#But this is also for my college's comic anthology which is due in like 12 hours so very last minute idea

[kodii-ak]

Pain

A comic about my chronic pain experience.

[wordsparks]

An Attempt to Explain My WIPs (Warning: GIF Heavy)

Music Land Maestress

A magical girl story, only set in England, with high school girls (and one ten year old to represent magical girl teams usually having a younger member...is that an actual trope? I don't know).

Part Sailor Moon

(Cause it's my fave mahou shoujo show & also cause what mahou shoujo story these days isn't inspired by it?)

With combat more of the PreCure sort (where there's physical combat involved not just magical attacks)

+ Some of the "save a fantasy world" aspects of my favorite CLAMP work, Magic Knight Rayearth

+ The "human mentors instead of animal mascots" idea and the idea that the girls' mission is really the mentors', both from Tokyo Mew Mew. (Only the mentors in my story are from a magical land and are a magical swordsman and a young magical prodigy respectively). The Monsters-of-The-Day are also possibly inspired by TMM's Chimera Anima, not sure though.

+ other things, including music.

***

The CYA Files

The seed of this dates back to my high school years, around 2002-2003, though I didn't start writing a proper MS till 2-3 years ago. Thus it comes out of my "writing really preachy things" period, back when I was still largely in my sheltered Christian bubble. Because of this, my dislike for superhero movies (I'd seen the 2002 Spiderman and a few others and wasn't that into them; I'm still not really THAT into them, though that might be cause I've never been into Marvel & DC Comics really...though now that I'm watching and very much enjoying Supergirl that might change), and maybe some guilt over the very-X-Men-inspired superhero comic "Lightning Girl" I'd written, I came up with this story with people who save future London using powered suits and their spiritual gifts. "Christian Superheroes," basically. When I work on it for NaNoWriMo this year I may have to reevaluate it to see if it's too preachy or not.

Anyway, this novel was inspired by two things mostly:

Superheroes

And mecha

(Not Eva-style specifically, but at the time I came up with the story, I think NGE was the only mecha series I'd seen, so no doubt it had an influence)

***

Nukata: A Novel

My NaNo novel last year (which won! yay!) and the one I'm working on right now. It's a historical romance about Nukata no Ôkimi, a real-life princess from 7th-century Japan who also became one of Japan's first lyric poets of note, and the love triangle she is thought to have had with Emperors Tenji and Temmu. But aside from that it's also a story about maintaining your dignity in a strange world, and about a girl who wants respect for her mind more than for her body. Nukata, Tenji, and Temmu are the main characters, along with Tenji's good friend and chief advisor Nakatomi no Kamatari, who was the ancestor of the famous Fujiwara clan that was the power behind the throne in Japan for centuries (shortly before Kamatari's death, Tenji granted him the family name Fujiwara).

Not much has been written about Nukata in English, and only 9 of her poems (maybe 11 if you count ones attributed to others but thought to be hers) survive, all by way of an 8th-century anthology called the Man'yôshû. I first encountered Nukata in my Brit Lit 1 class believe it or not. My degree program had a global focus, so every class had to have a global element, and thus this class included reading medieval Chinese and Japanese poetry as part of that. The poem we read was Poem 16, her poem comparing spring and autumn leaves, which is probably her most famous.

Nukata is still known in Japan today. There is a Takarazuka play about her (Akane Sasu Murasaki no Hana) and she is briefly mentioned in episode 12 of the anime Chihayafuru.

Not sure of the influences here since research basically wrote the plot, but I'd say Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha and Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan were probably influences, even though they are written about later eras.

This is also my first straight-up historical fiction novel (my other attempt was time travel) and my first romance. (I tend to avoid romances in my work because I've never dated, so I don't feel qualified to be writing romance...also it's a genre I really don't read). So kinda nervous but trying my best.

