Introducing the Action Cats!

So this one time I co-wrote a comic book script, and my co-author Adam P. Knave enlisted artist Eamon Dougherty to illustrate it, and Monkeybrain Comics decided that they wanted to publish it, and so this is a thing that exists:

That's a relatively short sentence, and it's a relatively short comic, but the creative process was enormously long. I wrote a bit about it, in a convoluted way, back in my February 2010 post "the writing process as it relates to interdimensional kittens and moneyhats".

I love this book, and I'm so pleased (and a little bemused) that it's a real digital thing now. It's about a team of cats (yep, just regular ol' cats) who sometimes save the world.

I'm pretty sure Adam & I came up with the idea while discussing this Consumerism Wow post on the phone. (tl;dr shortcut: Scroll to Thingy #9.) (Also, hey look, I accidentally predicted nyancat in that post. Huh.)

Action Cats is an all-ages appropriate, 23-page one-shot.* If you'd like to read it, it's just $0.99 on ComiXology. Who kindly invited us to be on the ComiXologist podcast the week that the book premiered.

We've gotten lovely reviews from Tatiana Christian at Comics Crux and Brad Pike at Thought Catalog (who forgot I exist but wrote such nice things that I like him anyway), plus, as of today, 45 excellent humans on ComiXology. Note to all y'all: Thanks so much to every single one of you for reading -- and especially for enjoying!

If you're not among them but you enjoy comics (or cats, or jetpack shenanigans), give it a chance?


*FOR NOW.

consumerism wow: the further misadventures of Mitty Matt

In a completely failed attempt to do a double-super Consumerism WOW holidextravaganza, Adam and I have posted dual (dueling?) January episodes! The followup to my post has been up for a whole week and I'm a bad consumer-friend is up on Adam's blog! Here's a preview:


Thing #1


Lauren: You are teaching your cat to speak and read English with help from a kitty that she’ll identify with! ….Adam, this is a very bad idea.

Adam: No, it’s a great idea! Then she can stop just mindlessly whining and actually communicate her wants and needs and… all right perhaps this will end badly. But I must try. For science!


Thing #3


Lauren: Is – is this why you’re teaching your cat how to read? You did not tell me that kitty had to get an eye patch.

Adam: Kitty does not need an eye patch, I would never let my cat be harmed like that! No this is for, uhm, my good friend… Mitty. Mitty Matt. He, uhm, was walking around, pacing really, while I was doing experiments and now he needs an eye patch. Mitty Matt. Who already speaks English and can read because he is human and not a cat.


Click through to Adam's blog to read the rest! I can very nearly promise that no cats were harmed in the writing of this episode. It's likely that at least one was severely annoyed, and that a dog who was raised in the wild by cats felt slightly neglected for having not been mentioned again, but c'est la vie d'un chien instruit dans le sauvage par des chats. (I got that translation from babelfish. I don't know any French that isn't food & cooking vocabulary. I hope I haven't just inadvertently called anyone's grandmother a transitive sausage or something.)

And hey, the book featured as Thing #1 is no longer available in print, but it's being offered as a digital download for only 2 American dollars! Friends, this is the future of the publishing industry we're looking at right here.

alas, poor Burrito

Many of you who read Burrito Blade, the webcomic drawn by Renato Pastor that I've been editing for and sometimes co-writing with Adam P. Knave for the past year or so, have probably already heard the news: we're not going to be able to continue doing the comic anymore. It feels sad and strange for us to cut our readers off in the middle of a storyline, so we're working on getting the rest of the story out of Adam's head and onto a computer, and we should start posting those abridged storybits at BurritoBlade.com next week.

Working on BB has been an adventure for all of us -- it was the first epic, episodic, ongoing project that any of us had taken part in. I browse through the archives and can see all three of us growing, stretching, and growing again in loops of ever-increasing awesomancy. The story morphed along with us, and our own characters surprised us. I think that in some ways, Burrito Blade outgrew us. I wish I could hit the reset button and start the whole project over again with the experience and confidence that I've gained from working on it -- I feel like I could do it such better justice now.

There'll be new rad projects to bend those skills to, but I'll miss Burrito Blade. Here's sending all the soft tortilla-wrapped thanks in the world to Adam and Renato for having me on the project, with a spicy side of gratitude to Maria and D. J. for having our backs.

