#which was several books long and then i started doing it as a webcomic

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia. I've been a fan of your work for a long time now and was wondering if you'd ever write an original sci-fi story or an original contemporary

Altho I know FFS probably classifies as contemporary 🤔 But I just saw that as a human au loosely based off Fae Tales

Fae Tales is an original series with my own original characters, and Falling Falling Stars is an entirely original contemporary story that features only some of those original characters, so technically, it is an original contemporary story. I'm not using someone else's IP, so it's not really fanfic. Something being an AU doesn't make it fanfic, for example, if an artist who draws a superhero character decides to draw them as a merman for Mermay, they're not doing 'fanfiction' of someone else's character - they're doing original art of one of their original characters, y'know? It's just another way of looking at them. Plenty of authors have re-used their characters in other things, this is especially common in comics, but it also happens in fantasy writing a lot too. Also doesn't mean those things become fanfic! Still all original, just has an AU component. :D

But AUs aside...

Otherwise, like, sure I'd consider it! My next works are likely to both be original fantasy worlds, but I like science fiction and I like writing contemporary. I've written original omegaverse in a contemporary setting with the Perth Shifters series, but straight up contemporary is definitely something I've thought up scenarios for.

Science fiction generally doesn't interest me quite as much as fantasy does, but all speculative fiction is interesting/enjoyable to me. That being said, all the next original worlds I've thought up - Daemonos, Glamour Gods, Vexteria, Mallory & Mount etc. are all respectively medieval-style science fiction (but really more like a fantasy, it's just interplanetary), paranormal science-fiction romance, high/epic/secondary world fantasy, high/epic/secondary world fantasy/psychological thriller.

It's more fun for me to sandbox in specfic, because like... I don't get to write characters who have naturally violet eyes, or shapeshifting demons, or fairy-human hybrids who are used by criminals and governments for their glamour as enslaved propaganda machines, or characters who are actually just pretty human but where magic is illegal and serial killers are super common actually.

Contemporary is easy for me to write, but it's not as appealing overall unless it's in situations like Falling Falling Stars, or Smoke in Autumn, or As Green as the Ragged Grass, or Spoils of the Spoiled, or...

Actually you know I've written a fair bit of original contemporary!

I've actually finished a contemporary novel in the past, which a few folks have read bits of through the Patreon over time, called Every Day Awake. The playlists for the characters (Allie, Brad and Jacob) are still on Spotify, as character playlists. I still plan on rewriting that book one day, but it's definitely not high on my priority list.

[thiefbird]

Despite all my better judgement, I appear to be into Boat Media. Having thoroughly enjoyed Temeraire and Aubrey-Maturin, I am now looking to broaden my horizons. Do have any recommendations for further reading?

I do!

I don't think CS Forester has quite the same voice as an author as Patrick O'Brian, but the Hornblower series holds a fond place in my heart - I actually recommend the TV series with Ioan Gruffudd, Jamie Bamber, Richard Lindsey, and Paul McGann before the books, if you like the Aubreyad, which I rarely do; it has a bit more of the feel of daily life added to it than the books originally did, which may well have been the influence of O'Brian's writing, and it is an affectionate adaptation.

I have not read this yet, but @gabrielnovakgoestomyschool has been badgering me to read a Boat Media, the name of which escapes me, so I will have them give propaganda for it in the notes.

I do not know if this is based on a book, but the miniseries To The Ends of the Earth was very good!

Similarly, I have not read The Terror, and I have heard that the show is better than the book, but I really enjoyed the first two episodes of The Terror! Unfortunately it is a show that requires me to actually pay attention, so it is taking a long time for me to watch it because I don't often have the spoons+time I don't want to be writing rn, but I have heard many good things and few bad.

I haven't read Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, or Moby Dick since high school(and I'm not certain I finished Moby Dick as that was right when my very severe adhd/autistic burnout started) but I very much enjoyed them then!

My last, but certainly not least, recommendation is Gone To Weather, an absolutely stunning webcomic by @focsle (beg pardon for the tag!)!

(And finally, watch this space - I'm working on an original Napoleonic War Boat Media novel, and I hope to have a finished first draft by the end of the year!)

[genericpuff]

ULO user here! I recently went back and found several old comments I'd made on LO while I was a huge fan of it in 2019.. so embarassing looking back lol. You mentioned that you used to send a bunch of "fangirl" messages back in the day- would love to see your old thoughts/opinions back when you loved LO to compare as a fun(if a bit melancholic) journey, if you'd be willing to share a few? Your thoughts/analysis are always amazing, but I'm super curious as to how you felt back before you realized what a shitshow it was

Haha yeah, I was a fangirl in the sense of like... always being on time for new updates, even if I was out doing other things, messaging my real life friend who got me into the comic to talk about it. Back then Saturday was the height of my week, sometimes the cliffhangers would get me so excited I'd spend the entire week thinking about what could happen next. I suppose I do still look forward to Saturdays now, but for much different reasons.

It's a lil' shameful looking back but I did used to be one of those "don't like it don't read it" dickheads LOL I also used to "not see the issue" with the age gap thing, not because I was okay with age gaps, but as someone who tends to write about immortal beings, I followed the same line of thinking that "they're gods, it shouldn't matter", until I realize just how silly it was that if that were the case, the comic wouldn't be constantly calling out the age difference and drawing Persephone to look as young as possible. I had to really sit on LO for a long time before I started seeing the issues with it. Ironically what opened my eyes to it was lurking in the #antiloreolympus hashtag every now and then, I'd be reading the opinions like "these opinions suck! they don't get it! they're just being nitpicky/mean/etc.!" and yet I duped myself by doing just that because it exposed me to other points of view which became more and more relevant as the comic declined in quality. I think it was around the trial arc that I started to notice the holes (one of the big tells for me that maaaybe LO didn't know what it was doing was when Persephone chose Hades to be her lawyer despite him being one of the judges and someone she was romantically involved with, like hello?) and then when the series returned from its mid-season hiatus and skipped right over Persephone's time in the Mortal Realm, that was when I realized the criticisms weren't coming from nowhere and I got off the high horse and started to read their points with more of an open mind.

Of course, I can safely say I wasn't as shitty as some of the stans can be, most of my opinions were just in the weekly discussion threads in the LO sub, but I was still giving my opinions on LO as if it was a Canvas comic, failing to recognize that 1.) just because webcomics are a budding industry doesn't mean they should be exempt from criticism, and 2.) LO isn't anywhere near the same level as Canvas, it's a #1 NYT best selling book with a creator who's won awards, so it absolutely should be subject to criticism and analyzing as LO is representing that same budding industry in a lot of ways.

I'm trying to find stuff from my pre-ULO days but unfortunately nothing from my main profile is loading past the last 9 months LMAO But if I do find any specific examples I'll definitely post them so we can roast past me together (*≧︶≦))(￣▽￣* )ゞI definitely remember back when ULO was created, it came at a perfect time I think LOL

[mirelurkqueer]

Re: the last reblog

I've been such a big fan of webcomics for most of my online life. I started out reading silly sprite comics across the internet. It's hard to pinpoint which actual webcomic was my first, but I've followed so many.

Like, does anyone remember Ink? I'm pretty sure that was the name of it -- it was a beautiful webcomic about a lion(?) cub who winds up in this strange afterlife where everyone looks to be made of painted glass and befriends a large bird there.

There was another that followed a cheetah who met an untimely demise and had to do several good deeds to get his spots back.

Then of course there was Off White, which was a spin on some Norse mythology following a pack of wolves at the end of the world as they try to get an amnesiac Skoll back where he belongs. It was my absolute favorite for a long time -- it's apparently getting a reboot with some major changes to the overall plot, but I'll always have a fondness for the original.

Obviously there's Lackadaisy, which is pretty well known now. Furry cats in prohibition era shennanigans.

Strays was another I was hooked on, about an orphaned wolf-girl tagging along with a mute merc.

Homestuck, of course -- I remember dragging my heels about getting to it. It was at the height of it's popularity, it was all over the dash and I was sick of seeing it everywhere. Then a few Lyricstucks and Sadstuck posts later my curiosity got the better of me and I was hooked.

Unsounded is and has been my absolute favorite webcomic ever for probably a decade now, and I can't sing its praises enough. It hits every note for me and the worldbuilding scratches my brain so good.

Ava's Demon is also pretty good! And I did of course read Never Satisfied religiously (and hope to support the creators new NSFW books when I get spare $$$ )

All this to say - webcomics are absolutely amazing. It's insane how much amazing content and talent is out there, absolutely for free. There's something for everyone, really.

[rachelcommitscrimes]

im gonna rant abt how much i hate the ghost eyes fandom (as a former fan) bc im just kinda mad rn

so uhh yeah major TW for s3lf h4rm, romanticizing mental illness, su1c1de, sadomasochism, infantilization, and rlly just anything related to that

(also sorry if this looks weird idk how to separate stuff on tumblr)

also DO NOT harass the creator or anyone mentioned here, you’re no better than them if you do that

——————————————————————————

ok so i read ghost eyes like 2 years ago but i stopped reading about the point where they were on that field trip. i still think it’s a nice comic and i’m sure the author is a cool person, also the art style is awesome. but the fandom is so fucking gross that i’m surprised more people haven’t talked about it. 

for some backstory on this, i used have REALLY bad depression and was cutting myself regularly (i’m much better now, i have medication, therapy, and i’m almost a year clean) i also stopped reading due to the comic severely damaging my mental health and i’m very glad i did. i was younger and immature and thought i could handle such content. this led to me becoming extremely obsessed with the comic to an unhealthy level, and getting severely attached to one of the characters (rudy) because i could relate to him at that time. i seriously thought that i WAS him sometimes.

i understand now that i should NOT have ignored the label and what i did was definitely wrong and if the creator is reading this i deeply apologize. i’m in a much better place now and i’m just glad that i was able to get the help i needed.

ok now to the angry part

if you don’t know what ghost eyes is, it’s a webcomic about a severely traumatized boy attending school for the first time and meeting a bunch of other severely traumatized kids. this comic has a crap ton of triggering/sensitive/disturbing topics (which is not a bad thing as long as you do it right) and like i said before, the creator has kindly put a warning before the comic starts stating that you SHOULD NOT romanticize/idolize/sexualize/kin any of the characters, do not read unless you can handle such topics, and so forth. now i know i should have definitely put the comic down before and not gotten obsessed over it, but i knew damn well enough that it was messed up to romanticize/sexualize any of the characters/things that happened in the book.

there are several scenes in which a character is self harming or harming someone else, and the comments will say shit like “nooo my poor bean” “awww baby don’t do that” or my personal favorite “protect the smol bean.” first of all, the characters are like 16-17, second of all, i cannot even tell you how fucked up it is that people see someone ruining their lives and putting themselves in danger and think it’s “cute” or “anxiety smol bean uwu” THERES LITERALLY A SCENE WHERE SOMEONE IS GETTING STABBED AND PPL ARE DRAWING THIS MF IN A MAID DRESS.

another reason i despise these fans is that they see an abusive relationship and start making ships/kinning them. as someone who has gone through pretty much everything rudy has gone through, i cant tell you how irritating it is to see people shipping him with his abuser or calling him a “cutie patootie masochist boi uwu” cause lemme tell you what-it doesnt feel good to have to put your health in danger and ruin your relationships with others just so you can get off somehow. ITS NOT FUN. the whole point of rudy’s character is to not romanticize someones fucked up mental health.

i could spend hours talking about this group of immature brats, but i’m tired and it’s a school night and i have a test tomorrow. i might add on if i feel like i need to but overall i really hope those immature fans grow up and realize their mistakes like i did, or get the help they need.

[coulson-is-an-avenger]

I’ve never read moby dick in my entire life but seeing you post about it so much made me want to give it a try! any warnings before I go into it? :D

oh my god gbskxjs okay first of all im honored that my mad posting has had this effect :DD!! you are so powerful for this, genuinely 💙💙

and secondly YEAH ok i can absolutely give some warnings!!!! this answer got long tho so I'm gonna put it under the cut 🐳💙

Firstly: the main thing most people struggle with in Moby Dick (myself included) is how utterly rambley the narrator is.

there WILL be pages upon chapters at a time where he simply Cannot get to the point, which is frustrating!!! something that helped me to keep in mind, though, is that Ishmael is doing that on purpose to avoid having to relive his trauma. It helped me to think of his whale rants as either a friend infodumping, or a desperate plea for the story to stop repeating.

if that doesn't help, you can always look up a summary for a chapter to see if there's any plot you'll miss by skipping it lmao

The Racism. This is a novel written by a white man in the early 1800s. There is some bullshit in this.

Although Melville does try to be conscious abt race and stereotypes, and has a very diverse cast, he still majorly fucks up. He regularly refers to several major characters as "s*vage", uses outdated terminology for Black people, throws out all sorts of shitty descriptors for folks, and rarely lets the characters of color speak for themselves. It's important to be aware of that going in.

This one is a weird dichotomy though, bc like. on one hand. all of that is infuriating. but on the other hand, the love interest of the narrator is literally a Pasifika man who is a gorgeous character that undercuts a ton of stereotypes and is allowed to be a nuanced person with a life that exists outside of the white characters. There's several characters of color who get to be People and have nuanced experiences and vibrant lives!! Pip and Tashtego and arguably Ahab himself are all fascinatingly nuanced folks that are not entirely bound by stereotypes!!

However comma, there's also an entire character who isn't allowed to exist outside of "evil zoroastrian stereotype" so hgbbjggbngmdhhf. it's a whole thing. Be aware of it.

Animal death — this is a book about whaling gbsjfjjf

Seriously though a significant portion of the book is dedicated to violently killing and then harvesting the corpses of whales. It does get sad! Some whales are killed more brutally than others. There is gore.

Rope violence/strangulation

This is just a safe one to mention. Lots of shit goes wrong with the rigging/harpoon lines in the book. Several characters are seriously injured or killed directly due to this.