***

The Case of The Canterbury Colony Ship

My first sci-fi mystery, and the beginning of a series of probably 4 books (one for each year the heroines are in university). My Camp NaNo April 2017 winning novel (yay!). Also an attempt to explore my own autism, since the heroine, like me, has Asperger's, and subtly vent frustrations I have about autism (the seeming lack of treatment for autistic adults in the U.S. and a lack of awareness of girls with autism - mind you these are based on my own knowledge and experience only). She forms a mystery-solving club with a neurotypical policeman's daughter whose father wants her to go into law enforcement but who secretly loves ancient lit, a science whiz girl with Social Anxiety Disorder, and a former scholar athlete who got too into partying and drugs and is now trying to rebuild her life after checking herself into rehab for a year. She gets tired of the mundane cases they get and wants something better, which happens when they get involved with a case baffling the police - the mysterious disappearance of the passengers and crew of a generation ship.

It's kinda the classic "amateurs helping out police/law enforcement agency who might not like them but needs them" trope that has been popular on TV of late via shows like Fringe, Psych, Castle, Sherlock, its American cousin Elementary, Scorpion, Alphas, and most recently Blindspot.

But the series has a decidedly literary bent, in case the title didn't tip you off. Protagonist Sophie Hughes started her life in a writing project I did in Brit Lit 1 where we were supposed to adapt one of the texts we read into a creative writing piece. I chose The Canterbury Tales. Due to page limits, I only wrote the end. Since then, the story and Sophie have evolved into what I have today.

This may also end up being a diverse book. Being white and having had very little experience of POCs growing up, my novels don't tend to have POC characters. But in this one, I ended up making Paige (the girl with SAD) black kinda randomly when doing her character sheet, and Sophie ended up becoming half-Mexican (probably cause I made her be from Miami, and also my mom was watching Jane The Virgin at the time...and also cause I needed some kind of hearty soup Sophie could cook in a dorm room, and my first thought was posole, cause I've seen my Hispanic coworkers eat it a lot). I guess it's diverse in terms of not everyone being neurotypical too (maybe). Can someone who actually understands this whole #WeNeedDiverseBooks thing explain to me how this all works?

So it has that "amateurs helping out police/law enforcement agency who might not like them but needs them" trope (though you could probably replace “law enforcement agency” with “FBI” cause it always seems to be the FBI) but has more of a literary bent. The main inspirations for the literary bent are the awesome TNT show The Librarians (the movies it’s a spin-off of are great too, especially if you want to see how Flynn started out) and the anime Read or Die: The TV, which I was introduced to by my junior college anime club around 2003, shortly before it got licensed here. (The manga version, R.O.D.: Read or Dream, as well as the anime and manga versions of the OAV that stars Yomiko Readman, are also available in English).

(ROD gif from @nothingforkings)

***

The Stars Above Us

This was my NaNo novel 2 years ago, and the first one where I wrote a novel especially for NaNo, rather than using NaNo as an excuse to make progress on an existing work. It’s set in the 3200′s and is about a girl named Katia Sewick who is living a miserable, apathetic, lonely life in Brooklyn and doesn’t picture it getting any better...and then she inherits a space station from her grandfather. She doesn’t know the first thing about running a space station, but she decides to at least go check it out. The staff does not accept her immediately, making her prove herself before she can take command. Then, shortly after she does that, a biological threat is discovered onboard that could kill everyone if not dealt with.

I’m not really sure how it will end, but with everyone living at any rate. Also, Katia will find meaning for her life at last.

This novel actually originated from a prompt in a writing prompts book (“Upon inheriting a working space station from her grandfather, a woman tries to make it run smoothly”), so it didn’t really have inspiration in that sense. The title came about cause someone in my NaNo group said she usually looked to Shakespeare for title ideas. (The quote I used for this title is from King Lear: “It is the stars,/The stars above us, govern our conditions." I’m not sure it fits the book, but it was the only Shakespeare quote I could find that talked about stars).

The biological threat plot is, I think, partially inspired by this kinda obscure anime movie from the ‘80s, They Were Eleven. They released it here in the U.S. on subtitled VHS in the early ‘90s, but a dub also exists. The sub is what I have seen. It’s about these young space cadets whose final test for space academy is to survive for a specified number of days on an abandoned spaceship, with no contact or involvement from outside. There are supposed to be 10 in their group, but when they arrive on the ship, they find there are 11 of them -- and no one is certain who the intruder is. Meanwhile, they discover some weird plant on the ship that makes people ill, among other things.

