It was déjà vu all over again at New York Anime Festival 2009. After a year of gloomy news in the anime and manga industry, the mood among publishers seemed cautiously upbeat. Four of the five manga publishers at the convention announced new licenses and initiatives, but almost all the new projects relied on familiar creators or crossovers with other media.
My first job after college was as a copy editor, and even now, I manage to supplement my income with some copyediting jobs here and there. That’s the first full-disclosure part, and here’s the second: I by no means claim that this site is error-free. People make mistakes all the time, be they silly, embarrassing, or even unnoticeable (and sometimes those “mistakes” are not really errors at all—style decisions and differences in opinions can account for a lot of things that catch people’s eyes. For example, I prefer to use serial commas, but I have no problem splitting infinitives or ending a sentence with a preposition—this latter preference is one many would disagree with).
Just for the record: I first approached this blog for Graphic Novel Reporter with the philosophical stance that I would not use it as my private billboard. In fact, a few weeks back, I even passed up trumpeting my appearance at the Brooklyn Book Fair.
Well, didn't September just zip on by! Whoosh went those 30 days. The other day I was in a store and people were talking about getting ready for the holidays and I felt myself thinking..."noooo, not yet!" I was just beginning to think orange for Halloween.
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An inker with nearly two decades of experience in the job, Bob Almond officially began the
Inkwell Awards in January of 2008. It was a program that grew out of his column in
Sketch magazine (“Inkblots”) the previous year, and has been instrumental in bringing positive attention and recognition to what he calls “an oft-misunderstood and maligned art form.” Almond and the rest of the Inkwell team offer an annual award to show appreciation for the best inking work done in comics over the past year, and they also run a site that Almond describes as “a one-stop resource hub for ink art explanation and education consisting of tutorials, interviews, and features on inking, among other items. And we have an inker database in the works as well.”
In the small town of Stone Creek, a random encounter offers two lonely people a chance at happiness.
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The yuletide season in Lake Eden, Minnesota, guarantees a white Christmas, delectable holiday goodies from Hannah Swensen's bakery, The Cookie Jar --- and murder.
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Oct 1, 2009
In this interview with Kidsreads.com's Terry Miller Shannon, Angie Sage --- author of the Septimus Heap series --- explains what drew her to writing fantasy novels and discusses the real-life inspirations behind a few of the quirky animals featured in her books. She also talks about why she chose not to create the art for the series despite her background in illustration, ranks some of her books in terms of the difficulty she had writing them, and shares details about what's in store for her characters after SYREN.
On Wednesday evening I had the pleasure of seeing Jeannette Walls, the author of the mega-bestselling memoir The Glass Castle, talk about her new book, Half Broke Horses, which is just in stores this week. Before she spoke, I was invited backstage along with members of the Clinton Book Shop book club to meet her; the store was sponsoring the event. We all had read The Glass Castle and thus dropped into a conversation with Jeannette almost at mid-sentence. Each of us had different parts of the book that had resonated with us, and, though I knew none of these other women, I found myself chatting with them like we were old friends with our only bond being a book we all had read. As we shared our observations, I tried to imagine what it must be like for Jeannette to have moments like this all the time when people are talking about your work, which actually is your life.
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October 1, 2009, 186 voters
