Please Say It! The protest and advocacy

As I described in recent posts, my latest project has emerged due to three factors: 

1. producing basic page art quickly using Procreate; 
   
2. the development of a YA story at Oxford; 
3. my interest in protest and advocacy in this gay moment. 

You can scroll back to refresh your memory about the art and the story. But, lastly:

The protest and advocacy

To prepare for summer school at Oxford, I reviewed a decade worth of sketchbooks, looking for ideas I still liked but had never developed. I was prepared for any assignment thrown my way! One of the "fresher" ideas I has stemmed from disturbing news.

A number of parental rights (aka "don't say gay") laws were popping up. I don't fully understand the rationale, but I do think the motivation is misguided at best. If you disagree, I will gladly sit down with you and explain my perspective. 

By the time I got back from Oxford, even more anti-LGBTQ+ stuff had gone down:

• the Nebraska student newspaper shut down over preferred pronouns
• the Christian school in Florida asked its LGBTQ+ students to leave
• the town in Michigan that voted to defund its town library as the library refused to drop three LGBTQ+ themed graphic novels

Whatever the motivation, the message to LGBTQ+ youth is clear: you're not wanted. You're not welcome. At least, I'm sure that is what is felt.

There is nothing new or special about Please Say It! It's simply a quiet story to add another positive narrative to the mix. It's not all sweetness and apple pie, of course, a good story has conflict! To me, it was important to launch it quickly, and for free. A story about the past for the right now. Content with a message, for younger readers who may not have the means to pay. It's not perfect, just my way of offering some
hope and encouragement.

I hope you stick with the story and support it if you can.

Please Say It! the story

Poison Press-style cover for the series

I'm still a little surprised this has come together the way it has!

The project sits at the confluence of three factors: 

1. producing basic page art quickly using Procreate; 
2. the development of a YA story at Oxford; 
3. my interest in protest and advocacy in this gay moment. 

I've discussed learning Procreate in a recent post, so you can scroll back for that leg of this tripod. So, secondly:

The story

To prepare for summer school at Oxford, I flipped through a dozen years of sketchbooks, looking for old ideas I still liked, but had not developed. And, I brainstormed new ideas. For my YA class, I settled on what is now titled Please Say It!

Our primary assignment was to generate the first 1,000 words of a YA novel. To do that, you kind of had to know where your story was going. So I mapped out the story outline first--based on common themes and pacing of realism-based YA (as opposed to fantasy-based)--in a modified three-act structure:

In class, our instructor shared with us the common YA "template" which more or less followed along a classic three-act structure, in 13-ish steps. This translated well to the standard 26-chapter format of Webtoon. So I'll stick with the Webtoon format, but it translates back to the template, and back to the three-act structure.

This gave my first 1,000 words more heft and purpose. My instructor (Carnegie Medal short-lister Julie Hearn) praised my theme, pacing, action, and dialogue. And the zazz, which a major goal of mine and my friend-from-Oxford Daribha's. What Julie advised needed the most work (and kept me from first class marks) was my "mechanics of language." Fortunately for me, narration mechanics is less important in comics than the things she thought I did well! 

So there, I was confident that I could complete this story as a YA story for teenagers, which was important to me for reasons of protest and advocacy. 

I'll speak to that in my next post.

For now, please check out the comic!--the first chapter is live at Webtoon and Tapas, with exclusive content at Patreon.

Oxford Bound

I've had a solidly productive month--after receiving input from my advisers, I moved my thesis project to version 2, and just turned it in for a final pass. That's a huge relief, for it to be so far along. Thesis completion, and taking the Oxford Summer Program in creative writing (which counts as my elective) are the last two things for me to do in order to graduate at the end of Fall term.

Also on the plate was a good amount of pre-reading for Oxford, with good progress there. Since the summer program in creative writing had been cancelled the past two summers due to Covid, I've been cautiously excited for this summer. Travel issues aside, it's happening! 

I will be in two modules, Young Adult Fiction, and Scriptwriting. We're instructed to bring a few ideas to work on for each module, and I am excited to move a few things forward within the context of the program. It's bound to be better as a result! Win, win, win.

See you in a month.

Procreate and Project Progress

I've made a lot of progress since my last post! At that time, I was about to draw pages 6-10 all digital. Not only did I do that, but I drew pages 11-25.Again, thanks to Monica who gave me the tone and pattern brushes she loves to use. They are really fun!