I also did a fair amount of research about space stations, including designs that have been proposed over the years.

This book also owes a debt to Star Trek (mostly TOS cause that’s the generation I’m most familiar with, having seen a number of the TOS movies even if I have yet to see the TV show) because I wasn’t sure how to structure the station crew (like what sort of crewmembers you would need) and ended up using the TOS crew as a model.

***

Tales of Walden

My high fantasy universe, currently consisting of short stories and poems and a work in progress since 2005. I tried to write a novel in this universe, but never finished it.

I’m still trying to find a long-term goal for this universe; for now I just write stories or poems for it when I feel like it (or like when I did it for Camp NaNo and Story-a-Day in May).

As for inspirations, Lord of the Rings is a huge one.

I’m not going to lie, this universe was very influenced by Tolkien. But then what epic fantasy these days isn’t?

Narnia - the first fantasy series I was ever exposed to - has an influence here too though.

(Narnia GIF from Giphy)

***

Other WIPs

I have some minor WIPs too.

Fairy*Net and Fairy*Radio, a duo of comics I drew art for for NaNoMangO 2015

Some unfinished stories from Story-A-Day 2015

A couple story ideas from Story-A-Day 2015 I want to develop further: one about using biohacking to become pop idols, and another about two Asian idols who are forbidden to be together cause of the “no boyfriends” clause in many female Asian idols’ contracts. (The latter was inspired by this list; I also wrote a short story about sasaeng inspired by this list).

A LOT of fanfic ideas that aren’t yet written (so I guess they’re not WIPs yet, except for the Osaka Naru one, which I have partially written).

Two huge Doctor Who fanfic projects: “The Companion’s Diary of Alyson ‘Alys’ Reed,” a diary-style fanfic about the adventures of a couple OC Companions with Eleven, and “The Linguist’s Story,” a mostly Classic Who-set group of stories about an OC Time Lady.

**

Hope you liked this post!

[nongravity]

DECAF April 2017 Post Mortem

This is going to be a different kind of festival report as I’m not only an exhibitor but I’m also the organizer! So I’ll talk about both sides of the coin here. This was my first time organizing an event like this, I had a lot of help from Sarah and Debbie and the rest of the Stray Lines group.

This is my 8th post mortem convention write up! You can find the rest on the Events page on my website or the post mortem tag here on my tumblr.

First, some event numbers! I’m leaving out the line item costs because it’s not just my money we’re talking about and I don’t want to force transparency anyone.

Budget for the event: €550-ish

Venue

Website

Poster Art

Poster/Postcard Printing

Decorations/Supplies

Sponsor and exhibitor incoming: €392

Damn Fine Print event sponsor

12 exhibitors

For a total budget shortfall of: €158

Our goal was to have 25 exhibitors, which would have safely covered our budget but we were only able to announce DECAF a month before it happened so even though we had interest from about 25 exhibitors, only 12 could pull a table together on such short notice. In retrospect, we didn’t even have room for 25 exhibitors! So from an event flow standpoint, it’s a good thing we only had 12. I’m not sure if there’s a remedy for this one, I feel like we landed on a reasonable price for exhibitors, so I wouldn’t want to double their prices, and 25 exhibitors would have made the event floor way too crowded. 

Space won’t be an issue at our next venue and hopefully having 3 months lead time instead of 1 will give more exhibitors a chance to book a table.

There were also some set-up costs that won’t factor into the next event, like purchasing the website domain and hosting. If you subtract that I maybe only lost €100. 

Now for my exhibitor numbers!

My total outgoing costs for the convention in order of leaving my house to the start of the show: €15

Fuel driving into Dublin - €10

Lunch - €5

What I brought with me:

Loads of We Can’t Afford This

My last 4 copies of Hats that aren’t trapped in storage

Plenty of Odd Reels and Strong

What I sold: 

1 Copy of Hats for €7

2 Copies of Strong €5

2 Copies of Odd Reels €3

11 Copies of We Can’t Afford This €4

For a total incoming of: €67

€52 is a good profit for a group table as opposed to a solo table. Brings down my total loss for the event to only €100. My hopes for the July show is that we’ll have enough space at the Dublin Food Co-op to all have individual tables. 

