#award winning author………………….

[jewish-sideblog]

Astonishingly easy to tell that you didn’t actually read this post, else you would have absorbed valuable information like “Buy essentials from local businesses with cash” and “Consider this a test run to see if organizing a larger and longer boycott would work”. You might even have learned that this post was written by a former United States Secretary of Labor, who served on Obama’s post-2008 economic recovery board, and authored multiple books and created award-winning documentaries on income inequality and late-stage capitalism. I think he might know what he’s talking about. I’m not sure you do.

Friends, A grassroots movement is calling on all Americans to abstain from shopping with major retailers — including Amazon — tomorrow, February 28, as part of an “economic blackout.” The purpose is to send a clear message: We have the power. We don’t have to accept corporate monopolies. We don’t have to live with corporate money corrupting our politics. We don’t have to accept more tax cuts for billionaires. We don’t have to pay more of our hard-earned cash to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg or the other billionaire oligarchs. We don’t have to reward corporations that have abandoned their DEI policies to align themselves with Trump’s racist, homophobic, misogynistic agenda. We have choices. Most Americans are struggling to keep up. Most live from paycheck to paycheck. Most can barely afford housing costs, food prices, and pharmaceuticals — kept high by monopolies, and fueled by private equity. If politicians won’t hear the voices of average Americans who are being shafted by corporate America, we have to deliver our message to corporate America directly. From midnight tonight to midnight Friday night, please: No Amazon, no Walmart, no Best Buy, no Target, no Disney, no Google, no Facebook. Don’t spend on fast food, major retailers, or gas. Avoid using credit or debit cards to make nonessential purchases. Buy essentials such as medicine, food, and emergency supplies, of course, but make those purchases at small, local businesses. Consider this a test run. If lots of people participate, I’m sure a longer one will be organized. (Tomorrow’s economic blackout is an initiative of The People’s Union USA, which describes itself as a “grassroots movement dedicated to economic resistance, government accountability, and corporate reform.”)' I hope you'll join. What do you think?

[neixins]

can mrs author commit to using either an em dash or a comma when inserting a piece of information into a sentence instead of starting with one and ending with the other like oh my godddddd

[jesncin]

🌈 LUNAR BOY WON THE STONEWALL AWARD FOR CHILDREN'S LIT!! 🌈

A historic win!! The very first queer Indonesian graphic novel has won the oldest and most enduring queer book award! We've been so hyped over the news since yesterday that we could barely get any sleep! We're celebrating into Lunar New Year tomorrow, and will likely be heading over to the US to receive the award at the ALA conference in Philly later this year.

Our editor sent us flowers over the news!! I'm not extremely emotional about it at all and am in fact so chill and cool instead (<-pathetic lies).

[childrenofcain-if]

Why is W's first feature film literally about their childhood with MC 😭 this is the cutest shit I've ever seen

why you gotta expose them like that 😔

but you’re not wrong, people who know W personally have suspected that the young actors look too much like W and MC when they were kids. the only difference is that those kids actually have a happy ending...

[thepersonalwords]

There is no shortcut for hard work that leads to effectiveness. You must stay disciplined because most of the work is behind the scenes.

Germany Kent

[hungryblackbird]

if i think about alice and alan too much i start to lose my miiiiiind

[essektheylyss]

I highly recommend local bookstores because nowhere else can you pick up a book that is no different from any other books around it, which include publications by such authors as Ursula fucking Le Guin, and discover only once you get home that it's printed in batches of 200 and doesn't even have an associated ISBN. This has happened to me multiple times, and it is the best. This is not ironic, it's the funniest experience and you really will only get this kind of appreciation and uplifting of local and small artists in indie bookstores.

And also those books will usually knock your fucking socks off.

[dduane]

So let me reblog this, as it's probably the simplest way to keep the thread in order.

Per the earlier post linked to below: as of this writing (and for the immediately-foreseeable future) it remains a complicated thing to pull together a full set of the Young Wizards books for library purposes, as there's never been a unified hardcover set of the whole series at once. The linked post gets into the whys and wherefores, mostly having to do with internal ructions at publishing houses.

The SYWTBAW covers vary wildly in art and execution as the years go by and cover styles change, and it's interesting to trace the changes.

The one you've got is indeed the first edition of SYWTBAW, the Delacorte hardcover, which is increasingly hard to find (though not insanely overpriced). The art's an early work by the Newbery-award winning artist and writer David Wiesner.