Basic color work for the upcoming project.

For this project, I think I have my drawing style "down" and working well in Procreate. So, I was happy to have (essentially) Act I drawn, so I ended up lettering it as well, so I could have the PDF as reference while I'm at Oxford next month.

But since I was still waiting for feedback on my thesis draft from my second and third readers, I cracked open Procreate again again and started practicing coloring. I flatted pages 1-25 while I determined my color style with the help of Monica and Christophe. Then I finished colors.

Though I received feedback from my second reader early, still waiting on the third reader. So I tackled the story's preface. I had written a 5-page story, and pencilled and inked 3 pages of it, back in 2011 for a publisher. But the project fell through before I finished it. With some minor edits, I decided it will work nicely as the preface to this new project. I colored said three pages, and drew and colored from scratch on Procreate the other two. 

Love the tone and pattern brushes.

So basically, I exceeded my pre-Oxford goals:

• Draft the OGN chapter breakdowns--DONE
• Write chapters one through three--DONE--PLUS four, five, and the preface
  
• Draw chapters one through three--DONE--PLUS four, five, and the preface

PLUS--colored preface, chapters one through five.

PLUS--lettered preface, chapters one through five.

Which sets me up nicely to meet my during-Oxford goals:

• Edit OGN chapter breakdowns
• Write short story version
• Edit chapters one through five of the comic if needed
• Write more comic chapters

But for now, this amazingly fun (for me) experiment will be shelved as I turn back to my thesis for the next month. Then it's off to Oxford.
 

Too much, too soon, too fast--playing with Procreate on iPad

Page one inks by hand

Converging threads here, bear with me!

For grad school, I am attending the Oxford Summer Program in creative writing. Excited! I am in two modules: scriptwriting, and YA writing. To prepare for both modules, I have been pulling together an idea bank and brainstorming.

For the YA module, I hope to develop a particular idea I've had (more on that later!). Though I'll likely work on it in prose form at Oxford, I'm more likely to continue the project as a comic. Hence, I've started writing out a simple comic script, for:

1. It's helpful to get my mind in the space of the project.
2. It's not likely to interfere with the Oxford version (ie I won't get too far along).
3. I have time to draw now.
4. I intend to use the project to convert to full digital (pencils, inks, colors).
5. I have time to learn something new (full digital), and should in advance of Oxford.
   

And here we are, the real point of the post! I am playing with Procreate on one of my neighbor's six iPad Pros with the goal to adapt to full digital. I am concurrently practicing sketching from scratch, and inking those sketches, but also inking pencils from paper.

For the project in question, I penciled the five pages of the first chapter, and took a pic of the blue line roughs. I've inked them both by hand, and in Procreate. This is both helping me get back in drawing shape, improve my inking faster in Procreate, and compare the two methods.

I was really frustrated at first:

1. 

   Page one digital inks
   

   It's a new project with new characters that I am not used to yet.
2. I decided to draw at a slightly smaller scale (9x12 Bristol rather than 11x17), which wasn't going well, oddly. I've drawn some really great dense pages on 9x12 Bristol, from Arche-Lady stories to "I Like Mozart" and ""On the Roman Road." But here, wasn't going so well!
3. Since I plan to post this as a web comic, getting my head around sizing of the font and how much room I should be leaving for balloons was throwing me off.
4. One of my goals is to produce pages faster. Fine, but that broke me. Pages were turning out badly, so I took my foot off the gas for this goal. I know the more I draw, the faster I get... so I decided this one will happen naturally, or, I can focus on it later, when I am used to the characters, and used to Procreate.
   

In some ways, I prefer paper. Likely, because it's what I am used to. However, there are elements of digital that are unbeatable, such as undo and no more smudges. There are some things that I think should be really, really simple that I haven't figured out how to do yet. Such as drawing a straight line, like with a ruler, and creating a panel border box. Should be a no brainer, right? I'll watch a youtube tutorial at some point, but I have enough to keep me busy for now.

Page one pencils, if you can see.

At some point, I'll tackle coloring. But to start, I'll be drawing the next chapter, pages 6-10 all digital. I'm excited!

Special thanks to Pier (who was generous enough to loan me his iPad and give me an intro tutorial), and Monica (who has endured my nagging questions about converting to full digital pros and cons). 

