Rynling R&D

While driving through the woods, I've been working with some of my favorite people to create artwork for two upcoming short fiction zines: a reprint of Terrible People (which has a horror-flavored murder mystery theme), and a new zine called Green Dreams: Dark Tales of Botanical Fantasy. In advance of flying back to the States, I also ordered reprints of some previous titles. My zines have yet to receive any attention from more traditional literary circles, but they sell well, get good reviews, and have tons of repeat buyers.

I also think my zines (and the various bookmarks and stickers and miniprints that I include with them) look amazing. I'm slowly learning more about typography, layout, and editing, and my art is gradually getting better too. Each new publication is an improvement on the last. I like to think that I'm doing good work. I spend a lot of time in indie litfic spaces, and I also think that I'm doing something that no one else is even coming remotely close to.

I'm considering starting an actual small press, which I'd like to call "Digital Terrarium." I think it might also be nice to create a magazine to go along with it. I'm extremely aware of how much work that entails, and I also understand why I am 100% the wrong person to do it. Still, what I have that I think a lot of "I'm going to start my own press" people don't are reasonable expectations. For a project like this, I also think my moss mentality is useful: slow but steady, unobtrusive and kind.

I wanted to draw an original design of the Deku Butler in Majora’s Mask, so I did a google image search for “butler clothing.” This is what came up...

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Now I have questions:

(a) What kind of butler dresses like this?
(b) In what video game is he the final boss?
(c) Where do I send my application to become a butler?

Not to sound like a boomer, but I need some people to learn how to write emails
https://enonem.tumblr.com/750113572652302336

Professional language acts as a social boundary setting to the protection of both parties. That matters because when you are dealing professionally with someone (be it within a corporate office or commissioning an artist on tumblr), there are going to be discussions. Maintaining that professional language ensures (at least in theory) that those disagreements are treated as part of the work. It also ensures that work will be done during work times and for appropriate recompense.

I'm working on a post about "how to commission an artist" for the gywo writing community here on Dreamwidth, and this is a good resource to bookmark.

I think my post is shaping out to be a decent guide btw. What it's unfortunately missing is info on how to commission book covers for indie self-publishing. I really need to figure that out. Soon, hopefully.

This is about me querying to review zines for an actual print magazine.

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Me, in front of a course proposal committee: I am a very serious scholar, and my classes are very serious and scholarly.

Me, in class: Anthropophagy (the consumption of human flesh) is one of the strongest taboos common across cultures. Putting aside the primal fear of being hunted, one can argue that there are many ways for a person to be eaten. You can have all your time eaten by a job, for example, or you can feel your heart being eaten by an unhealthy relationship. Please write (or describe the plot of) a short story in which the metaphorical fear of being consumed becomes literal.

I mean listen. How else am I supposed to talk about Kenji Miyazawa, beloved communist poet and author of the absolutely fucking incredible short story "The Restaurant of Many Orders"?

The class on Kobo Abe's short story "The Bet" (about absurdist corporate architecture) is going to be good too, I think. I've discovered a network of access tunnels under campus, and I've made up a super disturbing story to go with them. What I'm going to do is divide the class into three sections and, over the course of the class's running time, give three short underground mini-tours. I practiced this a few times over the summer, and I think I should be able to pull it off smoothly.

ETA: If this sounds overly cute and precious to you, please remember that I'm not being paid very much; and also, I'm totally going to get Covid. I figure that I might as well enjoy myself.

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Anyway, this is the sort of feedback I want to be able to give my students. I want them to know they are beautiful and perfect, but I also want to give them concrete advice about how to take their work to the next level if that’s what they’re interested in.

I know - I know!! - it's in poor taste to make fun of your students, but I have to share this.

I had a kid come up to me after class yesterday afternoon to ask me if there's any place on campus where he can borrow books so that he doesn't have to buy them. The money isn't an issue, he assured me. Rather, he just thinks it's wasteful to buy books that he probably won't take back with him when he goes home over the summer. Not the books for my class, of course, which he's already bought and can't wait to read. But books in general.

