recovering hermit living in the wilds of Vermont! I started drawing comics pretty much as soon as I could hold a pen. I had a very specific spot at my family’s coffee table where I would sit with a sharpie and a stack of printer paper and crank them out obsessively.

After over a decade of hibernation, I rediscovered comics in my early twenties and over the past few years have thrown myself back into making them. I have a deep and abiding love for the small press scene and it’s coming to form the backbone of my life.

In addition to my personal practice, I’m a co-founder of the micropress Go Press Girl! along with my friend Rachel Bivens, and I work as a librarian at the Center For Cartoon Studies, where I graduated in 2023.

Tell us more about your new comic?

VK: Allodynia follows a young queer couple, Tess and Jules, through the changes in their relationship as Tess volunteers for an experimental and painful medical study at a local hospital.

Tell us about your creative process; how did you develop this comic and what are the steps you took to bring it to the final stage?

VK: This comic was unusual in that I never wrote a script. I had the general tone and outcome of each conversation in mind as I thumbnailed the story, but I wrote the actual dialogue in real time as I drew each page. I’ve never improvised to that extent before and it was pretty nerve-wracking!

I was partly inspired by Luke Kruger-Howard, who writes his webcomic Football America Dream as he goes along; the dialogue is the first thing he puts down, straight to ink, and the rest of each panel gets arranged around it.

In some other ways I adhered to my typical process. I thumbnail very loosely on Post-its that I redraw and rearrange until I’m satisfied with the layouts and story progression. Then I draw “pencils” in sharpie on printer paper, and lightbox over them onto Bristol with the final tool of choice, in this case a mix of 8B-10B graphite and colored pencils.

I really like inking the pencils and penciling the inks, because it forces me to be a little less precious both ways.

Read the rest of the interview HERE! And dont forget to check out the Shortbox Comics Fair to support these lovely creators!!

[literaticat]

I have offers from two agents and I'm kind of freaking out about deciding. I have some questions. A. Agent #1 would be my preference except for one thing - she seemed really hesitant when I asked if I could talk to her other clients. She said I could email her questions for them and she would forward them to her other clients. Is this a yellow flag? And if so, how yellow is it? Another writer advised me to write back and push to be allowed to talk to her clients - is that something that's likely to get my offer taken away? B. When I was googling her, it seemed that Agent #2 hasn't sold any books to Big Five publishers in like ten years. When I asked her about this, she cited a book she's sold recently that was sold to an imprint that is distributed by, but not owned by, a Big Five publisher. Does that count? C. After Agent #1's offer, I gave all the other agents two weeks to get back to me (even though Agent #1 gave me a much looser timeline). Agent #2 got back to me within the two weeks, but we only got to talk on the phone yesterday. I unwisely told her I'd get back to her by the end of the original two weeks deadline, which is Monday. I just wasn't thinking! Can I write back to her and ask for more time, or am I held to the original two weeks deadline that I gave her?

If you want to just DM or email me who these people are, I can tell you my opinion privately (but you can't do that in anonymous mode).

Othewise, woof, this is a lot to parse.

A) I don't think it's really a flag of any color. Like, I do think people asking to talk to some clients is normal -- not everyone does! But it's not weird or anything IMO. I have some clients who I know won't mind, and I warn them when I've given out their names. But... maybe that isn't a request she gets often, and she just doesn't want to bother her clients by sending a person to pester them or giving out their personal info! I can understand and sympathize with that, too. My clients are busy with their own stuff, and I certainly don't want people bugging them on my behalf.

I personally probably WOULDN'T go back to the agent and INSIST YOU TALK TO THEIR CLIENTS -- that seems aggressive? Like... why not just take her up on her offer? It's a little weird, to ME, but hey. If she forwards your email, they can choose to reply to you personally, they don't HAVE to go through her.

(OR, just forego this step -- if she obviously has active, longterm clients that she is selling things for, newsflash, they are probably going to say nice things -- why would they still be with her if they hated her?!)