If all goes well, here's what will happen pre-Oxford:

• Draft the OGN chapter breakdowns--DONE
• Write chapters one through three--(ch. one is done)
  
• Draw chapters one through three--(ch. one is one)

 During-Oxford:

• Edit OGN chapter breakdowns
• Write short story version
• Edit chapters one through three of the comic if needed
• Write more comic chapters

After the summer program, fingers crossed, I'll continue drawing and start posting. I'm excited to convert to digital, excited to work on this series, and excited to workshop it at Oxford. Making it better is maybe 95% of my goal, and saying "this was workshopped at Oxford" is admittedly 5%. OK that I admit that?

 

 

Genesis of "Liebestrasse" (available June 2022!)

 This has been a very long time coming, and I couldn't be more pleased with this news. Excepting of course, we never had the history to draw from.

The project first started as I toured the Theresienstadt and Auschwitz camps. As the Nazi's attempt to show the world how well they were treating their ghetto inhabitants, Theresienstadt had detailed records that made their way to the museum their today. Reading the stories of the inhabitants, it was easy to read between some lines, as to who there was queer.

Sitting on a bench in Kraków's Planty, I began imaging how normal life must have been like, and one moment later, everything on its head. I imagined what my life might have been like, and the lives of the men whose stories were in the museum. And the first sketches made their way into my sketchbook.

Years later, after Greg Lockard and I had successfully collaborated on several short stories ("Trying Something New," "RE-Infinity," "A Sincere Lack of Manners and Subtlety," and "Star Players") I wanted ask Greg to work with me on the short story version of "Liebestraße" for my collection of romance stories On the Romance Road. All I had were a few sketches and idea for the opening scene (a bait and switch of a normal life upended). Greg and I brainstormed the two main characters, the feasibility of their meeting, and he developed the story. He enlisted the coloring talents of Hector Barros, and we completed the story in 14 pages.

The story was translated to French for the magazine La Revue de LGBT BD and Greg made a mini comic in English for convention sales... and quickly  the folks at ComiXology Originals hired us to expand the short story into a full original graphic novel.

Greg's research and care was a real inspiration for me, both in my drawing of Liebestrasse as well as forging my own goals as a writer as I entered graduate school. 

The book was completed, debuted at Thought Bubble late 2019 as a digital-first publication, and was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic as well as for a Tripwire Award for Best Graphic Novel. I don't recall the original print plan (thank you Covid brain!) but I am proud to share with you that it will be available from Dark Horse in June 2022. 

And, PS, I took liberal inspiration from an old movie poster of the 1940 Hitchcock version of Rebecca to make this unofficial promo graphic!

Star Players

High on my list soon after "First Date, Last Date" was a story penned by Greg Lockard, titled "Star Players." It's a sweet story about rival soccer players who met at a summer camp.

I was thrilled when Monica Gallagher agreed to ink my pencils for the story, and Chris Beckett agreed to color it.

The down side of the whole affair was some miscommunication that led to the story not completed until 2020. But it's released as a single and as part of On the Romance Road, so now harm no foul I guess.

About this time, I also finished all my art tasks for Baby Makes Three. That too wasn't published until 2021, due to time in Matt's coloring queue. But the first half of 2018 was a productive golden moment for me. 

 

First date, last date

 

At this point in 2018, I was going gangbusters with gay romance short stories, having amassed shorties I wrote and drew ("Quickies," "I Like Mozart," "Every Journey..."), or drew from others' scripts ("Liebestraße," "Cross Check," "The Most Incredible Magic"). I intended to combine these new stories with the best of my romance shorties from past anthologies.

One story haunted me. Originally posted to the web series Young Bottoms in Love was a tattooed tale I drew, as written by another author. The story hadn't turned out the way either of us wanted it to back in 2003. Yet, I liked the vintage art.

Fifteen years later, I turned to a frequent collaborator, MJ Isola, and asked he write a new story to the original art (an exercise he'd done before at my request). Rules were simple: keep as much of the art as possible, but feel free to cut panels, re-arrange, or add up to four pages of new material to make it work.

The end result fell right in line... I think he added three pages plus two panels, and I added a splash page (thumbnail here). The original art focuses on a couple's first date; and two new end pages are a flash-forward fifteen years, revealing it had been their last first date, as they'd remained a couple since.

Wizards, Knights, Dragons

 

I don't recall the exact timing, but by the time we were in Cardiff, I was in short story mode for what was published as On the Romance Road. While there, I drew several pages of "Every Journey Begins with the First Step" which I had scripted a few weeks prior.

