March Mildness
Hello hello!
I apologize it’s been a while since my last post. Things have been bonkers, and this is mostly a little journal post to check in and catch up.
I probably need to check in with my therapist about this, but I’ve been experiencing some absolutely wild, unchecked travel anxiety. I’ve traveled a ton in recent years, and they’ve been largely pleasant experiences (except with Air Canada, an outfit so bereft of any interest in itself that I’m astonished it exists). In the lead-up to Emerald City Comic Con, I wrapped up a major deadline and did convention prep. Once all my book work and administrative tasks were done, I got to laying out travel plans, and suddenly all the news about the FAA cuts started rolling in. I’m sure that had something to do with it. I never could sleep the night before a flight, but this time it was days of lying awake fretting about this normal thing I’ve done plenty of times before.
Emerald City Comic Con was a fun event. I hadn’t been since before the pandemic, in 2019, and the realization that it had been six years since I last attended absolutely bodied me. On the plus side, everything at my table was new to everyone passing by. I got to see some familiar faces and plenty of new ones. My old editor, Julia Patrick, from Chronicle Books stopped by to say hello! She’s now editing for Viz, which is amazing. The Viz folks have absolutely been killing it recently, with new offerings like Ru Xu’s Status Royale and Josh Tierney and Agroshka’s World Piece.
Outside of the actual convention, I was somehow invited to Karaoke three times, though I was only able to attend one. I made the most of it, and I did a pretty passionate rendition of “Won’t Say I’m in Love” as sung by Susan Egan performing as Megara in Disney’s Hercules. I also picked an Air Supply song at some point, which is a mistake, but the beautiful thing about karaoke is that you can make up for melodic fidelity with volume (and drunkenness), and if you pick a crowd favorite, everyone helps out and carries you. It’s wonderful. I’m so happy I went. I had never met one person in that karaoke room before that night, and I had a wonderful time with all of them.
In the event of any plane ride, I always have a suite of romantic comedies loaded up on my phone, and this time I watched You’ve Got Mail from Nora Ephron and Say Anything from Cameron Crowe. I love a low-stakes, easygoing slice-of-life rom-com so much. Angelica and the Bear Prince was written with You’ve Got Mail in the back of my mind, actually, so there’s a little bit of that in there. I’m meeting with my editor and agent in about a month and a half to discuss marketing and publicity for the book, and I’m eager to write about that experience for those of you who are curious about this. I’m nervous about it in a way I truly wasn’t yet fussed about for The Magic Fish. Man, I miss our old publicist, Nicole Valdez, who is off doing other amazing now.
My editor at Random House Graphic, Whitney Leopard, also casually encouraged me to pitch new projects to her, and I’m eager to do it. I’m thinking I want to return to my fairy tale roots and maybe pitch a straight-up fantasy project. I’ve been reading Lord Dunsany’s the King of Elfland’s Daughter alongside some essays by Jack Zipes to dig further into my fantasy roots, and I also have a gay romance I’d love to make into a comic as well, so I may end up pitching two things.
I’m currently finding my way back into reading comics with the Viz app! I’m obsessed with this series called The Children Nowadays by Kiriko Kubo. It feels a little bit like an extended newspaper strip, just full of simple but charmingly effective little drawings. I highly recommend it.
In other news, Lady Gaga’s new studio album, Mayhem, just came out, and I love it. I love a good pop record, and this returns to her europop-inflected dancefloor jam days in ways I really appreciate. I have had Vanish into You, How Bad Do U Want Me, and Blade of Grass on repeat for days.
In chicken news, the coop appears to be adjusting since poor Snooki’s death. Nelly and Snooki were very sweet together during Snooki’s decline, and Nelly, I’ve noticed, is unsure how to behave. She used to lean into Snooki for snuggles, and now I kind of see her leaning back into other things before realizing Snooki’s not there and moving away.
During ECCC, author and comic artist Eunnie, who made the delightful graphic novel If You’ll Have Me, came by and gifted me a lovely little drawing of Snooki and Nelly together, and I nearly burst into tears. Everything is wildly stressful and terrible right now, but this sort of thing always makes me feel a little better about being in the world.
With this feeling of being in charity with my fellows still beating strong in my chest, I went and ordered an edible arrangement for Chan Chau, who hauled all of my materials onto the convention floor the day before I landed in Seattle. Sometimes you just gotta pay it forward, cornily, and with a bouquet of candied fruits sliced in the shape of flowers.
As the weather starts warming into an honest-to-goodness spring, the hens have been giving us about two eggs a day, which has been so nice with the price of eggs being what they are. I love making myself a mug of egg drop soup (a little chicken broth, some diced green onions, a little sesame oil, and fresh eggs), and the girls are providing.
I’m recovering from some con crud at the moment (thankfully of a non-Covid variety, and a big thanks to everyone at ECCC who masked up with me), but I will be back to drawing comics again next week. I’ve taken a stronger editorial hand in shaping another author’s script this time, and I’ll tell you all about it next time you hear from me.
Thank you for reading! More soon.
