Issue #6 (of 9) of IN MAPS & LEGENDS and Issue #7 (of 9) of IN MAPS & LEGENDS are out now!

The last few months have been a bit hectic, so apologies for missing an update! In May I shared a table at TCAF, and it was great to meet everyone. A few people who stopped by remembered IN MAPS & LEGENDS from our Zuda run, which was great! Thanks to all who stopped by.

For the rest of May, I spent almost three weeks traveling through China and doing research for a graphic novel I’m hoping to get published. It was a beautiful, but very sobering trip.

And while I was gone, issue 6 of IN MAPS & LEGENDS was released! I came back and immediately set to work on meeting our deadline for issue 7, which came out at the beginning of July. So now you can catch up and grab the two issues from your favorite digital comics distributor! Let us know what you think. Each issue is 22 full color pages for only $.99.

In issue 6, Kait gets lost on a world she can’t map — with a man she can’t comprehend and a boy she can’t protect — while her old friends and new allies scatter across the ravaged world of Stryla.

Issue 7: All maps lead to one place on the dying world of Stryla: Balasander’s Crest, an active volcano at the top of the world. And that’s where Kait and her friends, old and new, must travel, though the price they must pay at the Crest may be too high for any of them to bear.

We’re on both Kindle and Nook (in both English and German!), or you can read it on the web or download a PDF. And, of course, we’re still on Comixology and other iOS (or Android!) apps. Buy it once, read it anywhere.

One of our distributors, Graphicly, has a new site, and on it you can sign up to read IN MAPS & LEGENDS and other comics using only your Facebook account! One step easier. The site also comes with embedding capabilities, like you can see below:

Now you can share comics anywhere you can embed a youtube video!

I also started a new monthly spotlight on IM&L’s site blog. You can see this month’s entry here: Recommended Digital Comics – July 2011. Since the beginning, I’ve highlighted a few digital comics each month, but I decided to expand that into full blog posts to provide more info to visitors looking for information on what’s out there and what formats are available. Let me know if there are any digital comics you think deserve a spotlight!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been reworking the art for SOME DID REST, the graphic novel proposal that resulted in my being awarded a 2011 Creative Workforce Fellowship. In mid-May I’ll be heading to China to spend a few weeks visiting the site of the 2008 Sichuan earthquakes, which was the original inspiration for the story. Over the few years that I’ve been developing this book, my line work has tightened, and I realized that the proposal art I drew last year no longer reflects how the final book would be drawn. So I’ve been reinking and reworking the opening scenes pages, a sample of which you can see on the right.

In January, my hometown newspaper, the Lawrence Journal World, ran a story about SOME DID REST’s inspirations and the steps leading up to the fellowship from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture here in Cleveland.

Storm Stories: LHS Grad Making Name for Work in Graphic Novels
“There’s something about disasters,” she says, struggling to explain her interest in them. “Everyone loses control.
“Maybe you can blame it on the tornado that hit my house and neighborhood in Lawrence.”

Another paper, Cleveland’s weekly magazine, Scene, also recently ran an article focusing on those awarded fellowships from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture here in Cleveland, and I was one of the artists highlighted. The grants are funded with a tax on cigarettes in the county, hence the article’s title.

What Your Butts Buy: How we spend one of the nation’s biggest pots of public arts money
Fellowship judges were impressed by Smith’s initial drawings for Some Did Rest, her forthcoming graphic novel inspired by the 2008 earthquakes in Sichuan, China. While reading about the disaster, Smith was struck by reports of thousands of students dying in shoddily constructed school buildings.

Both articles talk about the origins of the story behind SOME DID REST, and why it is I’ll be making a trip next week to Sichuan, China.

In other small, flattering honors, a cover I designed last year for independent publisher Lethe Press was on Lambda Literary’s 2010 in Review: Best Book Covers in very good company. The book is DIANA COMET AND OTHER IMPROBABLE STORIES by Sandra McDonald, and it was a pleasure to work on.

I also was a part of FULL SERVICE, a show that ran last week at the Cleveland Institute of Art’s Visual Arts + Technologies Coventry Center as part of the campus-wide spring show. Full Service included work by myself and some of my fellow technical assistants here at CIA, and my piece was a print of the original first chapter of SOME DID REST. I hope some of you stopped by to see it!

Always keeping busy.

