As I’ve previously mentioned, Amazon has recently added a hardcover option to Amazon KDP. This isn’t really a possibility (or, probably, a desireability) for Jake and the Dynamo, but I decided I wanted to make it an option for Rags and Muffin.
To that end, I updated my order with MiblArt and got a cover for a hardback edition. The image you see above is from Amazon’s previewer, which has okayed the cover art. Everything else in the sample seems to be good as well, so we’ll offer this alongside the eBook and paperback on the release date, which is still December 10th.
I’ve seen some other authors show off their Amazon hardcovers; they look good and have the cover art printed directly onto the hard surface, with no dust jacket.
In which I again attempt to carve one of the world’s most famous silhouettes.
Jack-o’-lantern carving is a newly established annaul tradition in our house. Last year, I attempted to carve the famous silhouette of Sailor Moon. It proved too much for my modest skills, and the result was a total loss. This year, despite my wife’s derisive laughter, I made a second attempt.
I gather my tools and my beer and prepare.
We got our pumpkins earlier this month. Like last year, we bought them at the local “Pumpkin Patch,” which is not actually a pumpkin patch but an annual event, like a miniature theme park, where pumpkins are showcased and sold. I didn’t post photos of the Pumpkin Patch this year because all the photos I have include my daughter, and I’m trying to keep pictures of her on the internet to a minimum.
At the start of the jack-o”-lantern making process, I cut a stencil out of paper, a process that probably took an hour. I didn’t save the stencil I used last year, but I was able to find it again with a quick internet search.
Cutting out the stencil.
Applying the two-dimensional design to the pumpkin’s surface is always a challenge. It’s important to maneuver the paper to keep Sailor Moon’s limbs and the crescent moon from getting distorted.
The stencil applied to the pumpkin.
Once I got started carving, I realized that I would be better off doing this as a two-tone design. Someday, I may be able to cut this intricate design all the way through the pumpkin, but not this year. Instead, I picked off the skin and much of the meat so the light could shine through.
I picked out the figure first.
After I finished Sailor Moon’s figure, I cut out the moon shape. This was the most dangerous part as the long curve of the moon weakens the pumpkin considerably.
The design is complete when the moon is carved out.
Here, you can see my finished jack-o’-lantern alongside my wife’s. She chose a simple design, but she had a good reason: We were having a party that evening, and she had a lot of other tasks to complete while also pumpkin carving.
The upcoming, action-packed novel Rags and Muffin will release on December 10th, just in time for you to cozy up with it over Christmas break. Taking place in a sweltering city somewhere in the tropics and featuring a lot of fiery explosions, Rags and Muffin will help you think warm thoughts during the cold winter.
You can preview it right now. Chapters one through four are available as a PDF file:
My latest novel, Rags and Muffin is now available for predorder! This is a rough, tough vision of the magical-girl concept that brings together a wide range of influences from the kumari veneration of Nepal to the film noir tradition of American cinema. Bone-crunching action blends with a brooding meditation on the concept of the child hero. Rags and Muffin is Fancy Nancy as written by Rudyard Kipling after binging on mecha anime while tripping on acid.
And I have to give a special shout-out to the team at MiblArt, which knocked it out of the park with the book’s cover art. This is an incredible interpretation of Rags and Muffin, compelling enough to change my own vision of the characters. I’ll likely review their services in the near future.
Since I just got the cover art near the end of October, I’ve decided to push the release date back to early December because I want to run some promotions that require a preorder window. But I recommend ordering now to lock in the low preorder price.
My Senpai Is Annoying, directed by Ryota Itoh. Shunsuke Takeuchi and Tomori Kusunoki. Doga Kobo, 2021. Episode 2, “Udon with the Occasional Full Moon” (of 12). 24 minutes. Rated TV-14.
The second episode of this series confirms my earlier suspicion that this show intends to draw only loosely from its source material, taking the vignettes of the manga and giving them a more definite plot structure. Unlike episode 1, which featured largely original material, episode 2 draws almost all of its incidents from the manga, but it has reordered and rewritten them. Because it’s doing a good job with this re-creation, I find that I can enjoy the anime without feeling as if I’m retreading the same story.
Igarashi and Takeda.