And hey, thank you, reader, for making room for our story in your life. I hope we'll be able to give you a new one to fill the gap we're leaving, and soon.

review: Dead Men's Boots

Just finished Dead Men's Boots, which is the third book in Mike Carey's Felix Castor series, which is turning out to be an upstanding addition to the supernatural noir thriller trend. I was a little dubious about the first book, The Devil You Know -- although I'd enjoyed most of Carey's run of Hellblazer, upon discovering that he'd written a novel set in London about a hard-boiled blue-collar magician-for-hire who hailed from Liverpool, wore a trenchcoat, chain smoked, had a tragic history of getting his friends well and truly fucked, was so rakish that he still got along well with The Ladies despite maybe not laundering his clothes ever, and was not supposed to be John Constantine, well. Like I said, dubious.

It turned out that I enjoy portrayals of John Constantine so much (he's my inappropriate comic book boyfriend) that I don't mind when he's not called John Constantine. Castor is everything you want in an antihero -- cocky and fallible, the sort of too-clever-for-his-own-good that gets him both into trouble and out of it again. And Carey's non-Hellblazer-related, alternate-reality setting of a modern world in which the undead are widely rising and exorcists are part of the workforce struck me as deliciously uncomfortable and unpleasant. (I think that I like supernatural noir so much because it's so unpleasant. It's a sort of escapism in which you get to set down the book and think, "Well, sure my life sucks, but I haven't had any extensive bodily damage, death threats, or demon uprisings to cope with today. Win!")

I found the first two books (with Vicious Circle following The Devil You Know) fun but a bit clumsy, as though Carey hadn't quite gained his novel-legs yet. Dead Men's Boots is better (oh I didn't mean for this to be a pun) executed. The plotline has more frays but a tighter wind -- it kept me guessing but drew everything in neatly (if messily, entrails-wise) at the end. The sex & violence are more purposeful -- sleaze and shock value are important elements in noir, but I didn't find those elements to be exploitive in Dead Men's Boots. (That is, the violence is graphic but not lovingly detailed, and I think Castor, as the first-person narrator, has grown up a bit since the first book and become more self-aware about sex & sexuality. Importantly for sometimes-angry-feminist-me, Carey portrays the male and female rapes that occur as violent acts rather than sexual ones.) And the characters in the book, both men and women, are more sympathetic and whole. The language in Dead Men's Boots is well-wrought, intelligent, extensively British (kudos to the US publisher for not noticeably Americanizing Castor's vocabulary), and dense with pop culture references both modern and classic, literary and musical, dorky and mainstream. It's campy and silly, but it does what it sets out to do -- entertain, darkly -- very well.

What I'm really hoping is that someone turns Dead Men's Boots into a film or premium cable series -- as dark, sexy, funny, and thrilling as it is, it seems made for motion picture. With the right person working the musical score (Castor's method of doing magic constitutes playing a tin whistle), a creature/effects department with the requisite amount of latex and unwillingness to pull punches, and a lead actor who is in no way Keanu Reeves, it could be glorious.

If you're an unsqueamish fan of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books or Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series but think you'd appreciate something a little bit chewier in the supernatural noir genre, you should pick up something from the Felix Castor series. Start at the beginning for maximum backstory or dive right into the third book -- Carey catches you up quick. Or try a volume of Hellblazer -- Original Sins is the beginning of the series, but my favorite bits are the ones written by Garth Ennis, starting with Dangerous Habits.

the writing process as it relates to interdimensional kittens and moneyhats

One terrific thing about knowing Adam P. Knave is that sometimes, during the course of normal conversation, perhaps after discussing ReBoot but before anyone brings up the business you're actually supposed to be talking about, some word or phrase will Happen. And it'll Happen in the way that it expands with incredible speed and mass, Universe-style, until it's a whole idea. And you'll bat this huge idea-thing back and forth with Adam like the interdimensional kittens that both of you are, and then drop it suddenly and pervasively and get down to the business at hand.

