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:
Rags and Muffin Sample Chapters (PDF)
The wait is over. Instant gratification can now be yours.
The DRM-free eBook features full-color illustrations. The paperback features new, more readable formatting with illustrations in glorious black and white.
And if you read, remember you can do me a solid by leaving an honest review.
Jake Blatowski can’t wait for high school—basketball, calculus, and a cafeteria that isn’t under investigation by the health department.
But he’ll have to wait: A computer malfunction has assigned him to the fifth grade!
It’s bad enough that he bangs his knees on the desks or that Miss Percy is going over long division . . . again . . . but Jake has to sit next to Dana Volt, a perpetually surly troublemaker determined to make his life a living hell.
Worse yet, Dana secretly belongs to a coalition of girls who protect humanity from the horde of deadly monsters plaguing the city—monsters that have chosen Jake as their next target!
Jake’s no hero; he just wants to make it to varsity tryouts. But now the impulsive and moody Dana is the only one who can save Jake from certain death—and Jake is the only one who can save Dana from herself.
Tomorrow, , begins the book launch of Jake and the Dynamo, first volume in a new series full of adventure, laughs, and lots and lots of magical girls.
Upon release, the book will be available as a DRM-free eBook with unlimited lending. It will also be available on Kindle Unlimited and as a paperback.
This is the last day of the low, low preorder price of 99 cents.
Read the novel that fans already call “hilarious, insightful, poignant” and “a great story for anyone who likes humor, adventure, and a truly unique setting.”
The eBook will be an Amazon exclusive for three months. I will announce when additional purchase options become available.
Prétear, written by Kenichi Kanemaki and directed by Junichi Sato. Hal Film Maker (). 13 episodes of 24 minutes (approx. 312 minutes). Rated TV-14.
Available on Funimation.
Funny story: Although it looks like a much earlier series, the information on Prétear from the Funimation site claims that the show comes from 2010. Since that’s the year before Puella Magi Madoka Magica made its appearance, I was all set to interpret this show as the end of an era, the last of the primarily Sailor Moon-influenced magical-girl anime before Madoka took over the genre. But Funimation’s metadata is wrong (which is good because that means I wasn’t crazy when I thought there was no way this was from 2010); Prétear is actually from 2001.
That, however, suggests perhaps equally interesting connections: It bears some apparent influence from Revolutionary Girl Utena, and it also predates Princess Tutu by just a few years. It comes from the same studio as Tutu and resembles it in some respects; so while this isn’t a bridge between Sailor Moon and Madoka, it might be a link between Utena and Tutu.
Unfortunately, I’m still so busy with work that I have had little time for anything else, which is why there hasn’t been much content here.
However, Rawle Nyanzi, who often plugs my stuff and whose stuff I often plug, has begun toying around with animation and has created an animated short entitled “Time to Smack a Witch!”
This short video looks like a cut scene from a side-scrolling beat-em-up video game from the mid-Eighties, complete with the beepy music. It has no dialogue, but it’s amusing and easy to follow. It’s only flaw, were I to offer criticism, is that is opening credits are way too long for something that looks like 8-bit Theater.
When it stares back.
Made in Abyss, directed by Masayuki Kojima. Written by Keigo Koyanagi, Hideyuki Kurata, and Akihito Tsukushi. Starring Miyu Tomita, Mariya Ise, and Maaya Sakamoto. Kinema Citrus (). 12 episodes of 23 minutes and 1 episode of 46 minutes (approx. 322 minutes). Rated TV-14.
Available on Amazon Prime and HIDIVE.
When Made in Abyss appeared in 2017, it was the biggest hit of its season, if not the year. It also quickly became one of the most polarizing titles on social media. I was already praising it before it appeared in English simply because I’d caught glimpses of its creator’s art. Then I started to hear … rumors … that made me squeamish—mostly about the manga being a hairsbreadth from lolicon.
I’ve not had a chance to read the manga, which if I’m not mistaken is still ongoing, but I have finally sat down and watched the thirteen-episode first season of the anime. I can say nothing substantial about its source material (my info is mostly hearsay coupled with some amazing panel art), but I will say that, whatever the manga is like, the anime is really, really impressive. This is one of the best cartoons I’ve ever seen, hands down.
THE UNIVERSE IS OUT TO GET HIM … BUT THE UNIVERSE DIDN’T COUNT ON HER!
Have you wanted to hold Jake and the Dynamo: The Wattage of Justice
Well, now you can!
… Except that’s kind of weird.
But in any case, Jake and the Dynamo
Jake Blatowski can’t wait for high school: basketball, calculus, and a cafeteria that isn’t under investigation by the health department.
Well, he’s going to have to wait: a computer malfunction has assigned him to the fifth grade.
It’s bad enough that he bangs his knees on the desks or that Miss Percy is going over long division … again … but Jake’s sitting next to Dana Volt. She’s a perpetually surly troublemaker who doesn’t even have to exert herself to make his life a living hell.
But no, it gets better: Dana secretly belongs to a coalition of girls protecting humanity from the horde of deadly monsters that plagues the city. But Jake’s no hero; he just wants to get to varsity tryouts!
When the monsters choose a new target, Jake’s not at all surprised that the target is him. Sure, why not? That’s the kind of week he’s having.
Now the impulsive and moody Dana is the only one who can save Jake from certain death—but Jake is the only one who can save Dana from herself.
The long-awaited day has arrived. Book one of the Jake and the Dynamo saga, The Wattage of Justice, the first American light novel from Superversive Press, is now available.
And here’s the book trailer:
The Kindle version is currently available. The paperback will come available within a few days.
This book features:
Read about it on the Superversive Blog, where Ben Zwycky describes the novel as a “gloriously over-the-top satire.”
And visit my new Amazon author’s page.
Because of the security system, the teleporter couldn’t carry Ivy and Bean all the way to Pink’s base in the space elevator’s counterweight. Instead, it deposited them in her secondary headquarters at geostationary orbit. There, in the midst of the central control room, with the Earth filling the vast window before them, they floated, weightless. The elevator’s black nanocarbon ribbon stretched away to the globe and disappeared into the swirling white foam of the thunderstorm raging below. Occasionally, flashes of lightning were visible in the clouds.
Bean held Ivy in her arms while Ivy sobbed.
They were both soaked from the rain. Water danced around them in the air, round and clear like marbles. Bean always thought weightless liquids looked like Jell-O.
Nestled against Bean’s chest, Ivy’s frizzy red hair bounced and waved, occasionally casting off more of the round globs of water. In one hand, Ivy clutched half of the ruined leather case of her grimoire. Its rescued parchment pages, most of them smeared and unreadable, swirled around in the air, blown hither and thither by the stations’ ventilation system.
“I’ll never be a real witch now,” Ivy cried. Tears poured from her eyes and floated away. “That Fancy Nancy is awful!” Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 6”
High above the Earth, Pink Vicious sat upon her great pink throne. Over her head was a huge skylight above which the planet, enormous and perfectly still, hung perpetually as it shifted through its daily phases of light and shadow. A black strip glossy with sunlight, like an enormous ribbon, stretched up toward the Earth and disappeared in the distance.
Pink Vicious did indeed have a space station situated at geostationary orbit, but that was not where she kept her headquarters: her headquarters were at the space elevator’s far end, in the counterweight, where the g-force was the same as on the surface of the Earth. It gave her a small thrill to know that nothing anchored her except that thin expanse of ribbon, and that if it ever broke, she would go hurtling into the outer darkness.
She had a full day ahead of her. The first order of business was to torture a prisoner. After that came snack time. Then nap time. Then time to develop her plans for world conquest. Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 5”