The quality is quite good, and though some occasional CGI peeks through the animation, it’s mostly not too obvious. Considering that the manga is quite sparse in details (despite being in full color), the anime is surprisingly rich, visually.
And in this image, you can see the final art for the cover of Rags and Muffin. I’m quite pleased with it, even if it’s not what I envisioned. This comes from Miblart, which makes a lot of book covers for a competitive price, but I’m afraid I don’t know the specific artist.
Although I’m impressed, my wife dislikes it. She says it looks like the cover of a horror novel. Interestingly, although the book is not out yet, it already affects different readers differently: My editor viewed it as a horror novel and said she found some of the content disturbing, even difficult to read. My wife, however, views it as a fun adventure novel.
Myself, I think the cover beautifully captures some of the book’s ideas and tone but not others. Rags and Muffin are supposed to be threatening characters, dangerous and forbidding. But what the cover does not capture is that they are also attractive, drawing people into their circle and rendering them unable to escape. In appearance and personality, Rags is similar to Fancy Nancy except with Kung fu, handguns, and questionable morality—but had we attempted to go that route with the cover art, the result would be deceptive and probably ineffective.
What I’m most happy with is that it turned out well despite the absence of guns. My original vision had Rags pointing a gun in your face, ready to pull the trigger—because you, in a way, are the villain of Rags and Muffin. Perhaps, even without the guns, the cover captures that anyway: This may be how Rags and Muffin look to a criminal, someone they are about to attack. Rags is looking right at you and means to kill you.
So the cover captures my original idea even without the guns.
I recently dug out my boxed set of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which I purchased at a book fair sometime in my childhood. The books are in good shape, so they will pass to my daughter when I decide she’s old enough for them. An astute reader might notice that I refer to these books in Dead 2 Rites: When Van Halensing gives Jake a “traditional formula” for compelling a ghost, that formula comes from the story “The Haunted House.”
If you grew up in the Eighties or Nineties, you probably remember these three books, and they probably made you pee your pants. The stories are rewritten versions of folk tales that the author, Alvin Schwartz, an amateur folklorist, dug up from anthropological journals and fairy tale collections. For the adult reader, the most interesting sections of the Scary Stories books are the endnotes, in which Schwartz explains where he got his material as well as his rationale for altering or synthesizing it. A child will be more interested in the stories themselves, but the stories aren’t the main reason these books are both famous and infamous.
My Senpai Is Annoying, directed by Ryota Itoh. Shunsuke Takeuchi and Tomori Kusunoki. Doga Kobo, 2021. One episode (of 12). 24 minutes. Rated TV-14.
Available on Funimation (so avoid the dub when it comes out).
The first episode of My Senpai Is Annoying has dropped, and I decided to give it a look-see since the manga is so maddeningly slow at releasing new volumes. Readers may recall that I previously reviewed the extant English-language manga volumes, which I found amusing but unspectacular. The first episode of the animated version, however, indicates that it’s going to both improve and expand on the comic—which it probably has to do because it would run out of material otherwise.
Mark Pellegrini is best known for his comic books, especially the sleeper hit Kamen America, which I’ll probably discuss here eventually since it makes overt references to Sailor Moon. But he also writes horror, so in honor of Spooky Month, let’s take a look at his indie horror novel They’ll Get You, published just last year. Although flawed—and in need of a good editor—They’ll Get You has what it takes to keep you awake at night.
Someone recently left this review for Dead 2 Rites:
Horror with a sweet sense of humor
If you enjoy breezy adolescent adventure novels with cheap heroics and villains made of straw, give this series a big miss. Why don’t you grow up already, with this coming of age confection? That’s right, big kid, the child in you will delight to the glittering, grisly action that recalls the Power Rangers episodes you devoured instead of studying. The adult in you will appreciate the ironic perspective you gain from Jake, the boy hero protagonist who is slowly piecing together the rotten puzzle of his post-apocalyptic world, and the hellish bargain his friend, the Dynamo of the title, has made to save it from final destruction. Dead to Rites has it all: Sailor Moon superheroics, Cronenberguesque body horror, and moral conundrums that would make Oscar Wilde light another cigarette in the holder. Get it, and let it get you twisted.