Prepared by: Community Partnership for Arts and Culture
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Twenty Cuyahoga County artists will receive $20,000 awards and additional support services for their outstanding work and innovation in the field. The Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC) Board of Trustees ratified and announced the awards today. They based the decision on the recommendation of a seven-member panel of art experts from seven cities outside of Ohio. | http://www.cpacbiz.org

A few weeks ago I was honored to find out that I had been awarded one of the 2011 Creative Workforce Fellowship. After the nominees were ratified by the CPAC Board of Trustees this last Friday, I’m happy to be able to share the news! This is an incredible opportunity given every other year to practicing artists working in craft, design, media and visual arts, and to be a part of it puts me beyond words.

Some Did Rest

While much of my visible comic effort has been focused on IN MAPS & LEGENDS for the past year, I’ve given myself time to focus on other graphic novel works– and one in particular, SOME DID REST, made up the core of my fellowship proposal when I applied this fall. SOME DID REST is a story I’ve been working on for a few years now, a single volume graphic novel inspired by the 2008 earthquakes in China. The gift of the Creative Workforce Fellowship will allow me to travel to the area next summer and see the impact of the catastrophe in ways newspaper articles can’t show.

More about the fellowship:

CPAC Awards more than $400,000 to Cuyahoga County Artists
Creative Workforce Fellowship – List of 2011 Fellows | Artist Bios (PDF)
The Plain Dealer: 20 local artists are awarded $20,000 fellowships
Cleveland Institute of Art Artists Capture 11 CPAC Creative Fellowships

A few weeks ago I was invited to be in an alumni/faculty show put together by the VAT Environment at the Cleveland Institute of Art. I’m a recent graduate and currently work as an assistant in the digital labs, and I’m really looking forward to seeing where everyone’s work has gone since we finished school.

The show, called “Building Peers”, opens today, with a reception this Friday, April 23 at 5:30pm. It’ll be running until May 15, so you’ll have plenty of time to stop by and check it out!

My own piece is the first chapter of my current work in progress, SOME DID REST, a teaser of which you can see here. If you want see it at a size where it’s legible, you’ll have to stop by the show or wait until the book finds a home. :) If you do get a chance to visit and read it, be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think!

March already?

Still no sequential art I can show, but I’ve been doing a few covers for small presses as freelance.

I’m deep into the first bit of SOME DID REST at the moment, inking the second half of the chapter and prepping files. It seems like script revisions never end, and I’m just lucky that the ones I’m thinking about right now won’t result in what I’ve drawn so far going into the trash. My days are spent hunched over my lightbox, drawing rubble…

Things are coming together for IN MAPS & LEGENDS, though I still don’t have anything I’m allowed to share. Soon, though! I’ve even tricked collaborator Mike Jasper into doing a few pages of thumbnails. Poor guy doesn’t realize he’s been swindled into doing the least enjoyable part of comics for me~ ;) We’re both eager to move forward with the story.

Fellow Cleveland Institute of Art grad and comics guy Kevin Czapiewski is teaching a continuing education class called The Art of Comics right now at CIA, and he recently asked me if I was interested in stopping by and getting involved. He’s got a great curriculum planned, and those who sign up go through the process of building a comic from a script and series of thumbnails all the way to a finished story.

I’m hoping to help out with next week’s session, where Kevin’s talking about how time can be portrayed in sequential art. He plans on teaching the class again during the summer, so I’ll be sure to post more info when I have it so anyone local can take a look. Who says Cleveland doesn’t have a comics scene?

And while you’re at it, take a look at Kevin’s long-scrolling webcomic, SPOILERS! We’re both what you get when you combine fine arts majors with a love of comics.

I also recently did an extensive update to the list of literary agents who represent graphic novels, going through it to fix links and remove names of those who are no longer in the business– as well as adding a few agents. So take a look if you’ve got a graphic novel ready to query. (But please– I’m not an agent! Queries that come to me don’t get you anywhere!)

It’s been a crazy winter. I spent a wonderful three weeks in Germany, visiting friends and family, and, most importantly, getting married. :) It was the perfect way to cool down from the crazy ride that was the Zuda competition.

Speaking of which, things have started moving with IN MAPS & LEGENDS! Writer Michael Jasper is hard at work on the script for season 1, and we’re waiting to hear back from our editor about the path we want to take MAPS down. I’ve started doing sketches of the new characters that will be introduced in the upcoming pages, one of whom you can see to the right. He may be old and crotchety, but he’s good at what he does… We hope to launch the first season within a few months.

