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Blog: drawboy's cigar box (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: illustration friday, hat, smoke, illlustration, ship, Patrick Girouard, Drawboy, Add a tag
Blog: drawboy's cigar box (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: bob cratchit, Drawboy, illustration, illustration friday, smoke, Patrick Girouard, Add a tag
Blog: Illustration Friday Blog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: smoke, lion, weekly topics, idea generation, IF community, illustration, character, children's art, artists, heart, pipe, Add a tag
Submitted by Lena Erysheva for the Illustration Friday topic HEART.
Blog: PW -The Beat (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: smoke, alternative comics, Top News, gregory benton, hang dai editions, Add a tag
Rolling along with the Fall line-up for comics, here's another September release. Brooklyn's Hang Dai Studios has teamed with Alternative Comics to release their fall schedule, which includes three titles Smoke by Gregory Benton, Beef with Tomato by Dean Haspiel, and Schmuck by Seth Kushner and an all-star line-up of cartoonists. It's a powerhouse line-up of talent, each book with its own distinctive voice born of living life in New York City. In Benton's case, however urban life has inspired a wordless fantasy epic about two kids, apparently the children of migrant workers, who are swept away to a magical land beset by perils who are befriended and protected by a magnificent dog straight from the Day of the Dead. It's a wordless narrative that's part Amulet, part Adventure Time, but all original, with a bittersweet ending that packs a punch. We emailed Benton with a few question about his work and Smoke:
Blog: Miss Marple's Musings (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: expats in New York, FREAKBOY, Kristin Elizabeth Clark, Lesléa Newman, LGBTQ authors, OCTOBER MOURNING, YA, YOUNG ADULT, writers, readers, Book recommendation, genre, contemporary fiction, novels in verse, SMOKE, Ellen Hopkins, Patricia McCormick, Sold, MFA in Creative Writing, Writerly Musings, Add a tag
Mondays on this blog will be given over to musings on being: a writer (for children), a voracious reader, an MFA student, an expat in New York, a nature advocate, part of the LGBTQ community, a lifelong wanderer, an obsessive observer of human nature, and one who jives to the java bean and the fermentation-flirtation of the Cabernet Sauvignon grape!
While I shall most definitely be writing a post on, ‘Why One Should Read Outside One’s Genre,’ today I espouse the importance as writers of reading the themes, content, forms and genre in which we have rooted our own manuscript. You need to know how your book compares with the competition, and how it is different. Reading your genre is about staying current as an author, just as a teacher or doctor might. Agents and publishers will expect this of you, and you should certainly know on which shelf in a (Indie) bookstore a reader should be able to find your book!
I like to not only read in my genre, but also books that have focused on some of the big themes and subject matter in my story; maybe betrayal, or teenage pregnancy, maybe set in other cultures, or in slang…. You might read to be inspired by form and style. Maybe you are seeking to write in a more literary style, then you could perhaps read Laurie Halse Anderson’s WINTER GIRLS. Since meeting and reading most of the works of author, Ellen Hopkins, I have been fascinated by the form of novels written in verse, and have been reading broadly in this form. I am thrilled that we have on the faculty of the Stony Brook MFA program, Patty McCormick, whose novel in verse, SOLD, has so much of what I want to explore in my own writing.
In which genre are you writing? And/or what theme(s) are you exploring, and what recommendation do you, therefore, have for us? Let me kick off, and let me say that while my novel is at present in prose, I am drawn to a more poetic vehicle for the story.
Genre: Contemporary YA fiction (edgy) Form: narrative prose Themes: Estrangement, abusive parental relationships and/or LGBTQ characters and bullying
My recommendations:
SMOKE by NYT best selling author, Ellen Hopkins and published by Simon and Schuster. I was lucky to read an ARC of this novel in verse, which is released tomorrow, September, 10th 2013. I loved BURN and was not disappointed with this sequel. SMOKE addresses big themes – courage and survival, abuse, hypocrisy and silence in religious communities (LDS), gay bullying, neglect, love… the writing is quick and sparse and visually meaningful. All the characters are 3+ dimensional. If you have never read a novel in verse, I highly recommend any of Hopkin’s novels. SMOKE is also included in this recent list of Top Ten YA Releases in Sept 2013.
