Just a quick post to let everyone know that “The Dreaming: Perfect Collection“, which is the omnibus edition of “The Dreaming“, is now available to be ordered from Diamond comics again. The book never quite went out of print – it just went out of distribution which made it near impossible for any bookstore to order. Now that it’s back in distribution, comic bookstores everywhere can order it through this handy code:
In the last post I made, I mentioned that I’d imported 20 copies of “The Dreaming: Perfect Collection” to sell at Brisbane/Sydney Oz Comic-Con (and later, at Ashfield Con). I managed to sell out all of my copies that month, and as promised, I did sketches for each of these books – 20 in total.
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The photo quality isn’t great, unfortunately, but I no longer own any of these books since they’ve been sold, so this problem can’t really be amended. I’ve also totally taken to snapping photos of my drawings on my iPhone and uploading them onto social media, so I guess that questionable photo quality isn’t going away any time soon.
The good news is, there’s a lot more work-in-progress shots of what I do, which I post up on my Facebook Account, but also on the Sydney Comics Guild, a comics club based in Sydney whose members seem to like my WIP drawings a lot (and keep wanting to see more).
Fabled Kingdom News: Well, what do you know? Book 2 is done! Everything from the covers to the chapter covers to the table of contents. What ISN’T done is the proof-reading that I’ve hired someone to do – I’m still waiting for the proof-read chapters to come back from the proofreader(s). The good news is that I’ve got Book 1 proof-read too, and all the new corrections for book 1 are now up on Lulu and Amazon. I’ve also tweaked the covers for books 1-2, and I’ll post pictures up when I get book2 printed, which will be after I get the proofread version of it back.
Hi all! I’ve imported 20 copies of “The Dreaming: Perfect Collection”! I’ll be selling them at Oz Comic-Con Brisbane/Sydney, which is this weekend for Brisbane and the next weekend for Sydney. I’m selling these books for $30 each, so drop by my table if you’re going to the shows!
As you all probably know, ever since the collapse of TOKYOPOP, these books have been near impossible to get in Australia without frightful shipping costs. I’m now looking into ways to fix this since there’s a demand for the books – so fingers crossed!
Fabled Kingdom: I’ve been working hard on “Fabled Kingdom”, and I’m now halfway through Chapter 14, which is the last chapter of book 2. I was hoping to get book 2 done before Oz Comic-Con in Brisbane and Sydney this year (see “appearances” above), but oh well… I’m not behind schedule, so no need to rush. Book 2 is still coming out in December this year, so no big deal.
Hi all! I finally got some time to post up news about my latest project, a fairy-tale inspired fantasy called “Fabled Kingdom”. It’s planned for 3 volumes, each with 7 chapters.
NOTE: I’ll be serialising the first 2 volumes online here. Updates 3-4 pages every Friday.
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Book 2 out in December 2015! Chapters 6.5-8 (in PDF*) out in March 2015! |
  
BUY as PRINT BOOKS: **If you buy this in print, you can buy the ebook version for $0.99 with Amazon’s Matchbook Program BUY as E-BOOKS: Also available on Kobo and Nook, but the older versions of these ereaders may have difficulty displaying the pages. Please read a sample first before buying. |
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What if Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother isn’t her real grandmother?
What is her two trueborn grandmothers are both queens – and one is good, while the other one is evil?
Fabled Kingdom is a 3-volume fairytale-inspired YA fantasy. It’s a comics-prose story, written and drawn by me. It will be released both in print format, and as an e-book series.
The story is about Celsia, a ‘Red Hood’ training to be a healer under her grandmother’s tutelage in a small village deep in the woods. One day, she discovers a shocking secret – her grandmother isn’t her real grandmother. Forced to leave her village, she goes on a quest to find her two trueborn grandmothers, who are both powerful queens of magical kingdoms. Accompanied by her childhood friend Quillon and the cheeky faun Pylus, her first destination is the ‘Fabled Kingdom’ of Fallinor, a magical kingdom that was destroyed 60 years ago. Or… was it?
You can also read this on DeviantArt, SmackJeeves, Tapastic, and on my website.
As you may know, Fabled Kingdom is a comics-prose story, and it was originally accepted by a major publishing house in 2013. However, I didn’t like the contract terms they offered, so I declined. Only 3 chapters of the book was done at the time, and now, I’m halfway through chapter 8. I decided to finish the book on my own, and then see what happens.
Doing this story has been quite an interesting experience, because in terms of length, there is a direct comparison. ‘Fabled Kingdom’ is a 3-book series much like ‘The Dreaming’ was (done 10 years ago), except that FK is in comics-prose format, and TD was a traditional manga story. Due to the differences in these formats, I was able to directly compare the amount of work required to do both. And here is where it gets real interesting.
‘Comics-Prose’ was originally conceived to (1) reduce the amount of time required to draw a single comics page, and (2) to shorten the number of pages required to tell a sequence of events. After having done about 212 pgs of ‘Fabled Kingdom’ (compared to 166 pgs for volume 1 of ‘The Dreaming’), I can declare the points below:
Some more statistics for comparison. These are approximates only:
I’ve mentioned before that I have no intention of going back to doing traditional comics, and this is why. Traditional comics is back-breaking labour; it really is. Having done it for 10 years, the burn-out is terrifying, and it doesn’t get faster or better – in fact, the whole process just gets harder, because you get older.
I’m older now, less naive, and less committed to being chained to my drawing board all day long without even being able to go out for lunch or to meet friends. When I did ‘The Dreaming’, I literally had NO social life. My friends didn’t see me for months at a time, and I almost lost touch with a lot of people. Now that I’m doing ‘Fabled Kingdom’, I have no trouble going out daily, and meeting my friends once a week. I usually start at 4pm, and get two pages completed (pencils, inked, toned) by 12am at night (with breaks in between for dinner, etc). Even on a really busy day, I still manage to get a full page done within a few hours.
To be honest, I feel relieved.