Suicidal themes/tragedy

The first chapter literally starts off the book with this gbskfjwjd but it is a present theme throughout, and especially in regards to the final tragedy. A significant portion of the story involves characters thinking that they have no choices left but to die.

In tandem with that, this book is a tragedy. Like a "everybody dies" kind of tragedy. Do not go into this story thinking that you're getting a happy ending out of it LMAO. there's love and joy and good times within the story, but it ultimately ends in tragedy.

This is a long ass post, but hopefully it's thorough enough to give you answers!!! On the more uplifting side: I did have a fantastic time reading this. The characters are all super compelling, the queer rep is incredible for the time, the narrative is truly awesome, and it genuinely left a huge impact on me. It definitely earns its place as a masterpiece of American literature imo.

I will also note that if you would prefer to engage with an adaptation of MobyDick that is not narratively racist to its characters, generally more accessible, and also gorgeous, I will always recommend @pocketsizedquasar 's Moby Dick (Or, The Webcomic)! It is, as of yet, unfinished, but they're currently releasing pages weekly, and it's what got me to read the book in the first place. There's a ton of heart here.

But yea thanks for reading this long ass ramble, and definitely do whatever you need to keep yourself safe! 💙💙💙 happy reading if you choose to!!! :D 🐳

[machsabre]

Reboot 2023

So... 

I'd like to say it's because of Covid, but truthfully, it's been a thing long before then too. I've been playing catch up with myself for far too long. I fell out of the comic making groove about a decade ago, and I never quite got back in. In 2017 I started Stargazer Apogee with the intent of getting back into it all. But not long after, I got married, we moved, bought a house, had a new career, and I was starting to have some health issues... It was kinda hard to keep on making a comic. Not to mention, I was coming into this with a “webcomics 2010″ mindset which is NOT how webcomics (or webtoons) are done anymore. And my art was going through a shift in styles at that time too. When I started, it was still traditionally penciled and inked... Then digitally inked... And it just kept harder to match up how I was drawing NOW to how I was drawing at the start of the comic. And then there was the script, which was constantly undergoing rewrites, as I was drawing it. (Which is not the greatest way to get back into groove.) And that’s not even counting the issues that the Pandemic caused. I just was never able to catch up to where I left off, much less where I left off a decade ago. On the plus side, my art DID get better! I mean, my art now is better than it’s ever been in my life.  Then earlier this year... Things sucked. My father died. My family were tools about it. I had some serious issues at work with some projects. I had some health issues that I’ll keep private, My wife and I had Covid back to back, my wonderful dog died out of nowhere and I had my first panic attack. This was all in a span of three months. And I spent weeks just trying to feel normal again. Something that never came and now I’m seeing a therapist and got diagnosed with severe anxiety. I'm not even the same person I was five months ago, much less five years ago. Or ten. In the last couple months, things have changed. The health issues apparently have an inexpensive fix. (Which I'm currently doing.) I got a neat new (better paying, less stressful) job, which gives me a lot of walking so I can get more exercise. (10,000 steps a day is commonplace now.) I’m on bupropion, which has helped me manage that anxiety so much better that panic attacks haven’t happened since, and I’m finally thinking clearly again for the first time in a long time. Which made me realize that I can never re-obtain what I was going for in the past. I need to start anew. So with the new year upon us soon, all previous unfinished stuff is done. Projects will be hard rebooted or completely changed. I'm taking this as a new opportunity, to re-establish myself as a comic creator. So right now, I have projects in mind that I want to do. But the immediate one I’m working on it what I call my “smutty monster-mystery” book. (Currently untitled.) Meant for (im)mature audiences, a little fun mystery story with sex, monsters, murder and dumb jokes. It’ll be a B&W comic, meant to evoke the feelings of those old Carter Brown Mystery novels. More on this soon. I’ll probably make a (new) Patreon for this. But that’s a 2023 issue. Right now, I’m just gonna spend the rest of this year script writing and drawing various stupid stuff.

More on this all soon. 

[greatwyrmgold]

I've seen some people derogatorily comparing webtoons (the tall Korean webcomics) to classic webcomics popular in the 90's and oughts. And I do think there are worthy criticisms of the webtoon format, particularly how it's centralized on big apps, but they're designed well for their environment.

The reason I call webtoons "tall comics" is that they're presented as a continuous scroll of comic. The start of an episode is at the top, you scroll down to see the next panels, repeat until you reach the end of the episode. It's a very natural way to read comics on smartphones, the hardware webtoons were designed for. Every millimeter of screen space is used; navigation requires only inputs that the device is designed for; and artists have found plenty of ways to leverage their format for artistic or narrative purposes.

I don't think classic webcomics fit desktops that well. And I'm saying that as someone who likes webcomics; I've read a few continuously since the mid-oughts. Plus several that I didn't discover until later, or which debuted or died in that time, or both, or which I dropped because they got bad, or which never updated continuously, or...look, I've read more webcomics than most people, and I still think it's poorly-adapted to its native envirionment.

To make my point, here's a screencap showing what you might see if you read the first page of The Order of the Stick, the first webcomic I read.

There are exceptions, but some version of this is by far the most common "classic webcomic" page layout. (Out of the dozen-ish webcomics I'm following that update at least once a week, one has one panel per "page," one usually follows a more newspaper-comic-sized format, and the rest are roughly like you see above.)

In the middle is an image with roughly the dimensions and layout of a physical comic book page. Of course, an 8.5:11 image doesn't fit cleanly on a 4:3 screen, let alone 16:9. So either the image is stretched wide enough that you can't view the whole page at once, or it's compressed and leaves lots of space on both sides, or you find a grumpy medium that does a little of both.

On the device I'm writing this on, the entire OOTS page above can fit on one page, if I scroll carefully and turn off the bookmark bar. About a third of the screen is blank, distracting negative space. And it's not like more recent webcomics have fixed the problem. Here's the first page of Aurora, a webcomic that started in 2019.

The background to either side of the page is less blank, it doesn't clash with the comic as badly. The header is fancier, there's an integrated comment system, and the website design doesn't assume everyone's using a 4:3 display. But the comic is still presented as an image sized to fit a physical piece of paper, not a web browser. (It's not clear from the screenshot above, but Aurora's pages are twice as tall as my browser window, bookmark bar off.)

(And these are far from the worst examples. I like Girl Genius, it's one of the webcomics I've been keeping up with basically since I learned webcomics existed, but its website layout is so cluttered with ad boxes and toolbars and fancy brass borders around everything...)

For zoomers who haven't been reading classic webcomics for most of their lives, let me explain how it works. You click on page 1 and start reading, scrolling down with your mousewheel or arrow keys. Once you finish reading the page (it usually won't take long), you move your mouse to the "next comic" button at the bottom of the page and click it, then repeat the process about once a minute. Newer webcomics and ones which have updated their web design in the last decade usually let you click on the image to go to the next page, but that's hardly a guarantee.

Depending on the webpage, your device, and your temperament, you might settle into a rhythm that works. If the comic has consistent page sizes, you might be able to settle your cursor in the spot where the "next page" button will be once you've hit page-down enough times to reach the end of the page. I binged more webcomics than I can count like that.

But even at its best, it's nowhere near as elegant as simply scrolling through a webtoon a panel or two at a time.

[vincaminor42]

2023 Reading List

A silly thing I've been doing the last few years is making a long list of my reading over the course of the year, month by month. It started as a way to keep track of what I'd read and try to remember it all at the end of the year, but has become a bit of a fun way to look back on my year and what I was into or focusing on over the course of it.

I used to post the results to facebook (which ended for obvious reason), then did a synopsis on twitter for a couple years (which also ended for obvious reasons); plus there's something about putting the whole list up, rather than just a summary, which is very satisfying.

Included on the list are professionally published short stories, novellas, novelettes, novels, graphic novel issues & collections. Not included are fanfic; short fiction posted untitled online; tumblr, twitter & other social media original fiction; non-fiction essays/articles; poetry; webcomics; and podcasts (too many & too hard to keep track of).

During 2023 I read 199 individual works. These consisted of

34 longer pieces of prose (novels and novellas)

118 short prose (novelettes and short stories)

27 graphic novel collections and long form comics

17 short comics and comic issues, and

3 kids books (a slightly nebulous category mostly middle grade and younger, though some middle grade might've been counted in a different category, cause I'm kinda wishywashy about these)

Most read authors for the year were

Terry Pratchett with 26 works (a book of his short stories did most of the heavy lifting there)

Seanan McGuire with 19 works, as she continues to be frighteningly prolific, with 3 active series, several other books a year, and at least one short story a month on Patreon

Kore Yamazaki with 14 works, as I made my way through most of The Ancient Magus Bride manga

Martha Wells with 10 works, mostly Murderbot rereads but also her new fantasy novel and some short stories

and my always favourite author Ursula Vernon (aka T Kingfisher) with 8 works; 2024 might be due for another Great Ursula Reread (last done in 2020, probably been long enough)

Only 28 things were rereads this year, which is a bit low for me (I'm a big believer in comfort rereading).

Actual list of works read under the cut, if anyone's masochistic enough to want to actually read them all, lol

I include anything I read during the month in its list, but if I didn't finish it that month it gets marked as "in progress" (and later "finished" the month it is, natch). Comics are marked with © to help keep track of them (short story comic anthologies make keeping comics vs prose tricky otherwise), and has nothing to do with copyright (though all of the comics read this year are still under copyright).

January - 24 works finished

Rincemangle, The Gnome of Even Moor – Terry Pratchett

If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You – John Chu

How Much Harm – Seanan McGuire

Kindly Breath In Short, Thick Pants – Terry Pratchett

Cold Relations – Mary Robinette Kowal

There's No Fool Like an Old Fool Found in an English Queue – Terry Pratchett

Station Eternity – Mur Laferty (in progress)

Symbiosis – D A Xiaolin Spires

Lost in the Moment and Found – Seanan McGuire

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet – Becky Chambers (reread)

AirBody – Sameem Siddiqui

The Eight-Thousanders – Jason Sanford

Leiningen Versus the Ants – Carl Stephenson

Coo, They've Given Me the Bird – Terry Pratchett

Open House On Haunted Hill – John Wiswell (reread)

This Is New Gehesran Calling – Rebecca Frainow

And Mind the Monoliths – Terry Pratchett

The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign – Cora Buhlert

The High Meggas – Terry Pratchett

A Being Together Amongst Strangers – Arkady Martine (reread)

Sinew and Steel and What They Told – Carrie Vaughn

Justice Calling – Annie Bellet

Twenty Pence, with Envelope and Seasonal Greeting – Terry Pratchett

Incubust – Terry Pratchett

Final Reward – Terry Pratchett

February - 38 works finished

Station Eternity – Mur Laferty (finished)

My Country Is a Ghost – Eugenia Triantafyllou

In This, At Least, We Are Alike – Caitlin Starling

Whalefall – Seanan McGuire

Turntables of the Night – Terry Pratchett

#ifdefDEBUG + `world/enough' + `time' – Terry Pratchett

The Ransom of Miss Coraline Connelly – Alix E Harrow

Sunrise, Sunrise, Sunrise – Martha Wells

Hollywood Chickens – Terry Pratchett

The Salt Witch – Martha Wells (reread)

Lone Puppeteer of a Sleeping City – Arula Ratnaker

Once and Future – Terry Pratchett

Color, Heat, and the Wreck of the Argo – Catherynne M Valente

FTB – Terry Pratchett

Sir Joshua Easement: A Biographical Note – Terry Pratchett

DIY – John Wiswell

Yellow and the Perception of Reality – Maureen McHugh

Troll Bridge – Terry Pratchett (reread)

Theatre of Cruelty – Terry Pratchett (reread)

The Eternal Cocktail Party – Fonda Lee

The Sea and the Little Fishes – Terry Pratchett (reread)

Towered – Tansy Rayner Roberts

The Ankh-Morpork National Anthem – Terry Pratchett (reread)

Medical Notes – Terry Pratchett

A Closed and Common Orbit – Becky Chambers (reread)

City of Red Midnight: A Hikayat – Usman T Malik

Thud: A Historical Perspective – Terry Pratchett

Montgomery Bonbon: Murder at the Museum – Alasdair Beckett-King

A Few Words from Lord Havelock Vetinari – Terry Pratchett

Death and What Comes Next – Terry Pratchett (reread)

A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices – Terry Pratchett

Minutes of the Meeting to Form the Proposed Ankh-Morpork Federation of Scouts – Terry Pratchett

The Ankh-Morpork Football Association Hall of Fame Playing Cards – Terry Pratchett

The Adventure Zone: The Eleventh Hour – Clint, Griffin, Justin, & Travis McElroy, & Carey Pietsch ©

Our Love Against Us – Davaun Sanders

How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub – P Djeli Clark

If You Take My Meaning – Charlie Jane Anders

The Coward Who Stole God’s Name – John Wiswell

March - 13 works finished

On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa With Gun and Camera – Elizabeth Bear

Content/Consent – Seanan McGuire

Beneath the Sugar Sky – Seanan McGuire (reread)

A Stick of Clay, in the Hands of God, is Infinite Potential – Neon Yang

Into the Windwracked Wilds – Seanan McGuire (as A Deborah Baker)

On the Hill, the Knitters – Steve Toase

What Moves the Dead – Ursula Vernon (as T Kingfisher)(reread)

The Bahrain Underground Bazaar – Nadia Afifi

The Bone Orchard – Sara A Mueller

To Sail the Black – A C Wise

The Goldfish Man – Maureen McHugh

A House with Good Bones – Ursula Vernon (as T Kingfisher)

Exile's End – Carolyn Ives Gilman

April - 12 works finished

Backpacking Through Bedlam – Seanan McGuire

Unknown Number – Blue Neustifter (as Azure) (reread)

The Mysteries of the Stolen God and Where His Waffles Went – Seanan McGuire

Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade (A Graphic Novel Adaptation) – Kurt Vonnegut, Ryan North, & Albert Monteys ©