I was like, Do you mean: The library??????

I dug a bit deeper, and it turns out that this kid is a bonafide Crazy Rich Asian who is not, in fact, familiar with the concept of "a library." Can you imagine.

Putting that aside, I think I'm going to schedule some time next week to teach my students how to set up a VPN and pirate books. Honestly that's probably a much more useful topic to know about than the Meiji period.

To be really super honest about money, the most I've ever gotten for my writing is from the Memorabilia BotW fandom zine, which paid all contributors an even €200 after the shipping for leftover sales finished up. At the then-current exchange rate, this was about $220.

(If you're curious, I put that money directly back into the fandom by immediately using it to commission fandom artists for fandom projects. Such is the circle of life.)

To put this into perspective, both The Atlantic and Kotaku pay about $150 for a freelance contribution of similar length.

To put this into even broader perspective, most "for profit" zines and anthologies only compensate contributors with complimentary copies. To give an example, I have access to a detailed finance document for the Carpe Noctem: Vampires Through the Ages zine, which has currently raised more than $11,000 on Kickstarter. It's a decently successful campaign that's already passed four stretch goals; but, once you take platform fees, production, and shipping costs into account, it's barely enough to send out contributor copies (as each unlocked stretch goal makes shipping and production more expensive). If - and only if - there isn't a problem with production or shipping, then the contingency funds will be divided among the contributors, who will get about $100-$150 each maybe a year from now.

There's been a lot of recent social media conversation about how fandom zines are bad because (a) zines are supposed to be indie and subversive and (b) zines don't adequately compensate artists. As someone who wrote an actual literal academic monograph about zines, I think the first point is not only incorrect but almost aggressively ignorant. As for the second point, I really don't know what to say, besides that nobody's making money either way.

I finished a sticker design to go with the zine, and I sent it to the printer this morning. I think it’s going to be beautiful. Once I receive the printed sticker and zine, I’ll put a lot of love and care into creating attractive promo photos, and I’ll try not to be shy about sharing them on social media.

One of my other goals was to collaborate on the designs for the two primary characters in An Unfound Door. I’m very lucky to have had my design commission accepted by Lalou, who worked with me to create a gorgeous illustration for The Demon King (here). Lalou offered to paint full art nouveau style illustrations of both characters, and of course I jumped at the opportunity. With any luck we’ll be able to start next week.

I’m very excited, especially since I can work on my own illustrations while referencing Lalou’s design process in real time.

I really enjoy this sort of creative collaboration, and once again I find myself wondering how I might be able to do this professionally. I hope I’m not being delusional, but I think I might be a decent editor. I’m actually kind of serious about this, and I’m going to start looking into it in earnest next week.

I think I've also been approaching my Wind Waker project in the wrong way. This is tricky, because academic publishers require you to submit a complete manuscript that's already ready for print and peer review along with a lengthy prospectus, while nonacademic publishers prefer a short pitch and sample chapter.

I've been thinking about pitching the project to Boss Fight Books, but this is also tricky, mainly because they have a very specific style. If I were to write the project for Boss Fight Books but then couldn't get the editors to read or respond to the pitch, then I will have an unpublishable manuscript that I'd have to start over from scratch if I wanted to publish it elsewhere.

Nevertheless, it's worth trying to at least pitch the project to them without writing the entire thing in advance.

Most of the books in the Boss Fight series are about 30k words long. I should therefore think of the project as a connected series of seven or eight 3,500-word essays. If I can come up with an outline and short list of annotated works cited, I can work from there to come up with a focal point for the pitch and a sample chapter.

If that doesn't work, I can pitch the sample chapter to somewhere like Gamasutra and start getting in touch with editors at academic presses to see how they would approach the project.

I guess I've always thought of myself as fandom trash who doesn't have anything interesting or important to say, but maybe it's time to start taking myself seriously. I think I probably panicked while racing against the tenure clock; but, now that I don't have to worry about that anymore, it's worth sitting down and taking the time to plan this project properly.