Tag: short stories

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.

Only Flora

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The Dreaming Vol3: I’ve finished pencilling chapter 16 (2 our of 6) of vol3, and has started inking chapter 15. This is going to the be last volume of “The Dreaming”, so I’m beginning to work out the details of my next work. But first, I gotta post up a Chapter 8 preview of “The Dreaming” vol2 first, which is coming out in November.

 

Supanova 2006: I’ll be there, selling copies of “The Dreaming” vol1, for about AUD$12. I’ll be at booth Y of the artist’s alley, and TOKYOPOP Australia has also printed a series of bookmarks for “The Dreaming” to be given away for free! Keep your eyes peeled. I’ll be sharing a table with Poshua, who’s selling a copy of “Generation 2006” ($12), an Australian manga anthology. This anthology contains my manga “The Two Dollar Deal” in it, so that’s probably your sole chance to buy it in print (for now).

 

Project “One2Eight” (aka 1 TWO 8): This is a new project I’ve created, and I’ve yet to put up a proper information page for it. The project consists of a series of short stories, each self-contained and complete, with a strict limit on the number of pages allowed. The challenge is to tell 8 stories, consisting of a 1-page story, a 2-page story, a 3-page story, and so on, to an 8-page story.

Both “The Two Dollar Deal” (8-pages) and “Message To You” (4-pages) is part of this series, and now you get to see “Only Flora” (5-pages), which is actually a prequel to another story (part of the “Boy Meets Girl in 10 Pages or Less” series). I did this story a fair while ago, and it was basically just an excuse to experiment at drawing without using ANY rulers (save for the panel lines). What the heck.

 

Only Flora - Page 1————————————

 

Only Flora - Page 2

 

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Only Flora - Page 3

 

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Only Flora - Page 4

 

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Only Flora - Page 5

 

The inspiration for this project came from a quote of Hagio Moto, who said that if you can tell a single, complete story in 8-pages then, you’ll never have any trouble telling a story of ANY length. Hagio Moto is right on that, but I want to go a step further, to see whether you can a single, complete story with a story arc in less than 8-pages (what a “story arc” will need a better definition). And I’ve proven that it’s doable. You can tell a 1-page story, but you can’t have a narrative arc in only 1-page of manga. Another aim of this project is to find the watershed point at which a story can begin to have a story arc, which is to say that it actually has a beginning, a middle and an end.

 

Narrative Watershed: I’ve found this point to be at 4-pages. 4-pages is the least number of pages you can have in telling a single, self-contained story with a story arc. It was originally 5-pages, with “Only Flora”, but I decided “Message To You” could qualify. At first it didn’t because it had no text in it, but I changed my mind when I realised you can tell a far longer story without text (Gon, anybody?). So why wouldn’t it qualify?