Tag: the dreaming

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!!

The Strange One: Odd Thomas

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Odd Thomas: Long time no update – I’ve been real overworked. For the record, I’m still working on the single-volume “Odd Thomas” graphic novel (just finished chapters 4 out of 7), which now has a name – “In Odd We Trust”. Dean Koontz came up with that name, and he’s also writing a fourth “Odd Thomas” novel, to come out just before this graphic novel I’m working on. Yes, Dean Koontz’s most successful trilogy of books is no longer a trilogy.

I promised long ago to write a lengthy description of the whole Dean Koontz-deal I’m working on, but I haven’t done it yet. It’s because up until the end of October, Dean was busy working on his novel(s) and didn’t have time to approve the last chapter script. Now that the entire script has been approved, I can finally tell you who did what part of the work. But I’ll save that for the big “Odd Thomas” post, which unfortunately is only coming out after volume 3 of “The Dreaming” in December.

 

The Dreaming: Yes, volume 3 is now coming out in December and not November. There’s a very good reason for the 1 month delay – the folks at TOKYOPOP had something to insert in the back and it needed time to get approved. As for what’s being inserted in the back of “The Dreaming” volume 3 – it’s a SECRET (though lord knows, I’ve blabbed it to enough people already. Whoops). Anyway, I haven’t yet posted up the chapter breaks, so here they are.

 

The Dreaming - Chapter 15

 

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The Dreaming - Chapter 16

 

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The Dreaming - Chapter 17

 

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The Dreaming - Chapter 18

 

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The Dreaming - Chapter 19

 

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The Dreaming - Chapter 20

 

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The Dreaming - Chapter 21

The Dreaming: Long Time No Update

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The Dreaming v3: Is finished. It’s 182 pages. It is OVER. The “The Dreaming” series has concluded.

It will be out in November 2007. I actually finished nearly all of book3 a while ago, but couldn’t be bothered to post it up since I was also working on “Odd Thomas”. It’s hell working on 2 books at the same time – now that the bulk of “The Dreaming” v3 is done, I’ve got a bunch of minor stuff I need to finish on it, namely the chapter illustrations and odds and ends (like part 3 of the Haunted Linen Cupboard series). Yeah, I’m dragging my feet on this, though luckily the due date is August the 23rd, so there’s plenty of time. It even took me a whole month to finish the cover, which is down below.

 

The Dreaming 3 - cover

After 2 covers, I finally figured out how to do a glowing window properly.

 

Odd Thomas: After that blabber about the last book in “The Dreaming” series, I get to talk about “Odd Thomas”. I totally forgot to post this up, but Allen Klingelhoets did an interview with me here which has some “Odd Thomas” information in it (Thankyou, Allen). I’ll be posting up a longer description of my work on “Odd Thomas” and how I came onto this project in August.

So far, I can’t show any art that’s not been approved, but there’s no hurry, because the book is scheduled to be launched mid-2008. So far, the first 2 chapters (of 7) is close to being finished, and the script is complete, currently being copy-editted. That’s about it for this chunk of news.

 

The Legend of Zelda: An 8-page doujinshi that is part of Life Meter 2, a video-gaming comics anthology. If you’ve ever wanted to see videogame characters in comic form, this is your anthology. This doujinshi was drawn specifically for this book, so this is the only chance you’ll have to see this “Princess Zelda” story in print. I’ll put it online later on… though only perhaps MUCH later on, when the anthology is sold out.

 
Princess Zelda