Okay, I have not yet read FREAKBOY, a YA novel in verse by Kristin Elizabeth Clark, which is going to be published on October 22nd, 2013, by Farrar, Strauss and Geroux, but I have discussed the book with the author and am a huge fan of her writing and very happy to see a book embracing these themes. I am convinced this will be a book with significant ripples in the YA book community. Just this week it received a starred review -“*”This gutsy, tripartite poem explores a wider variety of identities—cis-, trans-, genderqueer—than a simple transgender storyline, making it stand out.“ — Kirkus Review, starred review.
You can buy it now, here.
OCTOBER MOURNING by Lesléa Newman, published by Candlewick, September 25th, 2012. “A masterful poetic exploration of the impact of Matthew Shepard’s murder on the world.”
On the night of October 6, 1998, a gay twenty-one-year-old college student named Matthew Shepard was lured from a Wyoming gay bar by two young men pretending to be gay. Matthew was savagely beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die. October Mourning, is the author’s deep personal response to the events of that tragic day. It is a novel in verse, but quite different from the previous two as Newman creates fictitious monologues from various points of view, including the fence Matthew was tied to and the girlfriends of the murderers. This is a heartbreaking series of sixty-eight poems in several different poetic forms offering the reader an enduring tribute to Matthew Shepard’s life.
Your turn! Please add your recommendations in the comments below.
Blog: But What Are They Eating? (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Kent Whitaker, Deck Chef, Chow Line, Mo, Smoke, Guest, Add a tag
Blog: The Other Aaron (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Contest, Cover art, Smoke, borrowed saints, thoughts on writing, In the Memory House, Vengeful Spirits, thoughts on marketing, Echoes of the Dead, Add a tag
Fred, the envelope please...
Mary Rajotte is the winner of my 50/50 split of In the Memory House profits for November, thus continuing a fine tradition of Canadians winning my contests. Congrats, Mary. I'll be in touch to share the bounty.
Which might (or might not, who knows?) have been a bigger bounty had I started with this:
Instead of In the Memory House. Sometimes I need a little more market research. I tend to be too much of a gut guy. You see, In the Memory House is also the title of Howard Mansfield's book of essays about New England culture and history.
Yeah. Not my book at all. Mine features a living house which tries to make friends by killing people. Think of it as a house with Asperger's on steroids.
So maybe Echoes of the Dead has a little more zip. The word "Dead" lands hard, at least. It does deliver the message directly, and I've found that is a key piece of marketing any book. And yes, the paperback is still coming.
And then I've nixed Smoke and replaced it with Vengeful Spirits. Again, I think the new title lands harder and sends a little more of a direct message about the book's content. I've also tweaked the cover with new font and image:
This poor puppy has been through a number of changes, originally starting as Borrowed Saints. Like I said, I'm a gut guy. My heart and mind need to arm wrestle before the next book skitters into the wild.
Congrats again, Mary. And good luck, my dear books. I will try to do you better in the future.
Blog: Sugar Frosted Goodness (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Michelle White, smoke, milo, SFG: Fish, Add a tag
Blog: Drawing a Fine Line (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: cookies, smoke, digital camers pics, cat poo, Add a tag
Now I ask you ~ does this look like cat poo, or does this look like cat poo? You be the judge.
(I happen to know they're actually chocolate and butterscotch and corn flakes, but if you didn't know...)
Here are some tips for the holidays, free to you my faithful readers:
Before you make that roaring holiday fire, be sure the damper is open in the chimney.
I will say that again. BE SURE THE DAMPER IS OPEN.
Because if it isn't, you will get a house full of smoke, and your smoke alarm will go off REALLY REALLY LOUD and scare the bejesus out of everyone, and you will be running back and forth trying to decide whether to throw water on the fire (which makes more smoke, who knew?), or get the ladder so you can reach the smoke alarm and yank the bloody batteries out to make it shut up, or open the door to let the smoke out, while cats are running for cover with their paws over their ears, and you wonder if the neighbors have called the fire department because surely they can hear the alarm and oh god you hope they don't come because you're in your nightgown and its not pretty.
Also, you will have soot marks on the bricks to clean up afterwards (except they won't be kinda blurry like this.)