I remember Tom Swale—then one of my story editors at Hanna-Barbera, now Advisory/Senior wizard for the ages—indicating the peryton who's apparently reaching toward Kit's antenna-wand, and saying, "That guy needs his own Saturday morning series." Not sure I'd disagree. :)

The SYWTBAW cover you'd have seen in your young day, though, was the Dell Yearling (trade-ish size) or Dell Laurel-Leaf (mass market) paperback with art by Neal McPheeters. I have kind of a soft spot fo this one: i like the artist's work.

Then, after Dell dumped me and a bunch of other new and/or midlist authors (I mean, come on, what sensible person throws Jane Yolen out the corporate window??), there were no new SYW... editions in the US until the Harcourt paperback (and also a rare small format hardcover) with David Bowers art that appeared above.

The SYW... cover following that one was the same one we've got now on the Harcourt mass market paperbacks. Its art's by Cliff Nielsen, who's done all ten of the Harcourt covers, up to and through Games Wizards Play.

And a while after that, after the series's sales really started to pick up, came the 20th Anniversary edition. It had wraparound art from Greg Swearingen, who'd been doing the covers for the "digest format" editions of the early books in the series (this format being targeted toward younger readers). Such a lovely piece of work.

...Anyway, that's where we stand on North American SYW... covers at the moment. The one on the paperback SYW... that uses the New Millennium Edition text is unavailable in the US, Canada or the Philippines due to contractual issues.

(sits back, shaking head as usual at all those covers...)

Anyway: let me take a moment here to let people know who might have been looking for one of the earlier editions, for sentimental or other reasons, that we've got a fair number of them at Signed Books Direct. I'm in the middle of an inventory at the moment, so—to avoid any disappointment about actual availability—if you're interested in anything, rather than just ordering something, the best way to go is to drop a query to the store's email address and let us know what you're looking for. I'll get you sorted out.

Anyway: gotta stop here and go see if the rye bread in the kitchen has risen enough to bake... :)

School librarian here, just stopping in to share a story... Someone recently donated a scattered handful of your Young Wizards books to our library. I devoured them as a child and was excited to share them with my students, so I dug up copies of the ones we were missing, up through book 8. I got them out onto the shelf last week. On Friday, one of my middle schoolers came in asking for recs. I suggested the first book. He wasn't sure about it, but he trusted me enough to at least try it. He said it looked weird, though, and grabbed another random book just in case.

Monday morning, he was the first student in at my desk, and he checked out the next two in the series! He's hooked!

It gets no better than that. :)

...I have to wonder about the cover on the one that "looked weird", though. Certainly there are some of the SYWTBAW covers that've struck me as a little weird, over time. In particular, I was never quite sure what was going on in the art director's mind with the ones Harcourt commissioned from David Bowers...

Meanwhile, I've got plenty of copies of book 9, so if you want to DM me, I'll send one your way. :)

[over-smiles-and-over-wine]

George Clooney ain't no doctor and Eric Stonestreet ain't no gay

[slaughter-books]

Day 12: JOMPBPC: Should Win An Award

[krytus]

"ian short for lesbian" is still one of the funniest name things ive considered. should my pen name be ian....

[dotthings]

Other stupid antics from certain Jensen stans. They don't deserve a free pass. Also I'm a Jensen fan I was on twitter and the way Jensen stans were on twitter was one of several reasons I'm not sorry I quit (fandom wasn't the main reason but definitely a perk is escaping spn standom twitter). I am going to care what my own lanes do, and should care, because those are the fandom spaces I gotta live in.

These loud highly active Jensen stan accounts pretend they're perfect and they pretend all the other lanes are the only problem and pretend to be saner-than-thou.

And they have been pretty terrible on a regular basis, tbh. But this is just in the past 24 hours:

lying, as I said above, trying to equate how Misha speaks about being on The Boys to Jared's open and press-backed campaign to be on The Boys

lying about Misha's career post-spn. Claiming nobody asked Misha to act in anything. Realities: Berlanti productions hand-picked him to star on Gotham Knights as Harvey Dent--they took that to him, he didn't have to audition. Misha turned down a Castiel spinoff on the CW. Misha also starred in the award-winning scripted podcast Bridgewater, and produced and starred in an Emmy-nominated documentary series for PBS, Road Food. Should we also mention he's a NYT bestselling poet? I want to know what these Jensen's stans are smoking and how threatened are they by Misha's success and talent that they have to resort to lies to tear him down. Is Jensen not self evidently awesome and talented enough for them they have to resort to these stupid tantrums? That's really sad and pathetic to me as a Jensen fan

harassing positive tweets from JenMish fans to yell at people for hoping JenMish do The Boys promo together. Apparently there are Jensen stans who have no clue who Eric Kripke is if they think Kripke isn't going to promote using J2M...he already promoted The Boys using J2M. But okay, the Jensen stans harassing JenMish fans to inform them with a tone of high authority that there's no way there will be any Jensen and Misha inclusive promotion. Keep drinking that kool aid.

