Category: Manga-Comics

Lucid Walking: Comics for Telepaths

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First Review for In Odd We Trust: Coming out on the 24th of June (at least on Amazon.com), this book just got its first review. It’s in the Icv2 glossy magazine (so not online), and it’s a great 4-star review.

I quote: “The pairing of Dean Koontz with Australian manga-style artist Queenie Chan was a match made in graphic novel heaven. Together, they tell a great story in a genre halfway between Psyche and Nancy Drew, with marvelous dialogue.” I’ll be posting my long-awaited post on “In Odd We Trust” once I run it by Del Ray’s publicity agent David, so please keep an eye out for that. Here’s also an interview with me about the book on Jazma Online, done by Allen Klingelhoets.

 
 

Comics for Telepaths: And onto what else I’ve been doing for the past year. I’ve just recently wrapped up a long-running comic work, a fantastical techno-space opera which ran bi-weekly for the past year in Telepathy Tales telezine. For those unaware of this story on the telestream, I posted the first page of it up here.

 

Sci-Fi Comics for Telepaths

 

The uninitiated may be wondering why this story involves both thoughts and images, when it’s generally believed that telepathy involves only thought-transference. Well, that was Telepathy 1.0 – this story was broadcast on Telepathy 2.0. If you’re a telepath and you’re still on Telepathy 1.0, you probably already know where to get the upgrade.

Many thanks to editor Henrietta Max, and for The Daily Telepath for giving it a 4-star review. Thanks also to Melandril Moose and Telepathy Tales for giving this story a permanent home in the Vorpal Tex. For those interested in the adventures of Mr. Alabaster Curly and Luci Dworkin, I just told you where you can read all the back issues of the story.

In terms of influences, this story was inspired by Michael E. Blake’s “Science Fiction for Telepaths” (1977), a story whose entire text consisted of: Well, you know what I mean. An extremely long and complex piece of science-ficton this was, yet ironically, it’s often referred to as one of the shortest science-fiction stories in existence (according to everything2.com anyway). Hey, it took me a whole day to get through it, you know.

 
 

TOKYOPOP and “The Dreaming” Writing Competition: Everything that can be said about TOKYOPOP’s situation has already been said, and my heart goes out to those who lost their jobs in the corporate reshuffle. I wish you all the best of luck for the future. As for “The Dreaming” writing competition, I apologise for the delays – the winners were suppose to be announced at the BEA, but since TOKYOPOP’s restructuring got announced instead, there is obviously some confusion. I emailed TOKYOPOP and Marco Pavia of marketing replied, saying that they’re planning to announce the winners soon, so thanks for all your patience. Hey, if all else fails, I’ll just post up the 6 finalists and the winners on this blog. Once again, I apologise to everyone who entered the competition for this. Your entries were wonderful and a joy to read, and I hope this can be sorted out ASAP.

It’s Been A While: Sleeping Chick

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Sleeping Chick

Sleeping Chick

Sleeping Chick

Sleeping Chick

Sleeping Chick

Sleeping Chick

Sleeping Chick

Sleeping Chick

Sleeping Chick

Sleeping Chick

Sleeping Chick

Sleeping Chick

Sleeping Chick

Sleeping Chick

 

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I like to imagine chickens breaking out of their eggs not because they have to, but because they find it so quiet and lonely in there. This flies in the face of common sense (as does this whole strip), but unlike us human observers, newly-woken baby chicks don’t quite know they’re inside an egg. It’s a silly thought, but apparently worth doodling something on.

 

The Dreaming: “The Dreaming” writing contest is over, the winners have been chosen, and thankyou to everyone who entered it! I will write a longer post about it later – picking the winners were an extremely difficult job and it deserves an LJ post all on its own. I believe the winners will be announced at the Book Expo America.

 

In Odd We Trust: The release date is in June, not July, so I shall post my penultimate “In Odd We Trust” post soon.

 

Move to Melbourne: The reason why I haven’t posted for so long is because I’ve been moving house to Melbourne (from Sydney) for the past 2 months. I’m still not done, would you believe. There is alot of catch-up posting to do.

The Dreaming: Competition Reminder

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Odd Thomas: Long time no update. “In Odd We Trust” was finished last month, and well on its journey through production. The release date is mid-July 2008, 2 weeks before the San Diego Comic-Con, where Dean Koontz will be special guest. I also will be attending. More on that as the shelf date approaches.

 

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Hopefully most people know, but here’s a reminder for “The Dreaming” Writing Competition:

The Rising Stars of Prose Competition

It’s a writing competition based on the characters and universe of “The Dreaming” manga. TOKYOPOP is running the competition from: 1st February, 2008 ~ 15th April, 2008. Visit their website for the Official rules, Submission Guidelines, and also the entry form.

 

Cover for The Dreaming - vol1"The Dreaming" vol2 - coverThe Dreaming 3 - cover
Buy vol1, vol2 and vol3 off Amazon.

 

What is this competition about?
If the “Rising Stars of Manga” competition was to discover new manga talent, then the “Rising Stars of Prose” competition serves the same purpose. Part of the reason for running this contest is to (hopefully) find some great prose writers who can adapt certain TOKYOPOP manga into novel form. If you have any interest in becoming a professional writer of fiction, this sort of thing may be one of the ways to get your foot in the door and get noticed.

 

What are the Prizes?
The winner gets $500 cash, and a chance to be considered for the novelisation of “The Dreaming” and other TOKYOPOP works (depends on the quality of the winning entry). Other runners-up will get a free copy of “Tarot Cafe”, and also a piece of original “The Dreaming” art. There are 10 pieces of these original art to give away. I never sell my original art, so these will be the only copies out there. Perhaps it’ll be worth alot someday! *laughs*

 

Why does it use “The Dreaming”?
What, you mean apart from the fact that it’s a good story? Well, it’s also to give the fans of the series a chance to flex their creative writing muscles. “The Dreaming” is a good series to base a writing competition on – it has a definate beginning and end, the timeframe of the story stretches over 70 years, and it’s a self-contained universe with its own mythology.

