Since I was little, I loved to write. I was always coming up with stories and, yes, even illustrating them. I wrote my first "novel" in a Marble composition book in middle school, and it was an awful bit of fan-fiction that had me and two friends in the Ronin Warrior team. I'm sure that this abomination is stored somewhere in the things that I left at my Mom's place when I moved down to college, waiting to come back and haunt me with the awfulness that was a 6th or 7th grade writer.
But, even though I've loved to write and draw my whole life, it was the drawing that I went to school for. Specifically, animation, because it combined my love of writing stories with my love of drawing. The novel that I just finished and that is being released in nine short days was originally going to be a script for an animated series that I was going to make (and I still would love to have it animated, too!), but since I didn't know how to write a cartoon script in late high school, I did what I already knew. I wrote a book, and I illustrated it.
Now, 10 years later, after having the story go through countless changes and switching from a bi-weekly chapter-at-a-time release on my website, I've stood up and said to the world, "I'm a professional writer! You should buy this novel!" Yet I've spent my life in fear of those that have studied writing and books academically, and it's time to confess.
I feel inferior to those who have a degree in English. I feel like, since the piece of paper that I have says "Fine Art" and not "English", that I shouldn't be trying to write professionally. I mean, didn't I discover while editing that I use far too many commas and adverbs? Didn't I discover that I often had "word flab" and had to figure out a less complicated way to say something? Didn't I overlook a bunch of things that my beta-reader pointed out that I should have thought of? Wouldn't an English Major have caught those things?
And this fear of those who have studied also stems from something more than irrational fear and feeling inadequate. Nearly every person I have known in my whole life that either graduated or spent some time being an English major and read my writing, hated it. Handed me stories back with red pen marks over it when I hadn't asked for critique or just plain told me I sucked to my face. When I realized this pattern, it turned in to an irrational fear that I've had for years.
But the past few months have had me feeling a little differently now. I've had people ask me for writing advice for their 7 year old children. I've had people call me a professional writer. I've had people have long talks to me about my book and about their books, about how to finish a book, about getting ideas, about where to publish... Each new question has made me think really hard about what I do when I'm writing, and each one has also made me think "Why are they asking me this? I'm not someone that's qualified to hand out advice!"
In the past week, however, I've been doing a lot of thinking. Yes, I am qualified to give that advice. I'm even thinking about starting up a podcast with writing advice. I have a name for it and a list of topics that I want to cover too. I love writing, and I love to give people that spark that makes them want to write. I've infected a lot of people over the past 10 years with writing fever, and it's always something that I smile about. I want to share that love of writing, the thrill of it, with the world. People are asking me questions not because I'm trained in a classroom, but because I've got the practical experience that comes with actually writing!
I'm glad to say that, as of now, I'm done being scared of English Majors. There's going to be people out there that don't like what I do, and they'll say I suck. But I got my mother-in-law to read and enjoy a story that was originally going to be for anime-loving teens, and I think that's a damn good accomplishment.
I might not have one piece of paper with "Major of English" on it, but I have 350 pages of a novel that says, yes, I am a professional now! So look out, world!
We finally set the date for the release of my novel! The big day is August 21st, and pre-orders are now open! At the moment we only have them on my Etsy shop, but we're hoping to have my web-site set up to take orders later today. Don't want to go through Etsy? Contact me at liz[at]oap-studios.com for a PayPal invoice!
This listing is for a pre-order of my book. The release date of the novel is August 21, 2009. All pre-order copies will be signed by me and have a special gift included. Pre-orders will be ordered on August 20th and then shipped out once I receive them from the publisher and sign them.
There are multiples of this novel available! Please contact me if you're interested in ordering more than one copy!
This is a 6 inch by 9 inch paperback novel written and illustrated by me. It is 350 pages (almost an inch thick!) and features 22 black and white interior illustrations. The cover features a full color glossy illustration by the incredibly talented Julie Minter of Haunted Studios. The interior is printed on high quality bright white paper, not the off-white thin paper that most of your paperback novels come on!
This novel is the culmination of 10 years of work for me and is the first novel I've ever had published. I hope you enjoy it!
The back cover text reads: "After the test run of a power source that would allow mankind to travel beyond its solar system failed, all of Earth’s technology was rendered useless. Only a year after this accident, in 2033, the citizens of Hinomoto rose up against an unjust government. Their victory brought about a short-lived era of peace and equality until the new democracy corrupted itself. It then outlawed the very thing that overthrew the previous leaders: Martial Arts.
Five-hundred years later, humanity has regained their mastery over technology and science. Those who practice Martial arts are seen by law enforcement and the government as the most dangerous of criminals. Despite being arrested or murdered in the streets by the police, these ronin still struggle to keep their fighting traditions alive. While the Shogun tries to protect his family from a power-hungry Daimyo, a rebellion begins to grow in the bars and underground
dojos that will test the limits of a group of Martial Artists as they attempt to
restore the balance of power."