Uhura's Song – Janet Kagen

Salt Water – Eugenia Triantafyllou

The Counterworld – James Bradley

Even If Such Ways Are Bad – Rich Larson

Magical Girl Burnout Bingo – Lauren Ring

Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenzhu – Grace Chan

Georgie in the Sun – Natalia Theodoridou

Your Slaughterhouse, Your Killing Floor – Sunny Moraine

May - 7 works finished

Slipping – Seanan McGuire

Carmilla: The First Vampire – Amy Chu & Soo Lee ©

Unbreakable – Seanan McGuire (as Mira Grant)

The Ten Thousand Doors of January – Alix E Harrow (in progress)

The Shadow of the Gods – John Gwynne (in progress)

The Honey Month – Amal El-Mohtar

Elegant and Fine – Ursula Vernon (reread)

All These Ghosts Are Playing to Win – Lindsey Godfrey Eccles

A Lovers’ Tide in Which We Inevitably Break Each Other; Told in Inverse – K S Walker

June - 11 works finished

The Ten Thousand Doors of January – Alix E Harrow (in progress)

The Shadow of the Gods – John Gwynne (in progress)

Cursed Cocktails – S L Rowland

A Soul in the World – Charlie Jane Anders

Toad Words – Ursula Vernon (as T Kingfisher) (reread)

Beginnings – Kristina Ten

Dick Pig – Ian Muneshwar

Perhaps in Understanding – Anamaria Curtis

Yinying – Shadow – Ai Jiang

In Time, a Weed May Break Stone – Valerie Valdes

Blank Space – Delilah S Dawson

Bigger Fish – Sarah Pinkser

Space Treads – Parlei Riviere

July - 11 works finished

The Ten Thousand Doors of January – Alix E Harrow (finished)

The Shadow of the Gods – John Gwynne (finished)

The Bookshop and the Barbarian – Morgan Stang (in progress)

Theses on the Scientific Management of Goetic Labour – Vajra Chandrasekera

To Put Your Heart Into a White Deer – Kristiana Willsey

The Big Heavy – Steph Kwiatkowski

The Mausoleum’s Children – Aliette de Bodard

The Infinite Endings of Elsie Chen – Kylie Lee Baker

The Rain Remembers What the Sky Forgets – Fran Wilde

Submissive – Stjepan Sejic ©

Désolé – Ewan Ma

In the Shadow of Spindrift House – Seanan McGuire (as Mira Grant)

August - 12 works finished

The Bookshop and the Barbarian – Morgan Stang (in progress)

The Mighty Captain Marvel, Vol. 1: Alien Nation – Margaret Stohl & Ramon Rosanas ©

Hot New Toy – Seanan McGuire

Camp Damascus – Chuck Tingle

We Built This City – Marie Vibbert

Agent of Chaos – Ursula Vernon (as T Kingfisher)

Murder By Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Age – S L Huang

Erstwhile Vol 1: From the Tales of the Brothers Grimm – Gina Briggs, Louisa Roy, & Elle Skinner (reread) ©

Erstwhile Vol 2: Untold Tales from the Brothers Grimm – Gina Briggs, Louisa Roy, & Elle Skinner (reread) ©

Thornhedge – Ursula Vernon (as T Kingfisher)

Erstwhile Vol 3: A Grimm's Fairy Tale Collection – Gina Briggs, Louisa Roy, & Elle Skinner (reread) ©

A Dream of Electric Mothers – Wole Talabi

The Book Eaters – Sunyi Dean (in progress)

The Book Thief – Markus Zusak (in progress)

The Difference Between Love and Time – Catherynne M Valente

September - 12 works finished

The Book Thief – Markus Zusak (finished)

The Bookshop and the Barbarian – Morgan Stang (finished)

Drown the Lamenting – Seanan McGuire

The Book Eaters – Sunyi Dean (in progress)

Sleep No More – Seanan McGuire

Candles and Starlight – Seanan McGuire

Jim Henson's Labyrinth: Coronation, Vol. 1 – Simon Spurrier & Daniel Bayliss ©

Jim Henson's Labyrinth: Coronation, Vol. 2 – Simon Spurrier, Ryan Ferrier, & Daniel Bayliss ©

Jim Henson's Labyrinth: Coronation, Vol. 3 – Simon Spurrier, Ryan Ferrier, Daniel Bayliss, & Irene Flores ©

The Tea Dragon Society – Kay O'Neill (reread) ©

The Tea Dragon Festival – Kay O'Neill ©

Kaiju Preservation Society – John Scalzi

Goodnight Moon – Margaret Wise Brown & Clement Hurd (reread)

October - 16 works finished

The Book Eaters – Sunyi Dean (finished)

The Tea Dragon Tapestry – Kay O'Neill ©

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 1 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 2 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 3 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 4 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 5 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

The Witch King – Martha Wells

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 6 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 7 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 8 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 9 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

Under the Smokestrewn Sky – Seanan Mcguire (as A Deborah Baker) (in progess)

Four Words Written On My Skin – Jenn Reese

We Do Not Eat Much Fish – Grace P Fong

The Ghasts – Lavie Tidhar

The Curing – Kristina Ten

The Coffin Maker – AnaMaria Curtis

November - 24 works finished

The Innocent Sleep – Seanan McGuire

Under the Smokestrewn Sky – Seanan McGuire (as A Deborah Baker) (finished)

So You Want to Be a Wizard – Diane Duane

Doubtless and Secure – Seanan McGuire

The Muki's Deal – Rick Lazo ©

Let Me Cook My Breakfast, Mr Caiman! - Ranpakoka ©

The Bum Who Tricked the Devil – Rodrigo Vargas ©

Pineapple Wishes – Luisa F Rojas ©

The Lizard Prince – Lore Vicente ©

A Girl and Her Bird – Coni Yovaniniz ©

Bookshops and Bonedust – Travis Baldree

The Basenemporo Spider – Brenda Roman ©

Madre de Agua – Shadia ©

The Ring – Francis Francia ©

The Little Shepherd – PD Loupee & Bruno Ortiz ©

Myth of the Condor – Diego Carvajal ©

Yara – Nique ©

The Voice in the Night – William Hope Hodgson (reread)

Toad Words – Ursula Vernon (reread)

Winnie-the-Pooh – A A Milne (in progress)

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 10 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 11 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 12 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 13 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

The Ancient Magus' Bride, Vol. 14 – Kore Yamazaki (translated by Adrienne Beck) ©

December - 17 works finished

Winnie-the-Pooh – A A Milne

Paladin's Faith – Ursula Vernon (as T Kingfisher)

All Systems Red – Martha Wells (reread)

As It Was Told to Me – Elijah Forbes ©

Chokfi – Jordaan Arledge & Mekala Nava ©

White Horse Plains – Rhael McGregor ©

The Rougarou – Maija Ambrose Plamondon & Milo Applejohn ©

Velveteen Presents the Princess vs. the Congressional Committee for Superhuman Oversight – Seanan McGuire

Compulsory – Martha Wells (reread)

Artificial Condition – Martha Wells (reread)

Rogue Protocol – Martha Wells (reread)

Obsolescence – Martha Wells

The Star – Arthur C Clarke

Viral Content – Madeline Ashby

Exit Strategy – Martha Wells (reread)

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory – Martha Wells (reread)

The Plague Doctors – Karen Lord

The Masculine and the Dead – Frank Bill

[themollyjay]

The Myths of Forced Diversity and Virtue Signaling.

In my novel Mail Order Bride, the three main characters are a lesbian and two agendered aliens.  In my novel Scatter, the main character is a lesbian, the love interest is a pansexual alien, and the major side characters include a half Cuban, half black Dominican lesbian, a Chinese Dragon, a New York born Jewish Dragon, and a Transgender Welsh Dragon.  In my novel The Master of Puppets, the Main Characters are a lesbian shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborg and a half black, half Japanese lesbian.  The major side characters include three gender fluid shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborgs, and a pansexual human.  In my novel Transistor, the main character is a Trans Lesbian, the love interest is a Half human/Half Angel non-observant Ethiopian Jew, and the major side characters include a Transgender Welsh Dragon (the same one from Scatter), a Transgender woman, a Latino Lesbian, an autistic man, three Middle Eastern Arch Angels, and a hive mind AI with literally hundreds of genders.  In my novel The Inevitable singularity, one of the main characters is a lesbian, another has a less clearly defined sexuality but she is definitely in love with the lesbian, and the third is functionally asexual due to a vow of chastity she takes very seriously.  The major side characters include a straight guy from a social class similar to the Dalit (commonly known as untouchables) in India, a bisexual woman, a man who is from a race of genetically modified human/frog hybrids, and a woman from a race of genetically modified humans who are bred and sold as indentured sex workers.

Why am I bringing all of this up?  Well, first, because it’s kind of cool to look at the list of different characters I’ve created, but mostly because it connects to what I want to talk about today, which should be obvious from the title of the essay.  The concepts of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’.

For those who aren’t familiar with these terms, they’re very closely related concepts.  ‘Forced Diversity’ is the idea that characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are only ever included in a story because of outside pressure from some group (usually called Social Justice Warriors, or The Woke Brigade or something similar) to meet some nebulous political agenda.  The caveat to this is, of course, that you can have a women/women present as long as they are hot, don’t make any major contributions to the resolution of the plot, and the hero/heroes get to fuck them before the end of the story. ‘Virtue Signaling’, according to Wikipedia, is a pejorative neologism for the expression of a disingenuous moral viewpoint with the intent of communicating good character.

The basic argument is that Forced Diversity is a form of virtue signaling.  That no one would ever write characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males because they want to.  They only do it to please the evil SJW’s who are somehow both so powerful that they force everybody to conform to their desires, yet so irrelevant that catering to them dooms any creative project to financial failure via the infamous ‘go woke, go broke’ rule.

What the people who push this idea of Forced Diversity tend to forget is that we exist at a point in time when creators actually have more creative freedom than are any other people in history.  Comic writers can throw up a website and publish their work as a webcomic without having to go through Marvel, DC or one of the other big names, or get a place in the dying realm of the news paper comics page.  Novelists can self-publish with fairly little upfront costs, musicians can use places like YouTube and Soundcloud to get their work out without having to worry about music publishers.  Artists can hock their work on twitter and tumblr and a dozen other places. Podcasts are relatively cheap to make, which has opened up a resurgence in audio dramas.  Even the barrier to entry for live action drama is ridiculously low.

So, in a world where creators have more freedom than ever before, why would they choose to people their stories with characters they don’t want there?  The answer, of course, is that they wouldn’t.  Authors, comic creators, indie film creators and so on aren’t putting diverse characters into their stories because they are being forced to. They’re putting diverse characters into their stories because they want to.  Creators want to tell stories about someone other than the generically handsome hypermasculine cisgendered heterosexual white males that have been the protagonists of so many stories over the years that we’ve choking on it. A lot of times, creators want to tell stories about people like themselves.  Black creators want to tell stories about the black experience. Queer creators want to tell stories about the queer experience.

I’m an autistic, mentally ill trans feminine abuse survivor.  Every day, I get up and I struggle with PTSD, with an eating disorder, with severe body dysmorphia, with anxiety and depression and just the reality of being autistic and transgender.  I deal with the fact that the religious community I grew up in views me as an abomination, and genuinely believes I’m going to spend eternity burning in hell.  I deal with the fact that people I’ve known for decades, even members of my own family, regularly vote for politician who publicly state that they want to strip me of my civil rights because I’m queer.  I’m part of a community that experiences a disproportionately high murder and suicide rate.  I’ve spent multiple years of my life deep in suicidal depression, and to this day, I still don’t trust myself around guns.

As a creator, I want to talk about those issues.  I want to deal with my life experiences.  I want to create characters that embody and express aspects of my lived experience and my day-to-day reality.  No one is forcing me to put diversity into my books.  I try to include Jewish characters as often as I can because there have been a number of important Jewish people in my life.  I include queer people because I’m queer and the vast majority of friends I interact with on a regular basis are queer.  I include people with mental illnesses and trauma because I am mentally ill and have trauma, and I know a lot of people with mental illnesses and trauma.  My work may be full of fantastical elements, aliens and dragons and angels and superheroes and magic and ultra-high technology and AI’s and talking cats and robot dogs and shape shifters and telepaths and all sorts of other things, but at the core of the stories is my own lived experience, and neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are vanishingly rare in that experience.

Now, I can hear the comments already.  The ‘okay, maybe that’s true for individual creators, but what about corporate artwork?’.   Maybe not in those exact words, but you get the idea.

The thought here is that corporations are bowing to social pressure to include characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males, and that is somehow bad. But here’s the thing. Corporations are going to chase the dollars.  They aren’t bowing to social pressure.  There’s no one holding a gun to some executive’s head saying, “You must have this many diversity tokens in every script.”  What is happening is that corporations are starting to clue into the fact that people who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males have money.  They are putting black characters in their shows and movies because black people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting queer people in shows and movies because queer people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting women in shows and movies because women watch shows and spend money on movies.

No one is forcing these companies to do this.  They are choosing to do it, the same way individual creators are choosing to do it.  In the companies’ cases the choices are made for different reasons.  It’s not because they are necessarily passionate about telling stories about a particular experience, but because they want to create art to be consumed by the largest audience possible, which means that they have to expand their audience beyond the neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white male by including characters from outside of that demographic.

And the reality is, the cries of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ almost always come from within that demographic.  Note the almost.  There are a scattering of individuals from outside that demographic which do subscribe to the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ myths, but that is a whole other essay.  However, within that demographic, lot of the people who cry about ‘forced diversity’ see media and content as a Zero-Sum game.  The more that’s created for other people, the less that is created for them.

In a way, they’re right. There are only so many slots for TV shows each week, there are only so many theaters, only so much space on comic bookshelves and so on.  But at the end of the day, its literally impossible for them to consume all the content that’s being produced anyway.  So, while there is, theoretically less content for them to consume, as a practical matter it’s a bit like someone who is a meat eater going to a buffet with two hundred items, and then throwing a tantrum because five of the items happen to be vegan.