Obviously even these Dublin shows continue to cost more than they should until we actually move to Dublin. I can’t wait to eliminate the commute from these costs! It was also too much of a mad rush getting to Dublin with everything for the event and two kids so I didn’t pack a lunch of myself. 

We Still Can’t Afford This

It occurred to me while I was getting ready for the show that this was kind of like an Irish debut for We Can’t Afford This. A few copies were at the Temple Bar Gallery Art Book Fair last Christmas but most people never would have seen it! 

Kinda wild that it took me 6 months to show off my book about the Dublin housing crisis to a Dublin audience. But what a difference it made! I sold more than 2x as many as I did at LICAF. 

This kind of reignited my whole desire for organizing DECAF, to have more opportunities throughout the year to reach a local audience. 

Our Table and Us

Due to the Fumbally Stables requirement for a door-person, we had to put the Stray Lines table in the lobby away from the main exhibitor hall. It worked out though, as we became the DECAF greeters and toilet-direction-givers. I imagined it helped with sales a bit as well since it was a prominent placement. It didn’t allow us to hear any of the panels which was a bit of a bummer since it sounded like people were giving great talks from the snippets I heard. I could also barely hear the DECAF playlist I’d spent so long making.

What I brought for the group:

24 books by 6 different artists!

What the group sold:

52 books!

Not as many as LICAF but more than ELCAF and impressive because some of us were worried that the audience for DECAF would be the same Irish comics audience who’ve already read all our books. But instead we saw lots of new faces!

Winner

Is it cheating that I was the winner? It’s absolutely cheating. But I put We Can’t Afford This front and center on my music sheet stand and the music sheet stand is magic, whatever book we put up there (Sarah’s Primark at ELCAF, the Stray Lines Anthology at LICAF) always wins the day.

Dublin Eight Comic Arts Festival

It took about three months for DECAF to morph from hypothetical “a Comic Arts Fest in Dublin would be cool” to “maybe I could organize it” to “DECAF is happening!” I was inspired by Sarah running Pulse: Irish Comics Now last year and Monica Gallagher’s BMore Into Comics in Baltimore, Maryland. I’ve never even been to a BMore event yet since my family visits never sync up but the idea of a smaller, quarterly comic show really appealed to me. Monica hosts her events in bars, but since I’m a teetotaler I chose cafes which I thought would play well with the DECAF name.

Originally, it was supposed to be DCAF, I even okayed the name with The Dartmouth Comics Art Fest in Nova Scotia, but when I went to book the .ie website I found it was already taken by the Dublin Christian Arts Festival! 

Since I was already talking to a few venues in Dublin 8, and I really liked the silly coffee name I narrowed my venue hunt to a place that would keep Eight in the name. What happen if we do a show outside of Dublin 8? I have no idea! Scour the dictionary for E words. It factored into my choosing DublinComicArts for the website instead of DECAF, in case the letter E ever runs dry.

Rookie Mistakes

Besides losing money (definitely didn’t plan on that) some things came up along the way that completely slipped my mind. I didn’t say Free Admission anywhere on the poster or Facebook event. And it didn’t even occur to me until people started asking as they walked in the door! I don’t think it affected turnout but clarity is a good thing!

It wasn’t until a few days before DECAF that I put the first flyer on a college campus. Get with the times old man! If Julie hadn’t asked about dropping some posters and flyers at NCAD it never would have occurred to me! Not a single DECAF flyer made it to Trinity or UCD, DCU, DIT, Griffith, Pulse. Not that I really had posters and flyers to spare, or the budget to print more but really, what a dope to forget college kids, some of which are taking illustration and sequential art classes! 

At most comic events I feel bad for not socializing enough or making the rounds but it feels extra egregious when I’m the organizer! I said hi to people as they were coming in to set up, but once the show started and I got behind the Stray Lines table, that was kind of it for me! Debbie and Sarah made me go up at the end of The Comics Lab talks to say thank you and I’m glad I did. 