Which brings me to my next tip ~
Don't lose the directions to your digital camera. If you do, after fiddling blindly with the controls and not having a clue what you're doing, you will end up with photos like this:
I swear to you, this is not photoshopped. I was trying to take a picture of the sooty bricks, and it gave me a message (which I've never seen before) that said "slow shutter" and it wouldn't take the picture, wouldn't take the picture, wouldn't take the picture, and then after about 20 seconds, with me moving the camera around, it finally "clicked" and this is what I got.
Its kinda cool, but don't ask me how I did it.
My other tip to you bakers is to not double a recipe that's already generous, because you will end up with way too many of whatever it is and unless you own a bakery or know a lot of people to give them away to, you will be saddled with enough peanut butter cookies to last until next Christmas.
This is what I have to show for my baking efforts. The aforesaid peanut butter cookies, real shortbread (all I have left are the 'edges' because I gave away all the 'inside' pieces), and killer chocolate cookies. The chocolate ones have pepper in them. I know! No, they don't taste like pepper. But they pack a whollop and are really like nothing I've ever tasted. They'd go well with a hearty Cabernet or just a plain glass of milk or a cup of strong coffee. Can you tell what my diet will be for the next few weeks? Gee, I hope Santa brings a Thighmaster.
And with that, I will leave you all for a few days of no blogging while I go eat cookies and "do" Christmas and enjoy peace and goodwill and hopefully smoke-free fires.
Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah and good cheer for whatever else you do or don't choose to celebrate, everyone!
Blog: OUPblog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Health, History, UK, smith, green, A-Featured, virginia, Leisure, hygiene, purity, clean, cosmetics, dirt, dirty, makeup, ecology, hot, springs, asceticism, virgins, Add a tag
I’m happy to confess here and now that I’m a girl who likes her mascara, and it’s a rare day that I appear in public without it. So, imagine my delight when our new book Clean came along. In it the author, Virginia Smith, explores the development of our obsession with personal hygiene, cosmetics, grooming, and purity. In the first of three posts, I’m happy to present the below short extract from the first chapter of the book.
Dirt is only matter out-of-place and is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’. Nature does not care what we think, or how we respond, to matter in all its forms. But as a species we do care, very deeply, about our own survival. A dense mass of human history clusters around the belief that dirt is ‘bad’, and that dirt-removal (cleansing) is always ‘good’. The old Anglo-Saxon word ‘clean’ was used in a wide variety of situations: it was often blatantly human-centred or self-serving in a way we might call ‘moral’; but it was also used more objectively as a technical term, to measure or judge material things relative to other things. It was thoroughly comprehensive, and unquestioned.
Preceding all human cultural history however – certainly before any human history of personal hygiene – were billions of years of wholly a-moral species development. The exact date one enters this endless time-line is almost irrelevant; what we are really looking for are the time-spans or periods when things speed up, which in the case of homo sapiens was somewhere between c.100,000-25,0000 BCE, followed by another burst of development after c.5000 BCE. Throughout this long period of animal species development, all of our persistent, over-riding, and highly demanding bio-physical needs were evolving and adapting, and providing the basic infrastructure for the later, very human-centred, psychology, technology and sociology of cleanliness.
It is difficult not to use ancient language when describing the egotistical processes of human physiology – routinely described as the ‘fight’ for life – and in particular, our endless battle against poisonous dirt. Much of this battle is carried out below the level of consciousness. Most of the time our old animal bodies are in a constant state of defence and renewal, but we feel or know nothing about it; and the processes are virtually unstoppable. We can no more stop evacuating than we can stop eating or breathing – stale breath, of course, is also an expellation of waste matter. Ancient scientists were strongly focussed on the detailed technology of these supposedly poisonous bodily ‘evacuations’; and modern science also uses similarly careful technical terminology when describing bodily ‘variation’, ‘elimination’, ‘toxicity’ or ‘waste products’. In either language, old or new, inner (and outer) bodily ‘cleansing’ is ultimately connected to the more profound principle of ‘wholesomeness’ within the general system of homeostasis that balances and sustains all bodily functions.
Further extracts from other chapters of Clean can be found on Virginia Smith’s website.
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