The worst part is, if they could let go of how wound up they are about the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ they could probably enjoy the content that’s produced for people other than them.  I mean, I’m a pasty ass white girl, and I loved Black Panther.

So, to wrap out, creators, make what you want to make, and ignore anyone who cries about forced diversity or virtue signaling.  And to people who are complaining about forced diversity and virtue signaling, I want to go back to the buffet metaphor.  You need to relax.  Even if there are a few vegan options on the buffet, you can still get your medium rare steak, or your chicken teriyaki or whatever it is you want.  Or, maybe, just maybe, you could give the falafel a try. That shit is delicious.

[shinesurge]

I’ve been holding off on making this post because I wanted to try it out myself and get settled in and make sure everything went okay, but seeing as I’ve gone ahead and updated my site and everything I thought now might be a good time to start talking about this publicly! 

If you’ve known me for more than five minutes you know I fucking hate Webtoon, like, a lot. Every aspect of it disgusts me to the core of my being, and while Webtoon is the ugliest version of them the aspects that I hate also extend to basically any comic aggregate site. I hate that they treat artists like content robots, I hate that they treat comic readers like morons who aren’t capable of engaging with complex stories, I hate that they actively try to strip away all the cool parts of indie comics by cultivating sterile and impersonal environments that discourage artistic experimentation and unique expression.

So! I hope you’ll be interested in what I have to say about this new platform that’s (hopefully) going to be out of alpha this summer. If you think you like reading comics on Webtoon, I really encourage you to check out Dillyhub once it launches. That’s the short version, but I have a LOT to say about this! So I’m putting the rest of this under a cut.

Full disclosure, I’m not getting paid or anything for this. The creative outreach at Dillyhub contacted me a few weeks ago asking if I’d be interested in having Kidd Commander be one of their launch titles when they go live this summer. I was hesitant at first, since I actively distrust anything claiming to be For Creators at this point, but they answered my pushy questions patiently and everything seemed on the up and up so I gave it a shot; I’ve been needing a mobile mirror for KC anyway. Eventually they invited me to the alpha creator discord, where they’ve been working directly with all of us artists to improve the platform, and now to be honest I’m REALLY excited for this thing to get off the ground. Nobody asked me to make this post, but since I’ve spent years whining and bitching about how other services do wrong by their creators, I thought I’d talk about this one that’s doing things right.

So, the biggest advantage this site has for creators over others in my opinion is that it. Treats us like individuals, regardless of follower count lmfao. If you’re a new person just starting out with your new webcomic, here’s what webtoon does for you:

Note: you don’t get a custom banner, you don’t even get to choose the solid color it is. That big circle icon is ALSO the image that shows up in searches, but everywhere else on the site it’s a 100x100px square, so you have to choose whether you want it to look good as a giant circle at the top of your comic’s page OR whether you want to look good in search results. Which, by the way, is the ONLY way for people to find you if you’re not partnered. And that’s it! You have no monetization options, you won’t show up on the genre pages, and when someone DOES stumble across your page it looks super unprofessional. Good Luck! 

Now here’s my Dillyhub page(s):

You don’t get a static banner and one icon, you get a whole carousel banner with as many images as you want front and center as soon as you get to the project page. You get seven (custom!) genre tags, as opposed to Webtoon’s single tag you have to pick from their list, and plenty of room to talk about your work. The episodes are even laid out better, you get a MUCH bigger preview space to work with and they’re nice and big on the bottom half of the page:

you know, like they’re actually presenting ART lmfao.

That’s already an ENORMOUS improvement, but here’s my favorite thing.

o hm that’s a lot of super cushy settings I have for every individual episode, but what’s that, Episode Type?

LIKE.

listen, i know this is probably a bit specialized if you’re not a comic maker yourself, but this is a HUGE DEAL. You can post vertically OR page by page! You can even post pages two at a time for double page spreads, or so they read like a physical comic book! AND their specs are really open, as long as the file meets the size requirement you can make it whatever shape you want. You don’t have to reformat all your shit to post here!! I posted the entire first volume of KC STRAIGHT FROM THE PRINT FILES in like half an hour!!! The episodes can also be any amount of pages, you can post a single page or an entire chapter all in one go!

So that’s just the project page for the comic, let’s see what happens when I click on my username there.

Each author gets their own unique page (which you can tack a vanity url to!) to present themselves however they want! You always have the banner at the top, but beyond that you have a ton of options. Among other incredibly useful tools that really should just be bare fucking minimum at this point, like the ability to preview your page on different devices, you start customizing your blank page with this set of widgets,

and from THERE you can customize them MORE, you can promote your patreon or your kickstarter or whatever! Having this creator space ALSO means that if you run several comics, or if you want to promote your comic AND your illustrations, you can just separate them into individual projects! Each with their own page! This is also really nice as a reader because you can subscribe to a creator but you can also just subscribe to specific projects, if you don’t want to get ALL of their stuff in your inbox. It’s so good y’all hh.

Once again, all of this functionality is just THERE as soon as you make your account. You don’t need to be “partnered” or whatever the fuck, you don’t need to meet a certain follower threshold to unlock the ability to operate normally. You get your own creator space to present yourself how you prefer, you get pages for all your projects, you can even set up monetization options (and change them for individual pages IN a project) right from the start.

ok ok let’s compare this to my webtoon page

oh that’s right webtoon just puts your greyed out name at the bottom of each comic and that’s it because human beings don’t make this stuff, my bad lol anyway

Other fun shit that Dillyhub does that makes me feel like they’re people who have actually consumed or made comics on the internet at some point in their lives:

-When you log into the “studio” space, you’re in your creator account. When you log OUT of the studio space, it’s like you swap to a “reader” account, where you can access your pull list and comment on things with a different name and profile icon. Again, maybe only cool if you’re a creator, but if you ARE then you know exactly why this is incredibly useful lmao

-You can set up “hidden” projects, so if you only want certain things to be accessible by certain people or to not show up in searches that’s an option! You have SO much control here it’s great.

-The comment section has moderation options GODDD. You also have a real comment space, you know, so it actually encourages building a community (and a rapport with your community, if you like), and you also can just turn comments off entirely if you want! I haven’t used it much yet, obviously, but it’s been made very clear in the discord that artists want better control over their comment sections and the devs have it on their priority list.

-Absolutely every step of customization gives you a preview before it’s live, so you can easily see what these images you’re posting in different places are going to look like before you beam them to your followers’ inboxes. This includes individual episodes!

-This was sort of in one of the screenshots but it’s important so I’m saying it here too: the option to mark individual episodes as mature or with content warnings, rather than having to mark an entire comic as Mature Spooky Scary Content because of one or two pages getting a bit hairy.

This site is only in alpha right now, and it’s invite-only until they get to beta (for creators; anyone can make a reader account! but they haven’t set up a way to browse comics without direct links yet so) but honest to god it’s already blowing every other site I’ve used clean out of the water. And the staff has been really kind and responsive to us proposing fixes or changes! I will always defend individual websites as being the best option for an indie comic, but everybody’s gotta start somewhere and we NEED something that isn’t Tumblr or Webtoon to fill this role; this site feels a lot more like a symbiotic relationship than any of the other staples available for new creators right now. If you’re a comic reader and you want to see your favorite comics on Dillyhub I’d suggest keeping an eye on this site and once it’s live start poking them to look into it, and if you’re a creator follow their social media and hop in when they open up for anybody to join. I would LOVE to see this site take off as a viable option for hosting and reading comics.

Thanks for reading all this! I haven’t quite finished setting up yet, but if you want to poke around a project/creator page for yourself mine is here have at it. As things progress I’m sure I’ll have more to say, but since I’m usually so aggressively negative about places like this I just wanted to give some credit where it was due. fucking finally.

[kelmcdonald]

New Year! New Stuff!

New Post has been published on https://kelmcdonald.com/news/new-year-new-stuff/

New Year! New Stuff!

Hey all! Happy New year! It’s been awhile since I sent out one of these. I’ve had a lot of going on and kept just putting writing newsletters off. What have I been doing? Well for one, I put the finishing touches on Woman in the Woods and Other North American Stories. That kickstarter finished out at the most funded comic anthology on twitter! HUZZAH!

And didn’t have too long to celebrate, I jumped into helping run another Iron Circus Kickstarter, Real Hero Shit by Kendra Wells! I edited Real Hero Shit all last year. It’s out in February and is a fun time all around. I even did a drawing of the main character Eugene.

Then shortly after Real Hero Shit launched on kickstarter I got a job at the publisher Seven Seas! So getting the hang of things in the manga editing process took up most of my November and December.  I’m super glad because I really got to rethink how my comics are making money. This is gonna give me some flexibility and time to think about a new direction.

Why a new direction?  Well, cons still aren’t back in the full swing. I don’t have a lot of faith in things bouncing back in 2022. I went to Rose City Comic Con and Emerald City Comic Con in 2021. Both were okay but not in full force, also Emerald City was right when the Omicron variant first got reported. I don’t think things will bounce back by July 2022 (which is when San Diego Comic Con, my next con is scheduled)

The other thing is Kickstarter is pivoting to blockchain. Why are they doing this? Well, seems like they don’t even know. Their statement on it was a lot of buzzwords and not a lot of content. Then their follow up to clarification was… more buzzwords and some “our blockchain is different, we swear.” Now if you are someone who doesn’t live on the internet like I do and therefore don’t know what blockchain is, here is a youtube video that does a nice job explaining it. 

The short version is it is a way of coding that uses a shit ton of power. The environmental impact is too much for me and a lot of other comic artists to ignore. Part of Kickstarter’s “clarification” is them saying they are gonna use a blockchain that offsets their carbon footprint, but said blockchain is self reporting.

I mentioned a lot of other comic artists are taking this stance, as are a bunch of indie tabletop game developers. Also several of Kickstarter’s staff have quit over this. But Kickstarter is still going full steam ahead. I’ll be super surprised if they change things up. It’s frustrating because they have been so good until now and they don’t really seem to have a plan. I need to look into more crowdfunding options. Currently, I am looking into Indiegogo and Zoop. Indiegogo is more established but a lot of scammers have used it in the past, so I don’t know. Zoop is newer and takes a bigger cut, but it handles fulfillment and is comics only. So like maybe they will adjust to specific comic needs quicker? I don’t know.

I’m now gonna take this moment to post a general reminder to anyone who wants to start a webcomic in the future, please make your own website. Make sure people know about, otherwise your hard work can be wrecked by a corporation’s whim. Use all the tools, social media, whatever online that you can, but a hub/website you control is important to building something that can weather the ever changing internet.

With all these shake ups, are you wondering how you can help support me in the meantime? Well, here is my Amazon author page. Please review my books on there. It does help them sell better and get recommended to other people. 

Yes, I know Amazon is also bad for the environment. But even if you don’t use Amazon or try to avoid it, you can still leave a review.  Meanwhile, I’m restructuring what I’m gonna be doing with my website, patreon, and online presence. Where am I doing that? Well…

I’m gonna try to be more active on twitter again. In mid-2019, I was super burnt out on twitter. I’m not even talking about discourse or shitty people getting into fights with me on twitter. Just the act of trying to post on it regularly, to think of what to say, and stay active, I found it exhausting. Like I wasn’t burnt out on anything else, just twitter (and well other social medias). If you follow me on twitter, you might have noticed I only posted that my site updated. Those are all auto-posts from my website. After about 2 and ½ years, I think I’m ready to at least try to post stuff on there again. And I’ve got a few experiments to see if I can figure out a way to use it without getting burnt out. 

I’m also gonna try to post more on instagram and my facebook page too. But those are a lower priority. Facebook because it hides posts from like 2/3s of the people that like the page unless I give them money. Instragram because my account there is newer and building something up from scratch is harder than just getting older things running again.

I’m also gonna be streaming more art. Jose Pimienta and I had a good time streaming on Wednesdays, but we are gonna move it to the evening rather than at lunchtime. I figured that it would be easier to do editing work in the morning, and then art after dinner. Since they went well, I’m also gonna be streaming on Tuesday evenings with Alina Pete. Both of those streams will start at 8pm standard time. Keeping both of these going is gonna help me balance doing art and editing.

Bones and I are also gonna get back to streaming video games again. It’s gonna be a mix of Rimworld, Crusader Kings, and Don’t Starve Together. We’ll announce which before streaming each Thursday. To get back into the groove we streamed some Rimworld on Christmas and New Years Eve. I installed the Forgotten Realms mod. It adds a bunch of races from dnd into the game, so we gave playing as the Illithid squid monsters. You can give it a watch here and here.

As for projects coming in 2022, I got a lot of plans and hope I can get some off the ground. So here are some pitches I’m working on (these are all working titles):

Next The City Between will start soon. Murky Water is gonna wrap up in mid-2022. I have a couple ideas for the next story. Two are about half way written. I’m having my Patreon backers vote on which is next. I am also gonna think about if I want to do an omnibus of City Between books. But that’s on the back burner since cons aren’t back in full force and I’m not using Kickstarter anymore. 

You are the Chosen One is gonna keep going on my Patreon. I’m gonna take a break before starting Chapter 3 because I need to do some concept art. Also, Patreon isn’t really the best place to read something serialized. So I’m talking to Kevin, the guy who built my website, about making a password protected archive on my site. I want it to be easier for folks to catch up. 

Blue Moon is a YA horror/romance about a non-binary teen in a small town who gets drawn to a mysterious drifter passing through town. I’m writing it and Meredith McClarren is drawing it. I got the pitch packet mostly made, but gotta tweak it a little to clarify some stuff. 

As Time Goes By is a middle grade story about a town stuck in the late 50s. A modern preteen and their family pass through. Said preteen befriends a queer local preteen and the two of them try to help local kid escape the time trapped magic town. This one doesn’t have an artist and I still need to clear up some stuff. But once Blue Moon is ready to get pitch around I’m gonna focus on cleaning this one up. I’m trying to go for a Brigadon meets Pleasantville vibe. 