general hatred toward every single destiel shipper in existence for existing, pretty much, along with puritanical pearl-clutching that can equal any puritanical antishipper discourse because they feel threatened by queer sexuality, there is no kinder way to put it. They need to calm tf down

known biphobic Jensen stan pretending all of a sudden they care how queerness gets treated by queer fans only so they can pearl clutch and concern troll puritannically

pearl clutching that Kripke turned The Boys into pandering to the shippers because he's doing a J2M reunion on The Boys so...J2M's existence as spn's most prominent trio of actors is automatically about ships now. Their hypocrisy is hilarious. These same people cry about how SPN isn't about ships, but when Kripke casts J2M they start shrieking this is "pandering to the shippers"

There's myths about the Jensen stanning lane on twitter that they stay in their own lane and they're so mild-mannered and they don't bother anybody but the hate, the harassment, they particularly especially despise Misha and target him for supporting Destiel especially, they harass JenMish fans, they harass Destiel shippers--just for example, there's one who for a long while serially obsessively kept going around replying to untagged tweets about Destiel to tell people it doesn't exist and Dean is straight and Destiel shippers have no rights to speak.

Very rational behavior. So superior.

I don't think it's great for the Jensen lane or for Jensen that these loud-mouths behave this way, especially while Jensen has been out there making a point of being inclusive and welcoming. But they don't care. They claim to speak to defend Jensen's honor, but they don't care about him. They care about using him as the excuse to shout and yell about their own biases and their own hate.

They haven't paused to think for 5 seconds about Jensen.

Reality seems to have escaped some people in both the Jensen and Jared lanes that a) Jared openly and loudly campaigned to be on The Boys b) press kept amplifying it as if it were a done deal, even though Jared kept saying they were talking about, they talked, they're just talking c) it was treated as "official" and a done deal months ago even though nothing was actually announced d) by the time we got to today, Jared being on The Boys was not the least bit of a surprise at all, while Misha being on The Boys and it being a J2M on screen reunion was a surprise.

Because it was promoted ahead of time as a J2 reunion. Misha wasn't mentioned. Something Misha antis gloated over, claimed he was too much of a loser, claimed he was unwanted etc (you know how they go on and on).

Misha made maybe 2 or 3 offhand comments about wanting to be on The Boys, it was low key on his part, nobody made a big thing out of it including Misha, and press didn't ride it.

But sure. Sure. Misha "begged" and Jared did nothing.

Sure. Sure. Jared and Misha are exactly alike here.

It's either Jensen stans equating Jared and Misha (while they pretend reality isn't reality) or it's Jared stans lying and pretending there's been no Misha hate, while Jensen stans foam at the mouth with rage that Misha was included and now they have to cope with a J2M reunion, after they were already pissed about the loudly promoted loudly promised, loudly-campaigned-for-by-Jared J2 reunion.

I mean. They can all just cope.

(anti-Misha stans from Jared and Jensen's lanes both continue to drink their own home-brew kool aid, and I continue to laugh at them)

[glassamphibians]

when i talk shit about authors being on social media too much i am NOT talking about the prolific 40+ authors i follow who repost blurry screenshotss of #bookishsayings #writerproblems they clearly got from facebook never them they are perfect.

[belle--ofthebrawl]

I want to know what inspired you to start writing!

I don't know if I have an answer! I feel like I've always been writing. It's something people have always encouraged me on and it's always been my greatest strength. There's a teacher who said if I really wanted to, I should expect to be published by now...and I am! On AO3!! Not exactly what he had in mind I imagine, haha!!

But really...how hard could it be to write a shitty romance novel 🤔 I bet I could do it.

[user-needs-new-hyperfixation]

So I'm reading a published western steamy romance novel for the first time in...a while...and I just. I don't know. It's making me twitchy as all hell. It feels so chronically online for something actually published in print? The characters keep fretting about the potential power imbalances between them and rambling about capitalism? In a fantasy world! Where is the escapism?! Like I get that fantasy worlds and outlandish scenarios are a tool for saying something about the real world, but they usually don't actually say it. And good lawd, the way the attraction is written is so hamfisted it's more cringey than hot. Every time the characters look at each other there are long drawn out descriptions of their physical attributes and I get so sick so fast of hearing about the colours of eyes and hair and the contours of breasts and shoulders for fuck's sake I want to know what makes the person attractive, not what they look like. Am I...am I too demi/greyace for mainstream romance now? Is that what's happening? Also there's a freakin' Supernatural joke in this book which did in fact make me snort-laugh but also made me irrationally angry because this book was published in 2023. 😂 At least it has a nice cover and a bisexual protagonist lmao.