And, a few days prior, at Thought Bubble, Timothy Winchester had agreed to draft a script for the collection. I find him hilarious, so I was a little surprised when he came up with his wizard story. Since In the spirit of new challenges, I embraced it!

The first drawing was done in Cardiff, as was the dragon sketch, before Timothy sent me the script. The other two are in preparation to draw the story. Though I finished in 2017, the pages kept getting pushed to the bottom of Matt's coloring pile as (1) I kept sending him more projects and (2) the pages were really challenging to color... very dense art for me.

But you can read the finished story on comiXology!

 

 

Draft scripts

 Here's the start of "Every Journey..." published in On the Romance Road on comiXology. Sketches, thumbnails of the first page, and a lot of the script is there. Yes, when I write for myself, this is usually what the script looks like! Or used to, before I entered grad school and had to start adhering to some standards. Admittedly, it's much easier to edit from a Word doc or Final Draft than it is this mess!

Love is the Reason

I'm very excited about my latest book, “Love is the Reason” which hits stores any moment now. The story stems from an idea I had in 2004 focusing on darker romantic tales, and I spent a lot of time planning, outlining, editing, and writing it. The overlapping stories of Aubrey, Michael, Tighe and Chase allowed for foreshadowing, and incorporated recurring motifs. While I was always true to the outline, I also let the story shift organically, as characters developed. I wrote the story in as a newspaper serial; those pages had to be a bit dense to bring readers back each week (Figure 1). As a counter balance, I planned for “mood building” and “character development” moments that would be book exclusive pages, including some cinematic moments (Figure 2). Stylistically, each of the main characters was giving a slightly different “theme,” with Aubrey’s heavy blacks to Michael’s ’60s background patterns to Tighe’s zip-a-tone to Chase’s angular grays. From the start, Aubrey is set up as a dodgey character. But then I began interjecting dark and somewhat disturbing panels to tease the reader: is this foreshadowing? a flashback? a glimpse into Aubrey’s mind? (Figures 3 and 4). I even used a metaphor!—representing the fragile nature of love and relationships to blowing bubbles (Figure 5). As crazy as it may sound to some people, this is the first time I’ve ever felt like an artist. I admit I’ve told some entertaining stories in the past, but I’ve never put so much care into a project, utilizing storytelling tools in a thoughtful way. Reaction to the book so far has been positive, which really makes the last 18 months really worth it.

teiknimyndasöguhöfundur

Xavier had made his way back to Paris before returning to Lyon, and we met for breakfast before I left Paris. I then made my way to CDG airport, and flew to Reykjavík. The plane was chock-full of gay Icelanders who had been weekending in Paris. And, while my sketch does her no justice, I saw the most beautiful flight attendant I have ever seen. But, Iceland had so many beautiful people, perhaps she was considered a dog or something, I don't know. I checked into my lodgings, grabbed some food, and went on to Samtökin ’78, where I gave a presentation about gay comics. Samtökin ’78 is the LGBT community center in Reykjavík. Its director, Hrafnkell, assured me I had a nice turnout for a snowy Monday night in Reykjavík. I was very happy with the crowd and the discussion! Afterward, I went out for dessert with a few of the attendees, and had a very nice talk about Iceland, the US, politics, and Eurovision. Oh—"teiknimyndasöguhöfundur" translates to "comic book artist."

recontrer l'artiste

Back to Paris for my book signing and city-style merriment. Xavier escorted me to the train station, and was freaking out a bit to validate my ticket as the train arrived. I was confused, as I did not validate my ticket TO Angoulême. He explained how I should have. I guess the train was too crowded, but usually unvalidated passengers are ejected. Oopsie. I got back to Antoine's place, showered, then back into the city center in time for my signing at Blue Book Paris. I didn't have a huge turnout, but was not my smallest turnout, so that was good. And, it was fun!

Howdy, Neighbor

My upstairs neighbor—Mikhail from Russia—who I used to find very hot. Probably because the first 4 times I spoke to him, he was wearing his trademark tight long-sleeved red t-shirt with sleep pants. He's far less attractive in regular clothes, walking along the street with his girlfriend. November 2007.

les yeux bleus, les yeux verts

A fan favorite I sell @ comic conventions as a print. The green wash to the left represents the green in the guy on the right's eyes; the blue wash to the right represents the blue in the guy on the left's eyes; the blended middle represents their happy union. July 2007.