Eat the Witch is an adult graphic black comedy about werewolves eating the rich. Kinda. Basically, it uses magic as a metaphor for inherited wealth. So the werewolves are focused on fight (and eating) a group of spellcasters based in a country club. This one I want to write and draw. I’ve posted some character designs on instragram about this. Right now I’m mostly reading some political theory nonfiction books as research. That way I can clean up the parts in the story that are currently vague and make sure it’s reinforcing the metaphor I’m aiming from. This one will probably be a while I do anything public with it. I also don’t really know where I’d send this out as a pitch. 

I think that is everything. Hope you all have a good new year! Thanks for your support. Please support my patreon if you can.

[jenniferisacommonname]

Bonus Level Unlocked

This week marks the release of Jason Schreier’s Press Reset, an incredibly well-researched book on catastrophic business failure in the gaming industry. Jason’s a good dude, and there’s an excerpt here if you want to check it out. Sadly, game companies going belly-up is such a common occurrence that he couldn’t possibly include them all, and one of the stories left out due to space constraints is one that I happen to be personally familiar with. So, I figured I’d tell it here.

I began working at Acclaim Studios Austin as a sound designer in January of 2000. It was a tumultuous period for the company, including a recent rebranding from their former studio name, “Iguana Entertainment,” and a related, ongoing lawsuit from the ex-founder of Iguana. There were a fair number of ghosts hanging around—the creative director’s license plate read IGUANA, which he never changed, and one of the meeting rooms held a large, empty terrarium—but the studio had actually been owned on paper by Acclaim since 1995, and I didn’t notice any conflicting loyalties. Everyone acted as if we always had been, and always would be, Acclaim employees.

Over the next few years I worked on a respectable array of triple-A titles, including Quarterback Club 2002, Turok: Evolution, and All-Star Baseball 2002 through 2005. (Should it be “All-Stars Baseball,” like attorneys general? Or perhaps a term of venery, like “a zodiac of All-Star Baseball.”) At any rate, it was a fun place to work, and a platformer of hijinks ensued.

But let’s skip to the cutscene. The truth is that none of us in the trenches suspected the end was near until it was absolutely imminent. Yes, Turok: Evolution and Vexx had underperformed, especially when stacked against the cost of development, but games flop in the retail market all the time. And, yes, Showdown: Legends of Wrestling had been hustled out the door before it was ready for reasons no one would explain, and the New York studio’s release of a BMX game featuring unlockable live-action stripper footage had been an incredibly weird marketing ploy for what should have been a straightforward racing title. (Other desperate gimmicks around this time included a £6,000 prize for UK parents who would name their baby “Turok,” an offer to pay off speeding tickets to promote Burnout 2 that quickly proved illegal, and an attempt to buy advertising space on actual tombstones for a Shadow Man sequel.)

But the baseball franchise was an annual moneymaker, and our studio had teams well into development on two major new licenses, 100 Bullets and The Red Star. Enthusiasm was on the upswing. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention when voice actors started calling me to complain that they hadn’t been paid, but at the time it seemed more like a bureaucratic failure than an actual money shortage—and frankly, it was a little naïve of them to expect net-30 in the first place. Industry standard was, like, net-90 at best. So I was told.

Then one Friday afternoon, a few department managers got word that we’d kind of maybe been skipping out on the building lease for let’s-not-admit-how-many months. By Monday morning, everyone’s key cards had been deactivated.

It's a little odd to arrive at work and find a hundred-plus people milling around outside—even odder, I suppose, if your company is not the one being evicted. Acclaim folks mostly just rolled their eyes and debated whether to cut our losses and head to lunch now, while employees of other companies would look dumbfounded and fearful before being encouraged to push their way through the crowd and demonstrate their still-valid key card to the security guard. Finally, the General Manager (hired only a few months earlier, and with a hefty relocation bonus to accommodate his houseboat) announced that we should go home for the day and await news. Several of our coworkers were veterans of the layoff process—like I said, game companies go under a lot—and one of them had already created a Yahoo group to communicate with each other on the assumption that we’d lose access to our work email. A whisper of “get on the VPN and download while you can” rippled through the crowd.

But the real shift in tone came after someone asked about a quick trip inside for personal items, and the answer was a hard, universal “no.” We may have been too busy or ignorant to glance up at any wall-writing, but the building management had not been: they were anticipating a full bankruptcy of the entire company. In that situation, all creditors have equal standing to divide up a company's assets in lengthy court battles, and most get a fraction of what they’re owed. But if the landlords had seized our office contents in lieu of rent before the bankruptcy was declared, they reasoned, then a judge might rule that they had gotten to the treasure chest first, and could lay claim to everything inside as separate from the upcoming asset liquidation.

Ultimately, their gambit failed, but the ruling took a month to settle. In the meantime, knick knacks gathered dust, delivered packages piled up, food rotted on desks, and fish tanks became graveyards. Despite raucous protest from every angle—the office pets alone generated numerous threats of animal cruelty charges—only one employee managed to get in during this time, and only under police escort. He was a British citizen on a work visa, and his paperwork happened to be sitting on his desk, due to expire. Without it, he was facing literal deportation. Fortunately, a uniformed officer took his side (or perhaps just pre-responded to what was clearly a misdemeanor assault in ovo,) and after some tense discussion, the building manager relented, on the condition that the employee touch absolutely nothing beyond the paperwork in question. The forms could go, but the photos of his children would remain.

It’s also a little odd, by the way, to arrive at the unemployment office and find every plastic chair occupied by someone you know. Even odder, I suppose, if you’re actually a former employee of Acclaim Studios Salt Lake, which had shut down only a month or two earlier, and you just uprooted your wife and kids to a whole new city on the assurance that you were one of the lucky ones who got to stay employed. Some of them hadn’t even finished unpacking.

Eventually, we were allowed to enter the old office building one at a time and box up our things under the watchful eye of a court appointee, but by then our list of grievances made the landlords’ ploy seem almost quaint by comparison (except for the animals, which remains un-fucking-forgivable.) We had learned, for example, that in the weeks prior to the bankruptcy, our primary lender had made an offer of $15 million—enough to keep us solvent through our next batch of releases, two of which had already exited playtesting and were ready to be burned and shipped. The only catch was that the head of the board, company founder Greg Fischbach, would have to step down. This was apparently too much of an insult for him to stomach, and he decided that he'd rather see everything burn to the ground. The loan was refused.

Other “way worse than we thought” details included gratuitous self-dealing to vendors owned by board members, the disappearance of expensive art from the New York offices just before closure, and the theft of our last two paychecks. For UK employees, it was even more appalling: Acclaim had, for who knows how long, been withdrawing money from UK paychecks for their government-required pension funds, but never actually putting the money into the retirement accounts. They had stolen tens of thousands of dollars directly from each worker.

Though I generally reside somewhere between mellow and complete doormat on the emotional spectrum, I did get riled enough to send out one bitter email—not to anyone in corporate, but to the creators of a popular webcomic called Penny Arcade, who, in the wake of Acclaim’s bankruptcy announcement, published a milquetoast jibe about Midway’s upcoming Area 51. I told Jerry (a.k.a. “Tycho”) that I was frankly disappointed in their lack of cruelty, and aired as much dirty laundry as I was privy to at the time.

“Surely you can find a comedic gem hidden somewhere in all of this!” I wrote. “Our inevitable mocking on PA has been a small light at the end of a very dark, very long tunnel. Please at least allow us the dignity of having a smile on our faces while we wait in line for food stamps.”

Two days later, a suitably grim comic did appear, implying the existence of a new release from Acclaim whose objective was to run your game company into the ground. In the accompanying news post, Tycho wrote:

“We couldn’t let the Acclaim bankruptcy go without comment, though we initially let it slide thinking about the ordinary gamers who lost their jobs there. They don’t have anything to do with Acclaim’s malevolent Public Relations mongrels, and it wasn’t they who hatched the Titty Bike genre either. Then, we remembered that we have absolutely zero social conscience and love to say mean things.”

Another odd experience, by the way, is digging up a 16-year-old complaint to a webcomic creator for nostalgic reference when you offer that same creator a promotional copy of the gaming memoir you just co-wrote with Sid Meier. Even odder, I suppose, to realize that the original non-Acclaim comic had been about Area 51, which you actually were hired to work on yourself soon after the Acclaim debacle.*

As is often the case in complex bankruptcies, the asset liquidation took another six years to fully stagger its way through court—but in 2010, we did, surprisingly, get the ancient paychecks we were owed, plus an extra $1,700-ish for the company’s apparent violation of the WARN Act. By then, I had two kids and a very different life, for which the money was admittedly helpful. Sadly, Acclaim’s implosion probably isn’t even the most egregious one on record. Our sins were, to my knowledge, all money-related, and at least no one was ever sexually assaulted in our office building. Again, to my knowledge. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure we remain the only historical incident of corporate pet murder. The iguana got out just in time.

*Area 51’s main character was voiced by David Duchovny, and he actually got paid—which was lucky for him, because three years later, Midway also declared bankruptcy.

[jennamoran]

The Art of Glitch (Part 20)

The limited edition of Glitch is now available here!

You can also get the print-on-demand version here.

(The PDF is available in both locations. ^_^)

     Anyway, hi! We’re talking about Glitch art direction.

So previously,

we talked about the art in the pre-release;

and then a bit about the general set up for the 1st edition art!

and then covered some ways that example characters can die.

and then a bit about gender/ethnic balancing, plus details on a few pieces in particular!

and then about the first assignment to Elizabeth Sherry.

and then about the first assignment to Beatrice Pelagatti!

and then about the first assignment to Kirsten Moody!

and then the first assignment to Mel Uran!

and then about void flowers and Alexander Benekos!

and then about the first assignment to Robin Scott!

and then about the first assignment to Maria Guarneri!

and then about the first assignment to Lee Moyer!

and then about the first assignment to ?? and, uh, ??!

and then about the first assignment to Sadia Bies!

and then about the first assignment to Silvia Cucchi!

and then about the first assignment to Elena Albanese!

(aside)

and then about the first assignment to Melissa Spandri!

and then about the first assignment to Karma!

Let’s move on to what I think is our last artist here: Jenn Manley Lee!

                      Jenn Manley Lee

https://www.dicebox.net/

        So I stumbled on Jenn’s webcomic Dicebox a long, long time ago, and then again later; not only is it smart, and increasingly smart as it goes on, but it’s just gorgeous. Plus, it’s kind of stylistically on the mark for Glitch stuff? Which is why I was really happy to meet Jenn at a large local Thanksgiving and find out that she sometimes does commissions!

(... well, OK, it was a large Thanksgiving, so I was mostly busy being paralyzed by people and sounds; but, to the extent that I was mentally present, I was happy!)

A year or two later, after Glitch was approaching ready to go, I reached out to Jenn and got her involved in the project. There was a communication mix-up, though, and I’d failed to reach her in March when assignments were initially going out; when I did manage to get ahold of her in early May, I was so relieved that I, uh, just gave her a six-piece assignment.

Starting with ...

              Page 50

“Hradegais Loden, who is dying of Sunrise”

                     ... which you’ve seen before, since it was originally assigned to ??, who dropped the project.

I wound up giving it to Jenn because it was far away from all her other pieces in the book!

Then there was

                           Page 189

“Raniba Theos, Amputation their bane”

 Piece Style: a “Strategist” dying of the thing ...

Strategist: Egyptian (modern), they/them, probably actually in Egypt.

Bane: Your choice, or “amputation”

Examples:

sticking their forearm in a little guillotine that has replaced the normal card slot at an automated train station;

sitting glumly in a room scattered with severed limbs (resembling their own?);

trying to awkwardly laugh off the fact that their arm has just come off during a handshake;

trying to pay for something with half of a $5 bill (or 100-Egyptian-pound note);

living in an apartment where everything has pieces just kind of missing, from the bookcase to the sink.

             Note: please avoid unfortunate stereotypes. Unless you’re Egyptian or clear it with an Egyptian sensitivity consultant first:

They are not dressed like King Tut.

Or Nefertiti.

Or anyone like that.

They are dressed as a modern Egyptian if in Egypt, or as an American if in America.

… probably as a modern Egyptian in Egypt.

They do not ride a camel to work.

They do not live in the desert.

They are not a Bedouin.

They do not make their living as a merchant.

They do not own a magic lamp-shaped lamp, flying carpet, or monkey.

They are not lazy or comedically foolish.

No weirdness about the lips.

              It is fine if the readers do not immediately identify them as Egyptian, particularly given that this is B&W art; all I need is for that to be what you are drawing.

Further, ... [nonbinary sensitivity stuff.]

        Commentary  

It’s always weird talking about Jenn, TBH, because I get afraid people will think it’s a typo. “Oh, that Jenna,” they’ll say. “Not only has she confused herself for one of her artists, she can’t even spell her own name!”

Anyway, Jenn is actually a different person, honest, I can’t do art like this, and for this one I got this amazing rough:

which like yeah.

Later, the finished version came in as (a higher-resolution version of):

Which is also great and, formally speaking, I accepted it as it was, but I did wind up admitting that I missed the cartooniness of the original back foot.

So she wound up updating and fixing that.

Towards the very, very end of things I also wound up asking her to brighten the piece just a hair---

But that wasn’t so much to make the piece better, as to make it a better fit for its specific place in the book?

And with that, Raniba Theos was done!

(Jenn was working on layout by then, so the nameplate went into the book as a separate deal.)

                              Page 253

Piece Style: magic realism

Strategist: Italian, they/them

Bane: inobvious

                  Description: they are being horrified by a serious kitchen fail that they have just experienced, e.g. #3, #12, #14, #15, #18, #25, #33, #34, #68, #88, #94, #97, #98, #110, #127, or #148 from here. 

Staring in horror from a nearby doorway, sitting nearby (floor or chair) with head in hands, standing struck dumb having just failed to rescue whatever, face sinking as they remove whatever from the oven … that kind of thing.

 Note: please avoid unfortunate stereotypes. Unless you’re Italian or clear it with an Italian sensitivity consultant,

They are not in the mob.

They are not oversexed.

They are not wearing enough crosses to vaporize Dracula on contact.