Highlights

Over a week later and I’m still pretty shocked by the turn-out we got. Never really a dull moment in the day and it repeatedly got crowded! People who showed up at 11am asked when the talks and panels were and when we told them 2:30pm, they actually came back! That’s wild to me! The Activity table and the Comic Swap table were hopping all day! Adults were drawing up at the table and kids were drawing down on the floor! The Swap table ebbed and flowed with used books and at the end of the day the donation box had €106 to give to the Abortion Rights Campaign! All the exhibitors I’ve talked to say they want to exhibit again at the next DECAF! Really lucky.

The venue was the perfect fit for our first event. The tables and arches were beautiful and it looked nothing like a traditional comic convention. It looked like an art gallery and a friend even asked me if they do gallery events there (they don’t usually but you should contact them anyway and hire their spaces!)

The poster art by Charlot Kristensen blew me away. It was the public face for the event and we needed one since I’m a complete unknown in the Irish comics community, “some dude named Matt is putting on a show” wouldn’t have filled the room. 

Sarah and Debbie agreeing to combine their quarterly Comics Lab with DECAF was a godsend. There’s no way the show would have been as successful as it was without The Comics Lab, DECAF stood on their reputation and the crowds in the afternoon came for The Comics Lab.

Damn Fine Print saved the day by sponsoring us! Our budget shortfall would have been much much worse without them, maybe even jeopardizing the prospect for future DECAFs.

Conclusion

When you consider that I often lose 100+ quid to travel to the UK to table an event, it’s looney tunes that I was able to organize an entire event here in Dublin and only lose 100 quid. Like, why not run an event! This might seriously change my comic show traveling habits. 

My next goals are to make it sustainable, losing only €100 isn’t bad, but I can’t afford to make a habit of it.

Once the show is out of the red, my next goal is to make the show free for individual exhibitors. Just knowing from experience how much table costs eat into the potential profits of a show and what a relief it was last year at Pulse and Small Press Day to have no table costs. The two ways there that I can see are, sponsorships, grants or crowdfunding. Sponsorship saved the first DECAF so I’ll keep pursuing that wherever I can. I haven’t been able to successfully navigate Ireland’s extensive grant system yet but I really need to figure it out. Crowdfunding is a total question mark. Are there 200 people who think having a small press event in Dublin is worth €1 a month? I hope so!

Epilogue

I didn’t officially announce that DECAF would be quarterly until the day of the event because I didn’t want anyone skipping April in favor of July. But I put a deposit down on the July show venue the same week I booked the April venue because why build one when you can build two twice the price?

Tara O Brien did our wonderful July poster. I’ve been so lucky with the people who’ve agreed to work with me on DECAF! There were supposed to be July postcards to give away at the April event but I really didn’t need to spend more money on the April event than I already did so it was fine to release the art digitally and save our printing budget for the final July poster. 

The July event is a bigger venue, with more exhibitors, it’s wheelchair accessible and will have a full spread of cafe tables and chairs. It’s also accidentally booked on my daughter’s birthday (you eeegit!) I can’t wait.

[frftherese03305-blog]

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[tanmath3-blog]

My next author/publisher hardly needs an introduction—but in case some of you have missed knowing him, let me invite you to get to know Richard Chizmar. He is a brilliant writer and publishes amazing books, magazines, podcast and many other things as well. Richard is co-owner of the famed Cemetery Dance Publications, which publishes many great, talented authors. He is a dedicated family man with two handsome boys, is very driven, and has a great sense of humor. He believes in helping other writers and publishers he believes have the ability to become great. To say the least, I admire and respect him—and what he stands for. He is a class act all the way. His stories will amaze you and take you on a ride like never before. I have always loved reading his books, and highly recommend if you have not had the chance to read them, that you do so immediately! Please take a moment to get to know Mr. Chizmar and say hello—you won’t be sorry. Please welcome Richard Chizmar to Roadie Notes…..

1. How old were you when you wrote your first story?

Probably five or six. I used to write monster and war stories. I’d sit at my desk in front of the window in my second-floor bedroom and write in a thick, lined tablet my father brought home for me. Right from the beginning, I felt like a real writer. Making up stories has always been fun to me.