Anyway this annoyed me enough that it's kind of inspired me to write in a fit of "I'll make what I want myself!" so that's something. 😅😅

[jesncin]

Hi there!! I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what the process of being published was like for Lunar Boy? Were there any struggles you faced trying to get it seen? Any tips for others trying to get their work published? Thank you in advance and I love your work! :)

Hullo there! Sure! Unfortunately things have changed a lot since I pitched years ago so I don't know how replicable my publishing journey is nowadays. But I'm willing to share!

So! I always knew I wanted to write for kids, but in art school we were trained to be cape comic artists. Back then (if you can believe it), making middle grade comics was considered something that would sink your career. At that point in history, American comics was trying so hard to prove "we're not for kids!" that they left a chasm in the market for children's comics. Then Raina Telgemeier's bestselling books proved there was a hungry readership of kids and suddenly the trad pub industry is excitedly picking up middle grade graphic novel pitches (ironically, including cape comics).

I was studying my Masters in the US as this was all happening, and decided to use my time in the program to generate as many middle grade pitches as possible! The first one I made was Lunar Boy, but the story was so well received that it ended up being the one we pushed forward as a pitch and develop the most across classes. On Twitter there was this event: #DVPit, which is a pitching event for marginalized authors looking to seek editor interest on their pitches but also! To get agented. In its heyday (before Melon Husk ruined everything. This event is no longer on twidder sadly. Many pitching events have ceased to happen or are on hiatus from how unusable that platform is now) it was a fantastic event. I got agented on my 2nd try of the event, and it got the industry an early look at Lunar Boy and made them excited to see it out on submission.

My agent, Britt Siess, was extremely helpful with giving us feedback on how to refine our pitch. Not only did she give us story feedback, but I was surprised also by her comics feedback- that was more nuanced than I expected (little did I know that she's a huge comics nerd). She had connections to all the editors I was interested in pitching Lunar Boy to, and we were out on submissions right as we graduated with our Masters degree (during the start of the pandemic lmao).

I already had early editor interest in Lunar Boy which I think helped a lot with getting it picked up. I've been told that it helps to meet editors in person and get chummy with them before pitching to heighten your chances, but that wasn't really the case for me. I've never met my editor (Carolina Ortiz, I love her she's amazing) in person, but she did actually reach out to me long before we went out to pitch- on a Simu Liu tweet trend of all things lmao.

(I didn't end up looking like evil boy band members in pastel clothes in the final book, I went for cultural clothes instead which I think is the more bespoke choice haha) Carolina reached out to me from this tweet and we actually talked back and forth about Lunar Boy, refining the pitch. I felt like she understood the story despite asking for big changes. I don't think she'd do something like this anymore, but I really appreciated it at the time (I wasn't even agented yet). All the editors I met in person for events like Editor's Day at school liked my art (and would even hire me for colorist work and the like) but they weren't interested in Lunar Boy. This was reflected when we finally went on submissions too.

We got a lot of rejections, vague language like "we don't know how to edit this" or "we already have a book like this" (??? press X to doubt). Compounded with all my interactions with editors in person, I felt like I was "marketable" as an artist but not as a storyteller because our stories were so unapologetically QPOC- with culturally specific queer identities to an already underrepresented identity. The editors that were interested in Lunar Boy had personal connection to the story (they were either also from blended families or QPOC themselves). But hey, you only need one yes to get a book deal. We ended up with Carolina as our editor and she's been our rock and champion for this book since the beginning. We were out of submissions in just a week (which is really fast in the industry).

My big tip for getting into the trad pub graphic novel industry is to study the market. A lot of people mistaken publishing as a vessel or platform for their untold story, when really it's a business we compromise with. Pay attention to trends, book deals, shifts in the industry, read your peers' books, everything. Research is key with getting your foot in. Lunar Boy may look like an out-there book, but at its heart it's a story about culture shock, trying to fit in, along with family and friendship problems. In trad pub especially, locking in to sellable tropes and trends is key. Find clever ways to innovate and work within those limitations at the same time. Be open to feedback and changes. I know so many people are held back from getting book deals because they're too attached to their story. It helps not to be phased by rejection and or take things personally. I've been very desensitized to talking about books like a business, since that's what it took for someone like me to make it out there.

I hope that was helpful!