About Jennifer de Guzman is a writer and comics publishing professional living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She writes stories about sad girls, seawater, bottomless wells, airborne plagues, and horses. You can find links to some of them them in the Selected Works section or read them at her Scribd page.
What Are Possible Impossiblities? “The Poet ought rather to chuse Impossibilities, provided they have Resemblance to the Truth, than the Possible, which are Incredible with all their Possibility.”
- Henry Fielding, quoting Aristotle in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
|
Return from Comic-Con
July 27th 2009 I just returned from Comic-Con, where I worked at the SLG Publishing booth. Most of the time, I ferry books around — helping to set up for signings and keeping the store stocked. I do a few portfolio reviews and talk to aspiring comic book creators as well.
I have to admit to having divided attention this year, however. I had a meeting with an editor about my novel, and her comments gave me a lot of great ideas for the next revision. I’m starting on it tomorrow. I caught myself absently washing my hands for I don’t know how long the other day because I had gotten caught up in thinking about it.
The most important thing I need to do is make sure my protagonist and narrative is active, active, active. I need to start with action and motivation, and I need to keep it up throughout the novel. I need to keep in mind the reader, which is supposed to be a teenage girl, a reader who has been much maligned lately in my professional sphere because of Twilight . Especially at Comic-Con, the hostility has been palpable and ugly. No matter what I think of the series of books — I swooned over Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights when I was fifteen, so I’m in no place to judge — the spectacle of grown men taking cheap shots at girls makes me sick. It’s especially laughable when men who read superhero comics — most of which are not exactly paragons of literary quality — criticize the taste of these girls.
Since Minx’s demise, I’ve been thinking a lot about graphic novels for girls. I’ve been lucky enough to edit a book like The War at Ellsmere , and I want to edit more for that audience, and perhaps even write one. Jamie S. Rich just announced a new one from Oni Press, Spell Checkers. I’m looking forward to it! I scored a copy of his and Joelle Jones’s You Have Killed Me at Comic-Con.
Related Posts:
Leave a Reply
|
|