2. How many books have you written?

Three short story collections, a handful of novellas, and four of my scripts have been published in book form.

3. Anything you won’t write about?

Nothing specific comes to mind. I tend to just focus on people, places, and moments in time that mean something to me. Wherever that takes me…I follow.

4. Tell me about you. Age (if you don’t mind answering), married, kids, do you have another job etc…

I just recently turned 50 (and as a two-time cancer survivor, I’m pretty pleased with reaching that plateau). I’m married to a wonderful woman, have two amazing sons, and Cemetery Dance Publications has been my full-time job since before I graduated from college, closing in on 29 years now. I’m blessed in more ways than I can count.

5. What’s your favorite book you have written?

It will sound like a cop-out, but it’s true: the most recent one, A Long December. Thirty-five stories, spanning my entire writing career. I can trace the entirety of my adult life by when each story was written and where I was at the time it was written. It’s been pretty neat to look back on each story, almost like traveling back in a time machine.

6. Who or what inspired you to write?

I was fortunate in that my family was a big reading family. My father always had a book in his hands, usually a well-worn paperback novel from the library swap shelf. My mother was always reading a magazine or some type of non-fiction. My sisters were all big readers. So I learned a love of reading from a very early age.

The initial spark of writing interest just always seemed to live inside of me. I felt like I saw and heard and felt things just a little differently than the people around me, and I wanted to write down those thoughts so people might understand. But I was also just a normal little boy who was obsessed with baseball and football and fishing and playing marbles and climbing trees. It wasn’t until early in high school when my English teacher brought in a copy of Stephen King’s “The Monkey” for us to read aloud in class that I knew I wanted to truly grow up to be a writer. That is the moment where I knew…

7. What do you like to do for fun?

Fishing. Hiking. Exercise. Watching my sons’ sports team.

8. Any traditions you do when you finish a book?

Get to work on the next project. That’s something I learned from my father. Finish one job and move on to the next one. Keep grinding.

9. Where do you write? Quiet or music?

Most of my writing is done in an upstairs bedroom in my house, but I will write anywhere and at anytime. Parked in my car. At my office. At dinner in a restaurant. Wherever the mood strikes me.

10. Anything you would change about your writing? Sometimes, I wish I was more of a stylist; that I produced a lusher, more lavish prose. But that’s not me. My writing is all about clarity and forward momentum.

11. What is your dream? Famous writer?

I’m living my dream. One hundred percent true. I am living my dream each and every day.

12. Where do you live?

I live in the Maryland suburbs about a half-hour north of Baltimore. I’m 15-20 minutes away from the CD offices in Forest Hill and about the same distance from Edgewood, the town in which I grew up.

13. Pets?

Three dogs: Boo, Zoey, and Cujo.

14. What’s your favorite thing about writing?

That moment when everything clicks into place and you know the story works. It doesn’t happen with every story, maybe not even most of them, but man oh man when it does, it’s a magical feeling.

15. What is coming next for you?

The rest of 2016 is busy. My collection, A Long December, is due from Subterranean Press in early November. Darkness Whispers, a novella I co-wrote with Brian Freeman will be published later in November from Scarlet Galleon Publications. And, finally, Heroes, a chapbook featuring my short story and the script adaptation (co-written with John Schaech) and a comic adaptation, as well as a brand new introduction and afterword, will see print from SST Publications in December. I also have new short stories appearing in a variety of anthologies and magazines including Dark Hallows 2, Christmas Horrors, You, Human, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

You can connect with Richard Chizmar here:

Twitter: @RichardChizmar

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Richard-Chizmar/111616148855452?ref=ts&fref=ts

Cemetery Dance Publications: http://www.cemeterydance.com/

As always, thank you so much for letting us get to know you better. I wish you continued success and much happiness. So very proud to call you my friend.

Some of Richard Chizmar’s books:

  Getting personal with Richard Chizmar My next author/publisher hardly needs an introduction—but in case some of you have missed knowing him, let me invite you to get to know Richard Chizmar.