But that idea-thing will still be floating around out there, and Adam's way of reminding you of its continued existence involves contacting people who can draw, asking them if they'd like to work on a new comic book involving the idea-thing, and getting those people to say "yes". So, though a bit mystified about what's happening to your life, you'll find yourself writing and editing bits of comic book script in your spare time, and then using those bits along with Adam's to form a complete script, and then emailing the script to whatever agreeable drawing person he's found. And then, following the artist's recovery from rickets as appropriate, you'll receive mere sketches -- simple layouts -- from that artist, based on the script that you and Adam wrote, that will make you all at once (A) unspeakably excited about this project-thing, as you began to think of it while you were writing the script, and (B) unalterably certain that you're unable to say anything about to anyone yet because, really, it's still just an idea-thing, even if it has the mass and size and brain it needs to convince you it's a project-thing.

So all you can do is write obtuse and roundabout things regarding the creative process on your blog, and hope that soon, sooner than soon, the wonderful drawing person will send you & Adam whole complete pages that you'll be able to submit to a publisher who will say, "How terrific! I was just hoping that I would receive a comic book just like this! Fred, wasn't I just hoping that? Oh, don’t mind Fred, his iguana ate his neighbor's cat this morning and he's very distraught, even though the cat was a mean-spirited creature and absolutely deserved what it got, and Fred's neighbor has gone on record with the Times saying that she was going to have the cat put down tomorrow for biting her so repeatedly. Fred's just sensitive. But yes! Your comic book! Thank you for submitting it. I'm going to publish it and we shall make such fabulous amounts of money that we shall all pay off our debts and have enough cash left over to fold up and wear as hats! And so we will be loved and celebrated for not only our artistic endeavors, but also for our extremely sharp and modern moneyhats."

I'll tell you when I get that call.

While you're waiting, breath held or otherwise, you should maybe go read some comics and things by Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade, without whom I might not have thought to write about moneyhats.

consumerism wow: motivations

Another side effect of my trip to visit my family in upstate New York is that I have fallen hopelessly, tragically in love with Ojon's Hydrating Conditioner -- hopelessly because it smells wonderful (like musky vanilla, and the scent actually stays for at least a day) and leaves my hair & scalp neither greasy nor dry, and tragically because it costs way more than I'm willing to pay for a conditioner. Hair & skin care products occupy such a terrifyingly steep & slippery consumer slope. 'Cause. Sometimes expensive products work really well. But. I like not spending 22 bucks on a bottle of conditioner. But if I'm willing to spend 7 bucks on a bottle of conditioner, then why not 10? And if 10, why not 15, why not 20? After all, I'd drop that much on a round of drinks any night, and those drinks last significantly less long than a bottle of conditioner would.

This is why I'm not allowed to go into Sephora.

This is also (partially) why I've been thinking lately about how I assign value to things. I mean, consumable things: food, experiences, media, beauty products, wearables. I blanch at the idea of spending more than $20 on a piece of clothing, unless it's something nice that I can wear to the office (where I care much more than usual about how I look) -- but I'll gladly pick up the $40 check for a nice dinner with a close friend. I won't buy an $8 paperback book (~400 pages) if I don't have a coupon or can't find it cheaper used -- but I'll buy $15 worth of comic books I've never heard of (~70 pages) because they look weird and funny. I'll order a $12 cocktail but search out the cheapest entrée on the menu. Sometimes I won't buy an entire album on mp3 for $10 because I can pick & choose the songs that immediately strike me as likable for only $7 (even if I enjoy the artist and know full well that I feel differently about songs once I've warmed up to them), but I'll order 5 samples of perfumes I've never smelled for $3.50 apiece.

Do you do things like this? Surely I can't be the only mercurial spender out there.

The conclusion I've come to is that what I'm really shopping for isn't the product, but the experience of that product. Of appearing responsible and capable to my coworkers and bosses. Of sharing conversation and plates of good food and not having to clean up afterwards. Of feeling like I'm cultured and supportive of independent artists. Of drinking something I'd never conceive of on my own. Of finding out exactly what roses mingled with graveyard dirt smells like when applied to my skin.