Alternatively, are you like, Facebook/Insta/BlueSky friends with any of her clients? Maybe you can just drop them a casual line via DM, and be sure to say, hey, zero pressure, I know you are busy, but I got an offer from your agent, etc. While it would DEFINITELY be annoying AF for a random stranger to DM asking about their agent just because they are querying their agent, or because they want to get a referral or something like that -- in this case you actually have an offer from the agent, so it feels less like you are being a pushy stranger and more like you are being a curious colleague!

IF you decide to do that, though, just keep it SHORT, POLITE, AND CASUAL. And know that they MIGHT turn around and tell the agent that you DM'ed them. So BE COOL!

B) If a given small publisher is just distributed by a bigger publisher, no, that doesn't count as being part of the bigger publisher. However, big publishers do have LOTS of different imprints and whatnot -- are you sure that this imprint is not an actual imprint of the larger publisher? And when you say "no Big Five publishers in ten years" -- do you mean like, only tiny micropresses or something? Or do you mean "mostly major publishers just not necessarily part of the Big Five"? Like, Chronicle, Scholastic, Candlewick, Abrams, Sourcebooks, Bloomsbury, blah blah blah, all are not technically "Big Five" publishers -- but there is zero reason to be leery of them, they can pay just as much as any Big Five and they have just as good distribution, etc.

C) If you need more time, just say you need more time. "So sorry, I'm gonna need another beat here, still waiting on a couple of stragglers" or "So sorry, Passover and Easter got the best of me here, I need a couple more days" or whatever. Obviously try to make it fairly quick, but it's fine if you need a bit of time.

[oneforthemunny]

Hey babygirl, what are some beauty products that you absolutely swear by???

oooh this is a fun one.

ok sephora collection micropressed powder is severely underrated. gives you a natural, lit from within glow that feels like skin and is so much better than the matte look (imo bc I have dry skin).

I’ve been loving the natrium phyto lip balms bc they’re so nourishing and pretty and make your lips look so juicy. I usually line it with a lip liner (colourpop bff 2 is my fave nude).

I’ve been liking the surreal falsies mascara after @carolmunson rec and it doesn’t fucking move. wore it to multiple funerals this summer and did not move. fuck proof and cry proof so a win.

a splurge, but I am a huge fan of the merit concealer stick. good for acneic skin, doesn’t make me break out, covers but looks natural and so fuckin easy to blend.

[cnovelartreblogs]

with tumblr dying, do you know of any open discord communities for danmei and cnovels?

Hey hey!

The only public fandom server I'm part of for Chinese media (...virtually the only public fandom server I'm in at all, and my personal main hang-out spot on Discord...) is @merinnan et al's Daomu Biji server.

It's the nicest, chillest, most welcoming public fandom server I've ever been in - not that we haven't had our moments of drama, but they've been rare, and I've always felt comfortable there - and I've made a lot of friends too. That said, if you're not into DMBJ and/or as obsessed with Zhu Yilong as I am, I can't imagine it'd be a great fit.

Also, so - I'm @unforth, and my day job is that I own and operate an indie micropress, Duck Prints Press, that publishes original work by fanartists and fanauthors. As part of that, I and the staff involved with that run a "Book Lover's" Discord server. While it's sort of a combo "about the Press" and "about all queer books" and "about whatever we feel like talking about" server, we do end up talking about danmei a fair amount because multiple of the people involved in the Press, including obviously me, are into that kind of thing. Like we do a weekly chat on Wednesday about what we're reading and yesterday's was like, "here's one mlm YA book! here's a thriller in Dutch! here's the Yuri manga I just read! And here are the eighteen bajillion things we're all currently reading on Bilibili oh and I started Poyun." You're certainly welcome to join us. What we talk about there really boils down to what the people who are there want to talk about, ya know?

About a million years ago, I started building a cnovelartreblogs Discord server myself, but I've been so frackin busy the last couple years that I've never managed to finish setting it up the way I'd like. That said, it's got penciled in rules and channels for some of the more popular cnovel fandoms (mostly danmei, tho there is a Please Don't Laugh section). If I could get help moderating it, I could open it.