I swear, I'll have some more plushies and stuff to show soon! I haven't really been wanting to be in the studio lately, with trying to get that novel done and all that. Now that it is done I've been bitten by the writing and drawing bug. I think that even with all the hair-pulling and frustration that the novel brought on I still really enjoyed it. And it's nice to actually see that finished book and know that, hey, I MADE that! It's mine, and I worked hard for it! Now I just need to get out there and get other people to enjoy it too.
There's still a lot of work to be done, though. I need to take pre-orders and decide on the official release date, then order the pre-order books and get them signed and mailed off to the people that ordered them. Before that can happen though, hubby and I are trying to get the redone website up, possibly with a shopping cart so I can take pre-orders through the site. If that doesn't happen then I won't be upset, but it will be nice to have one spot with information on it that I can send people to. With all this web-site redesigning going on, I've been redoing the old character pictures from the
site to fit with my new style. And, frankly, it was really nice to do color work after so long of doing black and white!
So, what's on the horizon? Getting the sequel done. The rough draft of the sequel is what I was working on for NaNoWriMo last year, so it needs fleshing out and then editing. Lots of editing. OMG, so much editing. One of the first things I'm doing when I get the means to is hiring an editor to do this crap for me. I've been reading over the sequel the past few days though, and the story is pretty solid considering that I didn't know what the antagonists were up to for most of the time I was writing it. It still has all the mistakes I noticed when I was editing my first novel: overused commas, too many dashes (I seem to love those stupid dashes...), using five words when one will do, not giving enough description... Oh well, I'll bang the problem areas out, add on some new parts to make it even better, and give it a fresh coat of paint and it will be right as rain.
In addition to wanting to put out more novels, I definitely want to put out this webcomic that I've had the storyline planned for years. I think it's going to be awesome, always have, and I haven't seen a web-comic like it ever. I've been working on the script the past few days and have about 26 pages written, but there's st
ill a lot of designs and details I need to bang out. For one thing, the comic is heavily mechanical, featuring cars, motorcycles, and giant fighting robots, and I can't draw any of those things well enough to suit my tastes.
But, this is also the comic that my Etsy shop logo comes from. Yes, this is where Sarah, the nerdy-but-kinda-goth girl wearing the fishnet gloves is from. That character was never supposed to be a logo for anything, just a character in a role-play that I was doing with my husband. That role-play has been adapted and turned in to the comic that I'm wanting to draw next though. I've felt really strongly about the story for the comic for a long time. I think it's awesome, and that may be a bit biased, but it's true. As I said before, I haven't seen a comic like it myself, and while I'm sure there are some out there that aren't very different in themes, I bet there aren't any *exactly* like the one I'm planning.
So, it all comes down to being able to draw motorcycles, cars, and giant alien robots that kick the crap out of each other. This is something I'll have to work on, so don't be surprised if you see a lot of it in the next few months. Especially since one of my new friends in the area is a huge Transformers nerd and is going to help me out!
But, since I have no awesome mecha to show you, I'll leave you with a preliminary for the robot from the comic that I did this past week.
This is about to be a major picture spam. Please forgive me! I'm just excited and want to show off, because look what arrived!
My book! The first real, professional copy of the story I've worked on for ten years! And it's so pretty!!
It's 6 by 9 inches, and nearly an inch thick. 350 crisp white pages with black text and 22 interior illustrations.
As you can see, my cover artist did a fantastic job with the artwork! It looks so professional!
One of the full-page illustrations that I did, ink and black watercolor. Looks so incredibly cool! I almost immediately went and checked this page because it was the one I was worried about.
Each chapter has at least one small illustration at the beginning, like this. I really like the way this one of D and Ryoku turned out for Chapter Two!
I'll be deciding soon what the release date is for the book and then I'll be taking pre-orders! They're going to be $20 after the shipping charges.
Descriptions for all of these can be found on my Facebook Fan Page.
I also have a gallery on MangaBullet now!
I haven't checked in for awhile. Crap happened that I can't go in to really, but it's been keeping me busy on top of all the other stuff I've been doing. I'll leave you guys with some art I've done over the past few weeks for the novel I'm working on. I haven't been able to do any plushing. @_@ Descriptions for all of these can be found on my Facebook Fan Page.
(that one is probably my favorite out of all of these)
I just realized that every time I draw Kanjou, he's either in a fight or hurt...
I have two fan pages over on Facebook, one for my Etsy store, and one for my writing. Neither of them are very active even when I DO put new content up because, hey, even the supposed fans I've had for my writing all these years don't tell me they're out there. So I don't really expect much in the way of commenting and all, and don't usually get it.
Well, today marked the launch of being able to have usernames for your personal and fan pages, which I've been thinking was pretty cool. Get a username for my Fan pages so I could finally start linking them around and get some more fans, right? Right?
WRONG.
I can't make a fan page username unless I have 1000 fans, which means I need about 990 more fans on each page to qualify. Thank you, Facebook, for basically telling me that I suck and no one loves me. It would be easier for me to GET FANS if I had an easy url to link around, one that I and other people could remember, but I have to have a ludicrous amount of fans already to get more of them easily. What kind of messed up logic is that, really?
I don't think I've met 1000 people in my whole LIFE... Stupid FB...