Don’t assume they are fashionable or eating Italian food or part of a large family, although if for some reason one of those things winds up fitting it is OK.

Separately, [nonbinary sensitivity note.]

                      Commentary

OK, so the first rough I got on this one was:

This one needed help, and it was my fault. What I wound up sending her about it was:

[this] is amazing, but I worry that it's a bit too comic and not quite enough "life, of all the things I had to live, why did it have to be life;" I think mostly I mean, when doing the details of the character's expression/pose, please try to err towards defeat/despair/whyyy or blank rather than shock/startlement.

That there's a concern here is, of course, my fault---I wasn't expecting such an active scene. (For clarity, the active scene is great.) Therefore, I thought "horrified" would be enough to convey the right mood. I should have realized a broader range of possibilities exist and been more explicit as to the mood. My apologies.

I’d probably have been fine with a relatively small update that just changed the expression/pose---I get really nervous about asking for changes when it’s my fault, or when they’re not strictly necessary, even though most artists don’t mind, and the ones who mind will generally mind even if it’s not my fault and they are strictly necessary.

... but regardless, she wound up updating the piece concept.

which you’ll recognize as the basis for the piece in the book!

The final piece was great, and needed no changes at all! Which ironically means that I won’t showpiece it here. ^_^

I did wind up enlarging it in the book by a few percent and tilting it a degree or two ... I think counterclockwise? ... to look better opposite page 286, but that wasn’t about the piece qua the piece.

      Additional Commentary

I don’t really like that this page got moved opposite the Drunkard’s Gift; it was the only piece I could find to shift to there after I had to move what I thought was going to go on page 287, but ...

Like ...

I don’t think drawing a connection between the Drunkard’s Gift and the picture would be a very strong reading of the scene. The character really doesn’t look drunk, and I’m not familiar with a relevant Italian stereotype, and that kitchen is not, to the best of my knowledge, what a drunk person’s kitchen looks like.

... but I don’t like that you might look at the heading, and then the wine glass, and then be confused because the character isn’t drunk and also isn’t doing the specific things that that Gift lets you do.

...

The thing is ...

The picture looks good, there, like, visually, paired up with the blocks of the text on the opposite page? And I spent hours and hours shuffling pieces around trying to find a better way to fix the pg 287 problem without screwing other stuff up worse and in the end, this was the best I could do.

So, there you are!

It’s a great piece, anyway, all that aside. ^_^

            Page 296

“Hatharid Gerlos, whom Tourism kills”

Piece Style: a “Strategist” dying of the thing ...

Strategist: Caucasian, she/her, middle-aged

Bane: Your choice, or “tourism.”

Examples:

a tour guide is showing her off to a gasping crowd;

she’s being attacked by the spike of the Eiffel Tower or the noseless Sphinx;

she’s in a restaurant where all the food is absurdly alien and the water is fizzling and steaming like acid;

she’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sandals and camera while a bunch of concerned guards point their weapons in the middle of a government base;

she’s picnicking in a war zone.

                   Commentary

I think this character wasn’t originally Caucasian, but by the time I actually assigned the piece I got too worried about the range of possible unpleasant implications to have her be any other ethnicity I could think of.

Here’s the rough!

I love the birds so much!!!

But, to my eternal embarrassment---

Also, I really needed new glasses at the time, and I was looking at a much smaller version---

I didn’t realize this was on a bridge.

... :/

I tried very hard to figure out what was going on in the sketch. So hard. But the best I could do was interpret her as being on a turn in a stairway.

So I correctly guessed that she was being shot at by a gondola or gondolier, but, like, why was that happening while she was on a stairway?!? Like, that felt too indirect as a thing to happen just because you were in Venice, on a stairway halfway up a building somewhere.

Really, really embarrassing!

Jenn actually had to do a second sketch here, showing Hatharid falling through a pitfall trap to hungry, waiting sharks instead:

... at which point I could actually see the bridge and realize that the first sketch was much better. *^_^*;;

I was very happy that Raniba Theos, dying of amputation, was the next sketch she sent in so I could just accept with praise immediately and not give the impression that I did this kind of thing every time. *^_^*;;

          Page 319

Piece Style: magical realism

Strategist: Native American, he/him

Bane: inobvious

              Description: a roboticist/artisan puts the last few touches on a fairly lifelike mechanical rabbit. Ideally, a few others do pet rabbit things (in an open cage? Basket? Bed? Which is itself on a shelf?) in the background. If there are others in the background, the foreground one can/should be a bit less complete.

                Note: [Native American sensitivity note, which you’ve seen before.]

Secondary Note: this image is mostly just “Strategist doing a complicated project;” other than “advanced robotics are possible in the right metaphysical environment,” there are no specifics defined in the setting and thus nothing in particular you need to adhere to in drawing the rabbits.

         Commentary

Jenn came back to me with this:

which I thought was just lovely! (And kind of Penguindrum, but I suppose there was a bit of that in the original assignment.) 

... except, of course, that he had human eyes.

Could she keep that design and make it look good with starfield eyes?

...

...

It turned out that she didn’t think she could, or at least didn’t want to. I guess the direction of his gaze was too important or something?

(Eyes are a big deal!! Probably if I’d realized I’d be illustrating whole books of these guys eventually I’d have had Excrucians have nostril starfields or kneecap starfields instead.)

So ultimately, instead of correcting the eyes, she decided to change the whole piece:

I loved the rabbit peeking over his shoulder, but I was really afraid that he’d lose the ... kindness? That the first sketch had? But Jenn reassured me that he wouldn’t.

And in fact he did not!

             Page 378

“Nikmoda Ranlin, who dies of Delight”

         You’ve seen this one before as well!

         Layout

So what was not expected when I originally contracted Jenn was that she would also wind up revising the layout!

I hadn’t actually been expecting to revise it at all. I mean, it was a complicated layout!

And already poured into the book!

... but Jenn has done professional layout stuff in the past, and, y’know. Offered to touch it up a little. Fiddle with it to taste. Give it a little polish. Maybe ... like, take the chapter headings from

to

... ?

(Just the chapter headings; ignore the mess this made of the text. ^_^)

And of course, I thought that would be great!    

          Anyway, though, once she’d done that, though, she did a little more polish ...

And a little more ...

And, like, adjusting the marginalia format is, in a book like Glitch, a big deal ...

And a bit of work with the flowers ...

And then a little more polish ...

And ...

Well, anyway, ultimately, she wound up giving me a discount on a fairly comprehensive rework of the book’s general “look.”

That’s the 1st edition that’s in print, now, today!

[to-read-or-not-to-read3088]

70+ disabled, neurodiverse and chronically ill authors COLLAB

This post is in collaboration with several other bloggers whose links are included here:

Artie Carden

Anniek

Hi! It’s been a while since I posted anything, but this post has been a month in the making. I have twenty books by twenty authors for my part in this collaboration, and you can check out the other parts of the collab with the links at the top of the post.

I haven’t read some of these books but almost all of them are on my to be read pile, and I did extensive research to make sure I got this right, but please let me know if there are any mistakes or if anything needs to be corrected.

1. Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

📷

Meet Cute Diary follows Noah Ramirez who thinks he’s an expert on romance. He must be for his blog, the Meet Cute Diary, a collection of trans happily ever afters. There’s just one problem. All the stories are fake. What started off as the fantasies of a trans boy who was afraid to step out of the closet has grown into a beacon of hope for trans readers across the globe. Noah’s world unravels when a troll exposes the blog as fiction, and the only way to save the Diary is to convince everyone that the stories are true, but he doesn’t have any proof. That’s when Drew walks into Noah’s life, and the pieces fall into place. Drew is willing to fake date Noah to save the Diary. But when Noah’s feelings grow beyond their staged romance, he realises that dating in real life isn’t the same as finding love on the page.

The author, Emery Lee, is a kid lit author, artist and YouTuber hailing from a mixed racial background. After graduating with a degree in creative writing, e’s gone on to author novels, short stories and webcomics. When away from reading and writing, you’ll likely find em engaged in art or snuggling with cute dogs.

Emery Lee is nonbinary, and uses e/em pronouns, and e’s debut book, Meet Cute Diary, features a side character who is also nonbinary (and asexual!). Emery is also neurodivergent, and frequently speaks about what its like being a writer with adhd on twitter.

Meet Cute Diary is a book I only discovered last month, when it was published, but I’m excited to read it. It has representation of all kinds, and I love any book that has even a little mention of an asexual character because its so rare to see.

2. Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

📷

At Niveus Private Academy money paves the hallways, and the students are never less than perfect. Until now. Because an anonymous texter calling themselves Aces, is bringing two students’ dark secrets to light. Devon, a talented musician, buries himself in rehearsals, but he can’t escape the spotlight when his private photos go public. Chiamaka, head girl, isn’t afraid to get what she wants, but soon everyone will know the price she has paid for power. Someone is out to get them both. Someone who holds all the aces. And they’re planning much more than a high school game.

Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, is the author of the instant New York Times and IndieBound bestseller, Ace of Spades, billed as ‘Get out meets Gossip Girl’. Entertainment Weekly has called it “this summer’s hottest YA debut”. She was born and raised in Croydon, South London, and Faridah moved to the Scottish Highlands for her undergraduate degree where she completed a BA in English Literature. She has established and runs and mentorship scheme for unagented writers of colour, helping them on their journey to get published. Faridah has also written for NME, The Bookseller, Readers Digest and gal-dem.

Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s book is one that I pre-ordered months in advance, after discovering that I actually really liked this sub-genre of YA, and although I still haven’t read it yet (sorry!), I’m still super excited to dive into it. From what I hear, it has some gay rep, which we all know by now is something I seek out in my books.

3. Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal

📷

Priya has worked hard to pursue her pre med dreams at Stanford, but a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease during her sophomore year sends her straight back to her loving but overbearing family in New Jersey and leaves her wondering if she’ll ever be able to return to the way things were. Thankfully she has her online pen pal, Brigid, and the rest of the members of “oof ouch my bones,” a virtual support group that meets on Discord to crack jokes and vent about their own chronic illnesses. When Brigid suddenly goes offline, Priya does something very out of character; she steals the family car and drives to Pennsylvania to check on Brigid. Priya isn’t sure what to expect, but it isn’t the creature that’s shut in the basement. With Brigid nowhere in sight, Priya begins to puzzle together an impossible but obvious truth: the creature might be werewolf – and the werewolf might be Brigid. As Brigid’s unique condition worsens, their friendship will be deepened and challenged in unexpected ways, forcing them to reckon with their own ideas of what it means to be normal.

Kristen O’Neal is a freelance writer who’s written for sites like Buzzfeed Reader, Christianity Today, Birth.Movies.Death, LitHub and Electric Literature. She writes about faith, culture, and unexplained phenomena. Her debut novel, Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses is based on her own experiences with being chronically ill. Kristen has two autoimmune disorders and “a number of other problems and issues” with her body. According to her website, she is doing much better than she used to, but still has flares somewhat regularly.

I cannot describe the feeling of seeing a published book with the best group chat name I have ever seen. Oof ouch my bones is absolutely something that I would be part of if it really existed, because its just such a mood, and funny at the same time. I pre ordered this book too, but like all the others, I still haven’t gotten around to reading it. I’m super excited about it though and cannot recommend it enough.

4. Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales

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Will Tavares is the dream summer fling – he’s fun, affectionate, kind – but just when Ollie thinks he’s found his Happily Ever After, summer vacation ends, and Will stops texting Ollie back. Now Ollie is one prince short of his fairy tale ending, and to complicate the fairy tale further, a family emergency sees Ollie uprooted and enrolled at a new school across the country. Which he minds a little less when he realises it’s the same school Will goes to…except Ollie finds out that the sweet, comfortably queer guy he knew from summer isn’t the same one attending Collinswood High. This Will is a class clown, closeted – and to be honest, a jerk. Ollie has no intention of pining after a guy who clearly isn’t ready for a relationship, especially since this new, bro-y jock version of Will seems to go from hot to cold every other week. But then Will starts “coincidentally” popping up in every area of Ollie’s life, from music class to the lunch table, and Ollie finds his resolve weakening. The last time he gave Will his heart, Will handed it back to him trampled and battered. Ollie would have to be an idiot to trust him with it again. Right? Right.

Sophie Gonzales was born and raised in Whyalla, South Australia, where the Outback Meets the Sea. She now lives in Melbourne, where there’s no outback in sight. Sophie’s been writing since the age of five, when her mother decided to help her type out one of the stories she had come up with in the bathtub. They ran into artistic differences when five-year-old Sophie insisted that everybody die in the end, while her mother wanted the characters to simply go out for a milkshake. Since then, Sophie has been completing her novels without a transcript. Sophie Gonzales tweets about her experiences with ADHD on her twitter.

Only mostly devasted is one of the few books on this list that I’ve read. I read the whole thing in one sitting because I just couldn’t put it down, which is weird because I normally don’t read contemporary at all. I have recommended this book to literally everyone I know, and even bought my best friend a copy to convince her to read it.

5. The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd Jones

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Seventeen-year-old Aderyn ("Ryn") only cares about two things: her family, and her family's graveyard. And right now, both are in dire straits. Since the death of their parents, Ryn and her siblings have been scraping together a meagre existence as gravediggers in the remote village of Colbren, which sits at the foot of a harsh and deadly mountain range that was once home to the fae. The problem with being a gravedigger in Colbren, though, is that the dead don't always stay dead. The risen corpses are known as "bone houses," and legend says that they're the result of a decades-old curse. When Ellis, an apprentice mapmaker with a mysterious past, arrives in town, the bone houses attack with new ferocity. What is it that draws them near? And more importantly, how can they be stopped for good? Together, Ellis and Ryn embark on a journey that will take them deep into the heart of the mountains, where they will have to face both the curse and the long-hidden truths about themselves.

Emily Lloyd-Jones grew up on a vineyard in rural Oregon, where she played in evergreen forests and learned to fear sheep. After graduating from Western Oregon University with an English degree, she enrolled in the publishing program at Rosemont College just outside of Philadelphia. She currently resides in Northern California.

