Some LiveJournal Bat-Guano.

Remember Mark from LJ? He used to be the ‘business manager’ at LJ before they got big and sold themselves. LOL! He recently created a forum called ljunited :

a coalition of LiveJournal users dedicated to putting forth a slate of two qualified candidates for the upcoming LJ advisory elections

Well, an interesting conversation sprang up between Mark and the founder of earlyadopters this is a community made up of member who had accounts before mid-September of 2000. Now these are all pivotal users at LJ – some of them will be running for the LJ Advisory elections, and these people may or may not determine future policies at LJ. Please don’t be alarmed, I just find the conversation interesting. There’s thoughts on slashers as pedos, gay and nazi comparisons, all Potter slash is Child Porn: the things that make a typical wank, funny. Only this isn’t funny, because some of these users just might end up in a position to influence LJ policies. Like I said, no it’s not Defcon 5, but wow–the ignorance is astounding…

The conversation that launched a thousand WHUTS??

[Link from Boys Next Door community - you know, women's manga links and news--the stuff that doesn't make it to that other list site.]

Work & Fan Things.

Well it’s about time. The Library of Congress/Copyright Office finally processed the $30 application fee for the Only Words copyright. It’s been about what…10 months? At least I got my certificate.

Damn, so many things I missed when I was away. One is the Trigun Movie Flier project going on in Japan. It’s fan-oriented, nothing official—but it looks crazy-fun. A bunch of circles are getting together and making mock-movie posters for the upcoming Trigun film.

Have I got my royalty statement from Iris Print, for last quarter? No. I gave it about 30 days after the quarter ended, and when I still got nothing, I had my manager email Iris Print. No response. RW Day contacted me and asked me if I heard anything. I said nope. She’s emailed multiple times as well. Mia Paluzzi said she hasn’t heard anything either. :/ *yes, this is the official Tina Anderson blogging about not getting a quarterly royalty statement from Iris Print post.* At this point we’re all pretty frustrated; I ventured to guess that this recent bout of MIA is going to be blamed on me—just like the last time she didn’t contact me; my evil bloggish ways and wanky personality. ((^_^)) To be honest, I’ve not bothered her in ages since I emailed to express my anger about her sharing her thoughts on me with Yamila Abraham. That was in February. After that, I decided to get a representative to handle my affairs with publishers, because obviously—I can’t handle them, I’m too big of a jerk. Right now, I’m likely going to make my rep cringe because she asked me not to blog about any of this, but neither her emails nor R.W.s emails are getting any response, so… I hate to say this here at GGY – ‘DAMN any of you that do free work for Iris Print’. :/

In brighter news, my payment came through from German publisher The Wild Side. I have to mail Caroline her half of the payout which thanks to the week dollar, was pretty damn sweet.

Roulette.

It’s been called sharp and biting, filled with crude language, and so manly—even Carl Horn of Dark Horse would read it. It’s also known as being in ‘Dramaqueen’s RUSH’. I’m here to say that It still is. No matter how many times I say this at GGY, it seems people still keep inquiring after that fact. I’m under contract with DQ, a contract that gives Dramaqueen the exclusive right to publish Roulette, in English; I honor my contracts. Those of you who know me know that when negotiating a contract [in my native English], I make every effort to retain the right to shop my work to non-English language publishers. I’m weird like that…I tend to enjoy having control like this, over a story I’ve busted my ass to write; it’s one of this weird little egotistical quirks of mine that will forever keep me from scoring a gig with the ‘pubs that rule the market’. (^_^)

Roulette was licensed recently to The Wild Side, in Germany, thus prompting some serious email inquiries about my relationship with DQ, and the future of Roulette [mainly RUSH] in English. I can’t comment on RUSH, or the other stories in RUSH, I can only talk about my own. Basically, Laura and I wanted to finish the title and still get paid for it, and see it in print. Our English contract only pays us when Roulette is printed and sold—with this not taking place, we had to look elsewhere for publication. Roulette is a labor of love for us; it was our chance to create some gay content that incorporated themes we loved in movies like Scarface and Donnie Brasco—and because we were tailoring it for Dramaqueen’s market, our editor made sure we remained on the ‘BL path’, as much as possible. I confess that without our editor and left to our own devices, we’d probably had made something no ‘BL’ fan would’ve enjoyed (^_^). We wanted the middle and ending to be printed and read, in order to show how many interesting changes play out and stray from the themes presented in the first chapter. Riley and Colletti aren’t just two adversaries who’re hot for each other; the plot twists, the characters change in appearence, and the relationship dynamic isn’t as conventional as most ‘yaoi’ fans are used to—but then again, Roulette never did quite fit in with what most ‘yaoi fans’ swooned over.

I fondly recall my original ending for the story being quite tragic; and my editor felt that this wasn’t going to fit in with the overall story [or rather--the concept of RUSH] and asked me to write another ending. It wasn’t easy and I resisted at first. I felt my original ending was the ‘greatest thing eva’ for these two men, but even Laura disliked it: she didn’t want a HEA [happily ever after] typical BL closer, but she also didn’t want anyone to die. My editor at DQ, a master at working around my ego, finally said, ‘Rewrite it, for Laura…’ (=_=); If you’ve never met Laura Carboni, let me tell you about her—I equate knowing her to being friends with a smurf. She’s ‘Italy Smurf’; extremely optimistic and always upbeat; with an intense love of all things slash and yaoi. Having her plead with me in broken English is enough to make me give her anything she’s asking for. So I caved and ‘did it for Laura’ The way I ended it worked out perfectly—IMHO; but never take my opinion on my work as gospel, to me—it’s all good, unless more than three people tell me otherwise.

I’m rambling… Yesterday I contacted Laura about updates, and as we both spent time mooning over Riley’s changes in the last chapter, we decided to plan a new cover for the German release—just in case Dramaqueen gets around to releasing new issues of RUSH [and eventually using our English covers]. We wanted something different; something our German and Austrian readers could call their own, and something our publisher could take to conventions and show off without a plain brown wrapper. (^_^) So far, the new cover is in the planning stages—it’ll likely be on the publisher’s web site around the time of its projected release [I think our pub anticipated autumn, but Laura needs till November to finish thanks to her schedule with Winx] so I would suspect around Christmas? When the cover posts, I’ll link to it here. So that’s what’s up with Roulette.

It’s being drawn, it’s being printed, it’s not swimmin’ wit da fishes.

Yikes.

Titans #2, running this month in Playboy mag- I mean…wait– no, at a comic shop near you. Remember to buy two boys, because you know you’re going to ruin at least one of them!

Oh, and the extensions on Raven…so sexy. You white boys love them extensions dontcha?
*rolls eyes*