Why I value these experiences more than others I'm not sure. It's probably one of those highly individual, annoyingly unsaleable, unique-snowflakey things that drives advertisers to drink. Although it's true that somewhere in my motivation to purchase these things and experiences lies the concept that they'll make me more attractive/loved/happy, my personal idea (anyone's personal idea) of what is is to be attractive/loved/happy is necessarily strange, even to myself. But because self-awareness is awesome, I'm working on sussing out the particulars. I'll let you all know how that goes. I just hope you'll forgive me for not having the softest, flowingest, musky vanilla-scentedest hair while I'm at it.

good fortune

If you're sitting around, either waiting to go out or settling in for the evening, and had the thought cross your mind that really, you'd like to do a bit more tax-deductible donating before the close of the year, then this is a fortuitous Internet meeting, friend!

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is one of my favorite organizations to toss digital monies at, firstly because they help protect the rights of adults to read and own works of literature and art as such they choose, and secondly because they offer really worthwhile gifts and merchandise. (If you're still looking for a few belated holiday gifts for folks of the geek persuasion, they're a perfect place to look -- they've got lots of signed editions of terrific comics and novels, in addition to artwork and sundry perfumes, t-shirts, and etc.) So, yes, you should check out the CBLDF store.

Child's Play, the gamers' charity set up by the kids from Penny Arcade, allows you to send toys, books, movies, and games directly to any of several dozen children's hospitals around the world through Amazon.com. Christmas is past, but sick kids can still use the entertainment. You can also donate directly to the organization through Paypal -- they've always got administrative costs to consider.

Locally, the Atlanta Community Food Bank helps a lot of people have brighter holidays -- and happier, healthier new years. If, like me, you find yourself with more desire to give than actual dollars, you can always sign up to volunteer -- or donate just a few dollars.



Some terrible things have happened this year, and I can't say I won't be a little glad to see it go. But my family is deeply possessed of good humor, my friends are magnificent bastards, and a man who delights me every day loves me. I am so grateful for my good fortune. It's five hours to 2010 -- I wish you all a lovely end to the year, an even better beginning to the new one, and all the best fortune throughout!

wordbits & editbobs

Just a quick bit of news about Stays Crunchy, which is that book I edited for Adam P. Knave: Adam's publisher, Creative Guy, is running a contest to thank people for purchasing the book! Just take a picture of yourself, your cat, your photogenic friend, etc. holding a copy of Stays Crunchy in Milk, and post a link to it as a comment on this post of Adam's before December 18th. On the 18th, they'll randomly draw an entrant to win the complete series of Farscape on DVD. Because Farscape was awesome, and you are probably also awesome, and awesome things belong together. (If you haven't purchased a copy of the book yet, there should still be time to allow for shipping & handling! And it'd make a good gift for the 80's-pop-culture addict in your life. It's available on Amazon.)

In other edity news, I'm helping Adam and one D. J. Kirkbride with a particularly exciting comic pitch, which is particularly exciting because it involves pirates and other stuff that I'm not allowed to talk about. (Stuff I'm not allowed to talk about is often the most exciting kind of stuff.) I'll let you in on it as soon as I'm able.

Also, in holy-whoa-sometimes-Lauren-reads-things-for-fun-that-aren't-comics news, I'm finally reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and it's just ridiculously charming. If you ever thought that snarky 19th century British tea-party literature would be much improved by elements of urban fantasy, this book proves your whimsy to be absolutely correct.

Neil Gaiman coming to Decatur!

My favorite children's-and-more bookshop in my favorite part of the greater Atlanta area has lured one of my favorite authors into doing a reading and signing here in town! More specifically, Neil Gaiman is coming to Presser Hall at Agnes Scott College in Decatur on Monday, December 14th at 6:00 pm thanks to Little Shop of Stories and its excellent staff, who set up such a fabulous Graveyard Book-themed Halloween party that Neil chose them as a co-winner of his presence.

You can read full details about how to get in on this fabulous fan opportunity here on the Little Shop blog, but in summary: The reading/signing is ticketed, and although the tickets are free, you have to pick them up either A) from Little Shop of Stories today, i.e., Monday, November 30th, before 8:00 pm, or B) via telephone or at Little Shop starting on Monday, December 7th, and ending whenever they run out of tickets.

Knowing Neil Gaiman fans (we're not all exactly rabid, but oh crap is this a picture of me dressed up as one of his characters? Hell, nevermind, we're all crazy), tickets will probably run out. For general reference, I went during lunch today to pick up mine, and received ticket number 318 of X, where X is a number which hopefully my query to the store will produce.