Another book on my to be read pile that I’m super excited to read, but still haven’t gotten around to. This one features disability rep, but because I haven’t read it, I don’t know much more, sorry guys.

6. Mooncakes by Susanne Walker and Wendy Xu

📷Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers' bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town. One fateful night, she follows reports of a white wolf into the woods, and she comes across the unexpected: her childhood crush, Tam Lang, battling a horse demon in the woods. As a werewolf, Tam has been wandering from place to place for years, unable to call any town home. Pursued by dark forces eager to claim the magic of wolves and out of options, Tam turns to Nova for help. Their latent feelings are rekindled against the backdrop of witchcraft, untested magic, occult rituals, and family ties both new and old in this enchanting tale of self-discovery.

Suzanne Walker is a Chicago-based writer and editor. She is co-creator of the Hugo-nominated graphic novel Mooncakes (2019, Lion Forge/Oni Press). Her short fiction has been published in Clarkesworld and Uncanny Magazine, and she has published nonfiction articles with Uncanny Magazine, StarTrek.com, Women Write About Comics, and the anthology Barriers and Belonging: Personal Narratives of Disability. She has spoken at numerous conventions on a variety of topics ranging from disability representation in sci-fi/fantasy to comics collaboration.

Wendy Xu is a Brooklyn-based illustrator and comics artist. She is co-creator of and currently draws the webcomic Mooncakes. Her work has been featured on Tor.com, as part of the Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion exhibit permanently housed at the Chinese Historical Society of America, and in Shattered: The Asian American Comics Anthology. She occasionally teaches at the Asian American Writers Workshop and currently works as an assistant editor curating young adult and children’s books.

Suzanne Walker suffers from hearing loss, something that she wrote into her graphic novel, Mooncakes, making Nova hard of hearing. I read this in a few years ago as an advance reader copy for Netgalley and it was honestly one of the best graphic novels I have ever read. The main characters are Chinese American, queer AND magic, which is an amazing combination of representation.

7. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

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Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone… A convict with a thirst for revenge A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager A runaway with a privileged past A spy known as the Wraith A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.

Leigh Bardugo is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of fantasy novels and the creator of the Grishaverse (now a Netflix original series) which spans the Shadow and Bone Trilogy, the Six of Crows Duology, The Language of Thorns, and King of Scars—with more to come. Her short stories can be found in multiple anthologies, including the Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy. Her other works include Wonder Woman: Warbringer and Ninth House (Goodreads Choice Winner for Best Fantasy 2019) which is being developed for television by Amazon Studios.

Leigh grew up in Southern California and graduated from Yale University. These days she lives and writes in Los Angeles.

In the acknowledgements section of Six of Crows, Bardugo reveals she suffers from osteonecrosis and sometimes needs to use a cane; this was a source of inspiration for one of the story's six protagonists, master thief and gang boss Kaz Brekker, who uses a cane.

I read Six of Crows a few years ago and I really loved it. I’m not going to pretend I managed to finish the whole Grishaverse series, because I haven’t even gotten close yet, but it really showed Kaz’s struggles with his disability, and his mental health. This is part of a duology, and the duology is part of a large series of books with another duology and trilogy, but Six of Crows can be read without reading the others.

8. Hyperbole and A Half by Allie Brosh

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This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative--like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it--but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So, I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book: Pictures Words Stories about things that happened to me Stories about things that happened to other people because of me Eight billion dollars* Stories about dogs The secret to eternal happiness* *These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

Allie is an American blogger, writer and comic artist best known for her blog in the form of a webcomic Hyperbole and a Half. Brosh started Hyperbole in 2009 and told stories from her life in a mix of text and intentionally crude illustrations. She has published two books telling stories in the same style, both of which have been New York Times bestsellers. Brosh lives with severe depression and ADHD, and her comics on depression have won praise from fans and mental health professionals.

Another book on my tbr that I just haven’t gotten around to but really want to.

9. The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

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What if you aren’t the Chosen One? The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death? What if you’re like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again. Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just must find the extraordinary in your ordinary life. Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions...

Patrick Ness, an award-winning novelist, has written for England’s Radio 4 and Sunday Telegraph and is a literary critic for The Guardian. He has written many books, including the Chaos Walking Trilogy, The Crash of Hennington, Topics About Which I Know Nothing, and A Monster Calls. He has won numerous awards, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Booktrust Teenage Prize, and the Costa Children’s Book Award. Born in Virginia, he currently lives in London.

Patrick Ness has written about OCD and anxiety in at least two of his books, inspired by his own experiences with the two disorders and how it affects him (The Rest of Us Just Live Here & Release)

10. Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire

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Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children No Solicitations No Visitors No Quests Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world. But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter. No matter the cost.

Seanan lives in an idiosyncratically designed labyrinth in the Pacific Northwest, which she shares with her cats, Alice and Thomas, a vast collection of creepy dolls and horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She has strongly held and oft-expressed beliefs about the origins of the Black Death, the X-Men, and the need for chainsaws in daily life.

Years of writing blurbs for convention program books have fixed Seanan in the habit of writing all her bios in the third person, to sound marginally less dorky. Stress is on the "marginally." It probably doesn't help that she has so many hobbies.

Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Feed (as Mira Grant) was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo Ballot.

Seanan McGuire has an invisible disability due to herniated disks in her spine. She is slowly coming to terms with this, and talks about it occasionally on her twitter, and about the struggles she faces.

I loved this book, and so did my best friend. We both read it in one sitting and talked nonstop about it afterwards. Although short, its filled with amazing characters, plot, and representation (asexual character!!)

11. Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan

Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It's the highest honour they could hope for...and the most demeaning. This year, there's a ninth. And instead 📷of paper, she's made of fire. In this richly developed fantasy, Lei is a member of the Paper caste, the lowest and most persecuted class of people in Ikhara. She lives in a remote village with her father, where the decade-old trauma of watching her mother snatched by royal guards for an unknown fate still haunts her. Now, the guards are back and this time it's Lei they're after -- the girl with the golden eyes whose rumoured beauty has piqued the king's interest. Over weeks of training in the opulent but oppressive palace, Lei and eight other girls learns the skills and charm that befit a king's consort. There, she does the unthinkable -- she falls in love. Her forbidden romance becomes enmeshed with an explosive plot that threatens her world's entire way of life. Lei, still the wide-eyed country girl at heart, must decide how far she's willing to go for justice and revenge.

Natasha Ngan is a writer and yoga teacher. She grew up between Malaysia, where the Chinese side of her family is from, and the UK. This multicultural upbringing continues to influence her writing, and she is passionate about bringing diverse stories to teens. Ngan studied Geography at the University of Cambridge before working as a social media consultant and fashion blogger. She lives in France with her partner, where they recently moved from Paris to be closer to the sea. Her novel Girls of Paper and Fire was a New York Times bestseller. Natasha has a heart condition, and talks about her struggles with her health, and gives updates on her health and her books on twitter.

I’ve heard a lot about this book, but for trigger warning reasons it sadly isn’t on my to be read list. Everything I’ve heard about it says its an amazing book though, and the cover is beautiful.

12. Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde

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Three friends, two love stories, one convention: this fun, feminist love letter to geek culture is all about fandom, friendship, and finding the courage to be yourself. Charlie likes to stand out. She’s a vlogger and actress promoting her first movie at SupaCon, and this is her chance to show fans she’s over her public breakup with co-star Reese Ryan. When internet-famous cool-girl actress Alyssa Huntington arrives as a surprise guest, it seems Charlie’s long-time crush on her isn’t as one-sided as she thought. Taylor likes to blend in. Her brain is wired differently, making her fear change. And there’s one thing in her life she knows will never change: her friendship with her best guy friend Jamie—no matter how much she may secretly want it to. But when she hears about a fan contest for her favourite fandom, she starts to rethink her rules on playing it safe.

Jen Wilde is the YA author of QUEENS OF GEEK, THE BRIGHTSIDERS and GOING OFF SCRIPT. She writes unapologetically queer stories about geeks, rockstars, and fangirls who smash the patriarchy in their own unique ways. Her books have been praised in Teen Vogue, Buzzfeed, Autostraddle, Vulture and Bustle. Originally from Australia, Jen now lives in NYC where she spends her time writing, drinking too much coffee and binging reality TV.

Researching for this collab was the first time this book popped up on my radar as something I might be interested in reading. Jen Wilde, the author, is herself autistic and suffers from anxiety, which gives the narrative “authenticity that is lacking in similar books” according to socialjusticebooks.org.

13. The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

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Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso knows all about unrequited love—she’s lived through it twenty-six times. She crushes hard and crushes often, but always in secret. Because no matter how many times her twin sister, Cassie, tells her to woman up, Molly can’t stomach the idea of rejection. So, she’s careful. Fat girls always have to be careful. Then a cute new girl enters Cassie’s orbit, and for the first time ever, Molly’s cynical twin is a lovesick mess. Meanwhile, Molly’s totally not dying of loneliness—except for the part where she is. Luckily, Cassie’s new girlfriend comes with a cute hipster-boy sidekick. Will is funny and flirtatious and just might be perfect crush material. Maybe more than crush material. And if Molly can win him over, she’ll get her first kiss and she’ll get her twin back. There’s only one problem: Molly’s co-worker Reid. He’s an awkward Tolkien superfan with a season pass to the Ren Faire, and there’s absolutely no way Molly could fall for him. Right?

Becky Albertalli is the author of the acclaimed novels Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (film: Love, Simon), The Upside of Unrequited, and Leah on the Offbeat. She is also the co-author of What If It's Us with Adam Silvera. A former clinical psychologist who specialized in working with children and teens, Becky lives with her family in Atlanta.

Becky Albertalli has generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), and has spoken about it in several interviews, which you can find online. She has also written several characters in her books who also suffer with anxiety. Her first book, Simon vs the Homosapien’s Agenda (or Love, Simon), is the only book of hers that I have read so far, and I loved it. It was the first contemporary book that I read and actually enjoyed.

14. Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth

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Cyra is the sister of the brutal tyrant who rules the Shotet people. Cyra’s current gift gives her pain and power—something her brother exploits, using her to torture his enemies. But Cyra is much more than just a blade in her brother’s hand: she is resilient, quick on her feet, and smarter than he knows. Akos is the son of a farmer and an oracle from the frozen nation-planet of Thuvhe. Protected by his unusual currentgift, Akos is generous in spirit, and his loyalty to his family is limitless. Once Akos and his brother are captured by enemy Shotet soldiers, Akos is desperate to get his brother out alive—no matter what the cost. Then Akos is thrust into Cyra's world, and the enmity between their countries and families seems insurmountable. Will they help each other to survive, or will they destroy one another?

Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of the Divergent series (Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant, and Four: A Divergent Collection), the Carve the Mark duology (Carve the Mark, the Fates Divide), The End and Other Beginnings collection of short fiction, and many short stories and essays. Her first book for adult audiences, Chosen Ones, is out now. She lives in Chicago.

Veronica Roth suffers from anxiety, like a lot of the authors on this list, and talks about it in interviews. A quote from one: "I've had an anxiety disorder my whole life, so I've been to therapy on and off throughout, before books and after books. I went back and tried to talk through some of the things I was feeling and experiencing, and it was helpful."

I’ve never read any of her books, not even the hugely famous Divergent trilogy, though they’ve been on my radar for years. I’d love to get into her books at some point, but it might take me a few years.

15. How to be Autistic by Charlotte Amelia Poe

📷An urgent, funny, shocking, and impassioned memoir by the winner of the Spectrum Art Prize 2018, How To Be Autistic by Charlotte Amelia Poe presents the rarely shown point of view of someone living with autism. Poe’s voice is confident, moving and often funny, as they reveal to us a very personal account of autism, mental illness, gender and sexual identity. As we follow Charlotte’s journey through school and college, we become as awestruck by their extraordinary passion for life as by the enormous privations that they must undergo to live it. From food and fandom to body modification and comic conventions, Charlotte’s experiences through the torments of schooldays and young adulthood leave us with a riot of conflicting emotions: horror, empathy, despair, laugh-out-loud amusement and, most of all, respect. For Charlotte, autism is a fundamental aspect of their identity and art. They address the reader in a voice that is direct, sharply clever and ironic. They witness their own behaviour with a wry humour as they sympathise with those who care for them, yet all the while challenging the neurotypical narratives of autism as something to be ‘fixed’. This is an exuberant, inspiring, life-changing insight into autism from a viewpoint almost entirely missing from public discussion. ‘I wanted to show the side of autism that you don’t find in books and on Facebook. My story is about survival, fear and, finally, hope. There will be parts that make you want to cover your eyes, but I beg you to read on, because if I can change just one person’s perceptions, if I can help one person with autism feel like they’re less alone, then this will all be worth it.’ Charlotte Amelia Poe is a self-taught artist and writer living in Lowestoft, Suffolk. They also work with video and won the inaugural Spectrum Art Prize with the film they submitted, 'How to Be Autistic’. Myriad published Charlotte's memoir, How to Be Autistic, in September 2019.

Another book I didn’t know about until researching for this post, but I really want to read it because I haven’t read many books about autism, and practically none of them were actually written by someone who actually is autistic. Charlotte uses they/them pronouns.

16. Ask me about my Uterus by Abby Norman

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For any woman who has experienced illness, chronic pain, or endometriosis comes an inspiring memoir advocating for recognition of women's health issues In the fall of 2010, Abby Norman's strong dancer's body dropped forty pounds and grey hairs began to sprout from her temples. She was repeatedly hospitalized in excruciating pain, but the doctors insisted it was a urinary tract infection and sent her home with antibiotics. Unable to get out of bed, much less attend class, Norman dropped out of college and embarked on what would become a years-long journey to discover what was wrong with her. It wasn't until she took matters into her own hands--securing a job in a hospital and educating herself over lunchtime reading in the medical library--that she found an accurate diagnosis of endometriosis. In Ask Me About My Uterus, Norman describes what it was like to have her pain dismissed, to be told it was all in her head, only to be taken seriously when she was accompanied by a boyfriend who confirmed that her sexual performance was, indeed, compromised. Putting her own trials into a broader historical, sociocultural, and political context, Norman shows that women's bodies have long been the battleground of a never-ending war for power, control, medical knowledge, and truth. It's time to refute the belief that being a woman is a pre-existing condition.