I just really don't have the ability to do it myself anymore, my days right now are like:

wake up

scroll tumblr and do upkeep on the art side blogs (while sitting with my kids and helping them get ready for the day) (1.5 hrs or so)

study Chinese (while sitting with my kids and helping them get ready for the day (.5 hrs, tho I wish it was more, if I can manage more than 30 minutes then I can actually try reading a real damn book but I only have the time maybe once or twice a month)

work (7 to 8 hours on weekdays, often more on the weekends, bonus if my kids are around and my wife is at work, such as tomorrow)

try to be a good mom (all the hours)

errands, chores, kid after school activities, etc. (1 to 3 hours a day)

read while snuggling kids on the couch and trying to ignore the tv (an hour if I'm lucky)

sleep (8ish hours, I hope)

there's just no wiggle room left for me to do any extra fandom stuff right now, sigh.

(sorry to whine about that part. it's not relevant. I just got my covid booster yesterday and I feel terrible today so I'm feeling sorry for myself. it's truly not a bad life overall I'm just perpetually exhausted)

[justsome-di]

Whoopsie second book haul. All graphic novels from a sweet comic book store

- The Infinity Particle by Wendy Xu (I've been dying to read this and 60 pages in, it's so good I want to tear my heart out.)

- One Million Tiny Fires by Ashley Robin Franklin from the store's micropress and self-pub section

- Garfield Yokai by Brenda Snell, also from the micropress and self-pub section. It's so fucking funny.

- North American Kappas and their Antics by A. Young Citizen.

[excelsheets]

he’s a micropress sole proprietor. he’s a published comic artist. he’s a data sci master. he’s a product manager. he’s going home to watch house md and sulk

[perthshire-fae]

Storytime... Although my experience was brief AND confined to US micropress publishing it occurred during a critical time; specifically the rise of Twitter! Before the internet, Authors primarily relied on industry and journalistic reviews in print media as well as local and interstate events like the big Cons to promote their work; these were the OFFICAL CHANNELS. Word of mouth was the other big factor; the rise of personal Blogging and, a bit later, social media kicked the layman's opinion into overdrive!

It didn't take publishers of all levels long to start insisting Authors become public figures away from their signing desks at events, or tv interviews; everyone needed a personal blog to ENGAGE with their adoring (but as time went on, often festering) fans. Twitter came along and BOOM! Suddenly Everyman could have bantz with their favourtie wordsmith at any old time of day. Twitter's infancy wasn't inherently toxic, in fact it was a blast connecting with folks I admired both personally and professionally, although it quickly became parasocial. Publishers leaned on authors, especially new blood, to become demystified celebrities as a matter of course, not just because the increasingly unnecessary (and definitely bitter) journalistic press had found a new darling.

Bigger names than I'll ever be have talked at length about the toxicity run amok in the world of big publishing, about how the rise of social media has affect their work and what SHOULD BE their private lives. It IS affecting the craft itself on such a fundamental level at this point I would never critique someone for dipping out. I 100% agree that the lion's share of publicity for 'contracted' authors of all levels should rest with the publisher; no one should be forced to entertain, in whatever form, screen addicted everymen 24/7.

woop there it is

[ethereallad]

Victoria Brownworth, In Memoriam

I didn’t know the trailblazing lesbian Victoria Brownworth, but I remember her as a fighter. She was always on Twitter (when it was still usable), pointing out injustice. She wasn’t afraid to get into arguments with people — I remember her warning me to not engage with her critics. She was made of tough stuff. She, through her micropress Tiny Satchel, published my YA novel, Bereft. Bereft…

[mkzariel]

So excited that my debut microchap VOIDGAZING was acquired by Whittle Micropress! More details to come...but for now, pls reply to this if you have recs for book tour venues 👀

[halfdeadfriedrice]

I'm reading The Dawnhounds (again), but the 2022 version and not the 2019 NZ micropress version that I absolutely dnf'd, and I found myself liking it a lot more. There's probably some time and place (2019 is a rough time for a cop main character even a subversive one), but the /sentence level edits/ and the tying in of more lore and interest points - very small additions!!! Are a fascinating class of changing the rhythm having a pretty big effect