Gaiman has a dreamy terrific reading voice (check out his audiobook of Coraline for evidence), and by all accounts is a pleasure at readings and signings. And is gonna be signing any one item, or any two items provided that one of them is a book of his purchased from Little Shop (with the receipt). So if you like mythology, stories about stories, dry-yet-springy British senses of humor, Neil's blog, and/or having a lot of fun in a good clean literary sort of way, I recommend that you get yourself a ticket and come on out. Hope I'll see you there, Atlanta-and-the-surrounding-area!

The Blood That Bonds

Back when I was just a wee little edit-monkey, fresh out of the English department of the University of Florida, I filled my free time (i.e., the time during which I wasn't glued to Monster.com, dancing at Market Street Pub's free-cover 80's night, or playing some serious Halo 1) with lots of odd editing jobs. I proofread a few novels, including both modern and historical Mormon-slanted romances, pro bono for a vanity press. I worked a couple grammatical kinks out of a comic book or two for my friends the Killer Robots, who were collaborating with (omfg) Bob Burden in a Flaming Carrot crossover at the time, in exchange for a few bucks, a few drinks, and a free ticket to Dragon*Con. But Christopher Buecheler was the first author who actually paid me to proof an actual novel.

It involved vampires and hookers and action and lurve, and I cared for it like it was my own strange little wordbaby. Christopher and I fell out of touch after I worked on the first part of the story -- he was still writing the second part, and we both became busy with our day jobs.

Flash forward 5 years -- past the stints I worked handling nutrition textbook manuscripts, proofreading gay male erotica written by and for women, editing a novel about cartoon cereal mascots, and copyediting all the rheumatology ever -- to about a month ago, which is when I received an e-mail out of the great #0000FF yonder from one Christopher Buecheler. He's launched that first book I worked on, The Blood That Bonds, online, and is currently offering it as a free download in a number of a formats, hoping to manifest the reader and maybe-hopefully-even publisher interest that the story deserves.

He's also convinced Garry Brown to do a lot of really gorgeous artwork for the story & characters.

The Blood That Bonds is an urban horror-ish title along the lines of the Christopher Pike and R. L. Stine novels I loved when I was in high school, and still indulge in via things like Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series and Mike Carey's Felix Castor books -- it's supernatural, sexy, violent, and filled with equal parts shock value and earnest emotion. If you or a teenager you know thought you might've enjoyed Twilight if all the vampires hadn't had so much sand in their vaginas, you should give The Blood That Bonds a go. It contains 99% less vampiral vagina sand, guaranteed. And for the low, low price of zero American dollars, it's worth at least a download & taste test, right? Right.

supermonkey

Over Labor Day weekend, I got turned into a superhero! No, not at Dragon*Con, at Burrito Blade! Click through to the comic to see the full-sized image.



(Dragon*Con was rad, though. It's the best people watching ever, and you should go next year.)

females read press releases and they're pissed

Pehaps you do not read the blog Girls Read Comics And They're Pissed. It's about the unintentional hilarity to be found regarding women in comic books and comics-related media, and it's generally one of my favorite Intarweb things, and I've missed it bunches over the past few months while its writer, Karen Healey, has been busy doing 3-dimensional things. And okay, if feminist-geared dorkitude isn't your thang, that's chill, but dudes seriously this press release from Marvel about their upcoming merch line for women females is the most unintentionally most-funny thing I've read since the Twilight series. And Karen's post about it is, as always, rad. I've got two things to add:

A) I edit for a medical journal, and it's actually a common style point for med journals to never use the words "female" or "male" to refer to human beings, unless it's part of a multiword descriptor that would be awkward with less dehumanizing words like "women" and "men". 'Cause it's the 21st century and we're trying to encourage the medical industry to think of patients as people, not charts or numbers. I mean. I guess I'm glad that Marvel used "females" and not like "ALL TEH LADIEZ" or something, but. Perhaps the marketing dude is Ferengi and merely using the language that comes naturally to him?

B) The phrase "female product"? Makes me think that Marvel is gonna be selling like tampons with Spider-Man on them:

"SUPER Heroes, SUPER Absorbancy!"

"Fight LEAKS And ODOR Like You Have A Tragic Origin Story In Which They Killed Your Parents!"

"Scott Summers: Best For Heavy Flow Days!"?