Most of all, it gives an equal platform for all the prose entries to be judged by. This is because a prose competition differs from a manga one. You can ask people to submit 20-page manga stories on anything and judge them somewhat fairly against each other, but such a thing would be impossible to do for a prose contest. A manga is judged on art and panelling as well as writing, whereas prose is judged purely by the writing. How can you ask people to write short stories about anything, and then judge them against each other? The entries would be too diverse for it to be possible. You need some kind of measuring yardstick.

 

Does it have to be a horror story like “The Dreaming”? What does “based on the universe of ‘The Dreaming'” mean?
I don’t think the competition rules mention anything about your story having to belong in any genre. If I’m wrong, please correct me. Your entry has to encompass something from “The Dreaming” universe, be it the characters, mythology or anything else – much like writing fanfiction – but that’s about it. As a final judge, I would much rather look for good ideas, writing skills, characterisations and story structure rather than whether it’s a horror story or not. If horror’s not your forte, then don’t write horror.

Not contradicting the “canon” (ie. the events that occur in “The Dreaming” manga) is also extremely important – it proves that you have absorbed the story properly and can write within a defined set of rules. That’s necessary if you’re asked to adapt a manga into prose form – otherwise, it’ll be like adapting Harry Potter into a movie and getting the characters names/histories wrong. No one wants that.

 

Is this competition open to international contestants?
Sorry. I pushed hard for this, but I’m afraid the complexities of running an international competition is just too great. All those different rules and regulations will make it seem like running parallel competitions, so I’m afraid this contest is restricted to American residents only, much like RSOM.

The Dreaming: The End, or is it?

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It’s seven days from Christmas Day, and I gotta announce that “The Dreaming” vol. 3 is finally out, both on bookshelves and online! You can buy vol1, vol2 and vol3 here on Amazon.com!

IMPORTANT: Please look on the VERY LAST PAGE of volume 3. There’s a SECRET there, to be revealed on the TOKYOPOP site soon, hopefully January.

 

The Dreaming 3 - cover

So, "The Dreaming" trilogy is officially over (at least the manga written and drawn by me is).

 

It’s been a long and busy three years, and so much has changed in that time. My art has also improved, though the results of that can probably only be seen in “Odd Thomas: In Odd We Trust”, the book I’m working on now.

 

 

  • Along with “The Dreaming”, I was one of the first people to be published in TOKYOPOP’s OEL 3-book manga program, and judging from the changes in their publishing plans, probably one of the last.
  • I started work on “The Dreaming” in October 2004, and finished the last of its pages in August 2007.
  • Book 1 was 172 pages, book 2 was 181 pages, and book 3 was also 181 pages. Each had 7 chapters.
  • This makes a total of 534 mostly greyscale-toned pages, including 21.5 black and white chapter pages.
  • The average chapter length was 25.43 pages. The longest chapter was chapter 20, at 35 pages. The shortest was chapter 21, at 17 pages.
  • I worked a total worktime of 22 months, which makes an average of 24.3 pages a month, 7.33 months for each book. That makes about a chapter a month.
  • In a single month, this means 1 week for the pencils, 1.5 weeks for the inks, and another 1.5 weeks for the tones.
  • My favourite chapter break is chapter 2 in book 1, and my favourite dress is the one the unconscious girl is wearing on the “To Be Continued…” page of book 1.

 

 

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  • First, I’d like to thank all my wonderful fans for your interest and support in this series. I give special kudos to all the people who emailed me – I replied to most of your emails, and will continue doing so. I apologise if I haven’t replied to yours in particular (I get on average 1-2 fan mails a day), but I’ll try my best.
  • Secondly, I want to thank all the editors who worked on this series, namely Jodi, Carol Fox and Paul Morrissey. Carol especially, because she spend the most time on it. Thanks to all the senior editors who kept an eye on things too, and also Stu Levy who greenlit this project.
  • An apology and thanks to Katie Huang and Paul Aeria, who helped me with the toning for book 3, but unfortunately didn’t get their names in the credits because of a printing error. Nobody was at fault – there was some confusion with the 1 month delay in street date because of the SECRET on the last page. So I thank Paul and Katie here instead.
  • A big thanks to TOKYOPOP Senior Editor Jenna Winterburg too, for telling me about the SECRET you’ll find at the end of volume 3. Thanks for the TOKYOPOP marketing folks who came up with that too.
  • Thanks to Emily Shao, for maintaining “The Dreaming” Fanlisting, and also my Normal Fanlisting. I really appreciate it.
  • Kudos to all the librarians who pushed this book, and recommended it to their enthusiastic little manga minions. Thanks to Scholastic for ordering 45,000 copies for their book club too. You’ve got to get them reading when they’re young…
  • May I also thank all the reviewers who gave it a good review, and all the bloggers and journalists who interviewed me for their blogs and/or articles! You can see a full list of them on my site.
  • Thanks to all the news sites I read for mentioning me and my book, including MangaBlog, Heidi at The Beat, ComiPress and the now defunct Love Manga (If a news site I don’t read mentioned my book too, then I thank you as well. Hopefully you were saying something nice, teehee.)
  • Last of all, a big THANKYOU to TOKYOPOP for publishing this series, including every single person who worked on it. If you know anything about book publishing, there’s probably quite a few people whose names didn’t get mentioned because of the “behind the scenes” nature of their job. I want to say: your efforts are appreciated.

 

 

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I hope everyone (and my fans) continues to support me in the other works I do.
Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy 2008 New Year!!