I’ve also been hard at work on SOME DID REST. I just finished some major script revisions, and I hope to start on the sample chapter’s art for the pitch soon. I really want this book to go places. For now, I’m keeping it tightly under wraps.

After a long and convoluted path, Some Did Rest is finally out with a few test readers! I finished up this most recent draft of the script a few weeks ago, after far too many index cards and hours working in Scrivener. (Well, actually, Scrivener Gold, the free beta version… I’m a frugal sort of girl.) I’m still waiting on a few things and some second reads, but after so many weeks spent writing, I needed to stretch my drawing muscles. I drew a few pages from a scene near the beginning of the book, and have uploaded them to the book’s section of my site, so take a look.

There are still a lot of things to figure out, but I couldn’t resist sharing a peek at what I have so far. Hopefully there will be more to see soon.

For those writing/drawing graphic novels and looking for literary agents, the list has been updated with a number of new names. There are now 58 different agencies out there with a record of being open to graphic novel queries.

I’ve been taking a break from writing Some Did Rest recently to work on a few shorter projects, samples of which you can see to the left and below! Maps & Legends is 8 pages, full-color, and is part of a collaboration with author Michael Jasper. We’re revisiting a book he wrote and adapting it to visual form; as you can tell from the title, maps play a large part in the story, and portraying them has been a fun challenge. Hopefully I’ll have an update about Maps & Legends’ future soon! Mike has some great ideas about where the story will go.

I also finished up a short submission for a comics anthology. Best Erotic Comics is true to its name: an annual anthology out from Last Gasp. I had a short story in this year’s BEC 2009. The book just got a great review from Carnal Nation, and it has short comics from a lot of great artists: Alison Bechdel, Gilbert Hernandez, and others. So pick it up if it’s your kind of thing! The short story I just submitted is titled In Winter, and is only three pages. I’ll update with any news about whether it will be in next year’s edition when I find out. I love doing short comics because of the freedom they allow– I’m always playing with different styles and figuring out what works best for the story I’m drawing.

Now, though, I’m ready to focus. Some Did Rest needs a finished script (and I’m dying to figure out the look of the pages and send it out into the world). And then… who knows? I’ve got another YA idea floating around in the back of my head that might get some attention when I’m done.

My WIP finally has a title! None of the many characters have names yet, but that’s another matter entirely, right? In any case, the project is now going by Some Did Rest. I’ve spent the last few months outlining and doing research, and I’m finally nearing the point where I can start writing the script. I’ve done enough background work now that I’m hoping this next phase will be a bit quicker.

Some Did Rest is a very different work than Highwater… there are still some teenage characters, but this is distinctly a much more adult story. The structure is also very different and less straight-forward, and the style looser and grittier. And on that note, I’ve updated the project page with some new concept art and character sketches. There are a lot of visuals I want to bring into the final pages, and I’ve yet to figure out just how I want the pages to be laid out… I have a few ideas, but you’ll have to wait to see those. :)

I’ve been working on a new short project to keep my hands busy while Some Did Rest is still in words-only phase. This one is a collaboration, with a fellow FinePrint client, Michael Jasper, doing the writing! It’s fully pencilled already, and I should hopefully have some teaser images to post once the pages are inked and colored! It should be good.

Also updated is the list of literary agents who represent graphic novels– there are now 50 different agencies on the list! Take a look, and feel free to drop me a line if you know of anyone I’ve missed, or if you have any questions I can help with.

I’m having a lot of fun with my WIP. I’ve got a growing pile of library books next to my feet, documentaries watched, and a long list of research books still waiting to be checked out and brought home. Quite a few of the documents I’m slogging through are heavy with numbers and graphs, while others offer interviews, giving a human side to the situations I’m exploring. But the books and articles that explore my WIP’s main premise are still a long ways off, a decade or two at least. Nothing to do but watch and see how things develop. It’s all heavy conjecture, right now… and I’ve been diving in head-first. There’s a definite line between intimidating and exhilarating, and I have to tread carefully if I want this to come together the way I think it has the potential to.

But as I’ve been doing research, the rough shape of the story has been coming together: it still could change, and nothing’s in stone, but I’m at least the point where characters are emerging. And I’m so happy to be able to say that! There’s nothing quite like figuring out the faces and postures of a cast. They may not have names yet, but they have birthmarks, histories and personalities. Check out some of the new faces here.

Also, the list of literary agents who represent graphic novels has been updated with Jon Sternfeld of the Irene Goodman Literary Agency. Whether he takes graphic novel queries is unknown, but he represents at least one (signed in April 2009).