Abby Norman’s debut book, ASK ME ABOUT MY UTERUS: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain, was published by Bold Type Books (Hachette Book Group) in 2018, with advance praise from Gillian Anderson, Lindsey Fitzharris, Jenny Lawson, and Padma Lakshmi.

The book was praised by The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, The Sunday Times, The Irish Times, Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, Book Riot, Toronto Star, ELLE, Health Magazine, Undark Magazine, BUST Magazine, Bitch Magazine, Ms. Magazine, BBC Radio 5, and other international media outlets.

​In 2019, the paperback edition was published in the U.S. and the Korean translation in Seoul (Momento Publishing/Duran Kim Agency).

​Her work has been featured in Harper’s, Medium, The Independent, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, and elsewhere. Interviews and profiles have been seen and heard, including NPR/WNYC, BBC, Anchor.fm, The New York Times, Playboy, Forbes, Glamour, Women’s Health, and Bitch Magazine.

Abby Norman suffers from endometriosis, which was a large part of why she wrote her book, and why she advocates so hard for fellow patients at conferences such as Stanford University’s Stanford Medicine X and the Endometriosis Foundation of America’s medical conference and Patient Day. She is

Abby has served on technical expert panels including the National Partnership for Women and Families’ CORE Network (Yale University), the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid, The Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR), and Health Affairs.

​In 2019, Abby contributed to a paper addressing research gaps and unmet needs in endometriosis published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

This book is definitely one I will be adding to my to be read list, as someone who (unfortunately) also has a uterus, it is important to be informed. And Abby sounds like such a badass who wrote a whole book about her chronic illness to help others with the same condition.

17. Stim: Autistic Anthology by Lizzie Huxley-Jones

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Around one in one hundred people in the UK are autistic, yet there remains a fundamental misunderstanding of what autism is. It is rare that autistic people get to share their own experiences, show how creative and talented and passionate they are, how different they are from media stereotypes. This insightful and eye-opening collection of essays, fiction and visual art showcases the immense talents of some of the UK's most exciting writers and artists - who just happen to be on the spectrum. Here they reclaim the power to speak for themselves and redefine what it means to be autistic. Stim invites the reader into the lives, experiences, minds of the eighteen contributors, and asks them to recognise the hurdles of being autistic in a non-autistic world and to uncover the empathy and understanding necessary to continue to champion brilliant yet unheard voices.

Lizzie (Hux) Huxley-Jones is an autistic author and editor based in London. They are the editor of Stim, an anthology of autistic authors and artists, which was published by Unbound in April 2020 to coincide with World Autism Awareness Week. They are also the author of the children’s biography Sir David Attenborough: A Life Story. They can be found editing at independent micropublisher 3 of Cups Press, and they also advise writers as a freelance sensitivity reader and consultant. In their past career lives, they have been a research diver, a children’s bookseller and digital communications specialist.

I wasn’t even aware that there was an anthology out there by an autistic author, about autism, but now that I do I need to read it.

18. Chimera by Jaecyn Bonê

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Creatures unlike you've imagined before! Welcome to a world where myths and legends collide to create a new breed of monster. Savage and soulful, these monstrosities combine to form the mighty Chimera. In this anthology, talented writers weave 10 tales of fantastical beasts. Featuring stories by: Matt Bliss Jaecyn Boné Alexis L. Carroll Chris Durston Dewi Hargreaves Stephen Howard Samuel Logan Vincent Metzo Braden Rohl Michelle Tang

Jaecyn is a queer, non-binary, disabled Asian-American writer and digital artist fascinated by faeries.

Most of their writing involves wlw romance and faery-inspired creatures. Their first novel, Farzana's Spite is a 10-year-old work in progress and the first novel in The Faerth series. Other works include The Killing Song (novel) and Colour Unknown (short), both of which are also part of the Faerth universe.

Jaecyn's art can be described as a neorealistic pop art style with cel shading. They began their digital art journey with a 5-year-old refurbished iPad using their finger as a stylus and immediately fell in love. They do digital download commissions as well as sell prints of their artwork.

Jaecyn is the Co-Editor in Chief of the Limeoncello Magazine, an online Own Voices literary magazine which debuted its first issue on March 21st, 2021.

When not writing, drawing, or chasing after their two children, they can be found either gardening or practicing their ukulele.

None of Jaecyn Boné’s books are published yet as they are still in the stage of querying, but they contributed to the above anthology, along with nine other authors. I had no idea that this anthology existed, and now I’ll be closely following this author to see when their books get published!

19. Forest of Souls by Lori M Lee

Sirscha Ashwyn comes from nothing, but she’s intent on becoming something. After years of training to become the queen’s next royal spy, her plans are derailed when shamans attack 📷and kill her best friend Saengo. And then Sirscha, somehow, restores Saengo to life. Unveiled as the first soul guide in living memory, Sirscha is summoned to the domain of the Spider King. For centuries, he has used his influence over the Dead Wood—an ancient forest possessed by souls—to enforce peace between the kingdoms. Now, with the trees growing wild and untamed, only a soul guide can restrain them. As war looms, Sirscha must master her newly awakened abilities before the trees shatter the brittle peace, or worse, claim Saengo, the friend she would die for.

Lori M. Lee is the author of speculative novels and short stories. Her books include PAHUA AND THE SOUL STEALER (Disney/Rick Riordan Presents), FOREST OF SOULS and the sequel BROKEN WEB (Page Street), and more. She’s also a contributor to the anthologies A THOUSAND BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS and COLOR OUTSIDE THE LINES. She considers herself a unicorn fan, enjoys marathoning TV shows, and loves to write about magic, manipulation, and family.

Lori struggles with anxiety, and the common symptoms like fatigue but she doesn’t let this stop her writing amazing books. I read Forest of Souls earlier this year, and it was seriously one of the best books I’ve ever read. I loved the magic, the characters, the world building. Everything about it, including the plot twist ending that had me losing my mind at 2am, was just so unlike anything I had read in any other fantasy before.

20. A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A Brown

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For Malik, the Solstasia festival is a chance to escape his war-stricken home and start a new life with his sisters in the prosperous desert city of Ziran. But when a vengeful spirit abducts Malik’s younger sister, Nadia, as payment into the city, Malik strikes a fatal deal—kill Karina, Crown Princess of Ziran, for Nadia’s freedom. But Karina has deadly aspirations of her own. Her mother, the Sultana, has been assassinated; her court threatens mutiny; and Solstasia looms like a knife over her neck. Grief-stricken, Karina decides to resurrect her mother through ancient magic . . . requiring the beating heart of a king. And she knows just how to obtain one: by offering her hand in marriage to the victor of the Solstasia competition. When Malik rigs his way into the contest, they are set on a course to destroy each other. But as attraction flares between them and ancient evils stir, will they be able to see their tasks to the death?

Roseanne “Rosie” A. Brown was born in Kumasi, Ghana and immigrated to the wild jungles of central Maryland as a child. Writing was her first love, and she knew from a young age that she wanted to use the power of writing—creative and otherwise—to connect the different cultures she called home. She graduated from the University of Maryland with a Bachelor’s in Journalism and was also a teaching assistant for the school’s Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House program. Her journalistic work has been featured by Voice of America among other outlets.

On the publishing side of things, she has worked as an editorial intern at Entangled Publishing. Rosie was a 2017 Pitch Wars mentee and 2018 Pitch Wars mentor. Rosie currently lives outside Washington D.C., where in her free time she can usually be found wandering the woods, making memes, or thinking about Star Wars.

Roseanne is another author that struggles with anxiety and wrote one of her two main characters with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), despite it being a fantasy. I don’t even think I can name a fantasy that had a character with anxiety represented so well. This was a book I read around the same time as Forest of Souls, and I loved it. The cover was beautiful, the characters were brilliant, and I just loved the world building, the magic, and the plot. It was just different to the usual fantasy books I read, and I enjoyed the variation so much I’ve had the sequel pre ordered almost a year in advance.

So, this was my 20 books by 20 chronically ill, disabled or neurodiverse authors list. Blurbs and synopsis were compiled between Goodreads and author websites, and bios were found either on Goodreads, author websites or on amazon author pages. All the information about their chronic illnesses, disabilities or neurodivergence was found online, where they had either explicitly said it or written about it, but if I have something wrong, please let me know so I can fix it!

If you have any other suggestions or know any other books and authors that should be on this list, please let me know and I’ll do my best to add it to the list as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading 😊

[jeans-ong-ong]

Hi! I just wanted to say I adore your comic! The colours are so beautiful, your art style is lovely, and the care you put into this project is evident. With so many things to tackle, like using real life cultures, the effects of war on those in service and out of it, and mental health, How do you go about doing research for it?

Hello! Thank you for this wonderful ask - both for the compliments and the interesting questions. So, let’s dive right into it: apologies for the long answer, but when you ask a creator to talk about their projects, they love to do it.

I started planning Introspection of a Deserter right when I began attending my Bachelor course in Education and Pedagogy - I met a lot of philosophical concepts that tingled my creativity, and I had to read a lot of books, so I felt like I was in the right mental space to handle a project that was deep and complex. I was studying how people grow up and shape their life, and it felt relevant for me to write a fictional biography that hit a series of themes that were interesting for me. I was 19, and now I am 22, and in all honesty I don’t think I’ve done a good job on the needed research.

Cultures Well, this part was simplified by the show. I think the creators of Avatar did some decent research, especially aesthetic wise, but they didn’t really go for the authentic representation. The info I got by talking with some asian fans is that Avatar does not work according to determined social mechanics, for example, in Korea or Vietnam. From what I gather, it was felt closer by Asian Americans, due to the characters feeling quite american, but the aesthetic being non-western (in A:tla at least). Being pretentious as I am, I felt like I wanted to use a bit more authenticity, but I didn’t really get it right on several aspects. I watched some fantasy asian movies to get examples for the tone I wanted (fun fact: I’m working on a watchlist of 30 movies to find the root of the mood of Introspection), mostly chinese; I read some articles about daily lifestyles and so on. On a hindsight, I should have watched more documentaries. I actually planned a trip to Vietnam in the indefinite future to “feel” the vegetation more! Vegetation is one of those thing you tend to take for granted, but it gives an entirely different texture and feeling to the landscape. Take, for example, the webcomic Heart of Keol: I couldn’t do that just by watching some fantasy movies (the author is, indeed, Korean), I need to live it first. However, a lot of stuff was made up and conveniently placed there, and that ... that has some consequences. See, for example, the religion storyline. Now, this one is a sore spot for me, because I’m viscerally attached to it. I don’t actually plan to change it in the near future - even if I do have a pair of books about buddhism on my readlist. What I’m telling in the comic is fundamentally a story about pseudo-catholicism: the concept of sin doesn’t match the concept of karma, the “sinfulness” of homosexuality and the desire of redemption, that’s just something that does not make sense in the context of a Buddhist culture. Let’s not even get into reincarnation: I have not done the minimum amount of research necessary to get such a difficult concept. And yet, I feel like changing this side of the comic would distort it to an unrecognizable story, and if I want to keep drawing it, I believe I need to mantain a bond with it. Will I try to be more authentic nonetheless? Yes. The effect of war I must admit I am quite fashinated by war. There is actually a branch in Medical Anthropology that studies war! And not only in the Medical one. However, the academics that do that have a severely higher risk of getting shot so I’m... still considering it, yes? I started looking into it because of Introspection. I think reading stories is educational most of the time, if only for the spark of interest one might develop for certain themes. You create some basis neuronal connections that will make it easy to look into more reliable sources later. But what is even better for me is Writing Stories: perfectionism forces me to look into sources (and as I grow older, I get that more and more), and looking into those makes me wish to write a story in that setting. That being said, my personal connection to war has been pretty indirect so far. I’ve listened and read stories about people who have been in battles, soldiers, victims - and I’ve been reading a lot about colonization in the last 4 years; from the classics to current issues (think Palestine). I include this bit on colonization because it will/would be a very recurrent theme in the story, and yet I know I’m still not there yet, I need to be more informed. The interest started with the disciplined experience of being in the military as studied by Goffman, and later on by Foucault, but then came in the concept blood thirst, and how does one person manage to enjoy killing people? How does one’s conscience tolerate it? I still haven’t finished doing research for that, because that story line “has just started”, and I like to keep concepts fresh in my mind (probably a mistake. Artists: do the research before you start working on the story, not while you’re doing it - unless it’s a written piece, that you can rework and rework. I didn’t finish the script before starting to draw the comic, so uh ... that’s a consequence). Mental health This was probably the one I winged the most through experience and knowledge gathered over the years. I haven’t properly read a book about depression yet - but I’ve just got one pending in the reading list, and the same goes (spoilers!) for alcohol and drug addiction. I did read a lot of experiences told by those who have been there, and I’ve even done an internship (actually only half of it because of Covid-19) in a rehab center for alcohol and drug abuse. However I know depression a bit, I’ve had several people with a variation of it in my life, and part of this comic is a re-elaboration of what I and other people have gone through in a (not always) exaggerated way, and fictionalization. When I was in a very different mental place, I used to refer to this comic as my “self-therapy”. Just an example can be found in (planned) book 4, which will be an hypothesis of therapy for someone with serious suicidal thoughts. Never will the comic be about “complete healing!”, because that’s not something I believe in, however it will be used to experiment, and hope a bit for a better, if bittersweet, vision of life. As I got into doing the comic, some themes became more important than others because I felt more bound to them, and usually I do more research on those now. Academic paper reading, people who live them in first person experiences (through documentaries, autobiographies, or youtube videos), or even personal experiences are all sources I draw from in comic planning. This being said, I should either choose shorter stories or simpler subjects for my next comic. But will I? Who knows. Thank you for reading so far!