Issue 20: Voyager's Homecoming, dueling film fests, pitches, and revisions!
There is so much stuff.
And so many things.
Almost like the universe is full of stuff and things!
NEW STUFF
Just a quick reminder that Long Away is having its US premiere when it screens at the Long Beach QFilm Fest in their Queer & Trans Shorts Program on Saturday, September 6 at 1 pm pacific at The Art Theatre! You can purchase tickets right now, right here! Come see us, Los Angeles!
We also just got notified that the film made it into the FP Arts Short Film Festival in Scotland, and it’s screening on the exact same day as the Long Beach QFilm Fest! Our movie’s gonna play in two theaters on opposite ends of the globe on the same day, and that’s kinda mind-blowing. It screens at 18:00 local time at the East Kilbride Arts Centre! You can purchase these tickets right now, too, right here! Go see it, UK!
The Amazon shenanigans over disappearing formats and reviews of Tilly’s book continue. In addition to seventy-eight 5-star reviews disappearing, and the paperback and Kindle versions no longer seeming to exist, we’ve gotten reports that people who previously purchased the Kindle version had it deleted from their devices without authorization.
Unfortunately, it gets worse. Our manager decided to order one of the hardcovers, since that’s the only print format that was still available, and received this with his shipping notification…
They’re apparently censoring the book’s title and cover, even from people who’ve already bought it. Searching for Tilly’s name and the book title on Amazon also often return no results, as if the book doesn’t exist. Standard internet searches for the book will take you to the Amazon page they used to be on, and then show you a photo of a dog and tell you something went wrong.
Mind you, for those who’ve not read the book, it is an examination and critical write up on a science fiction movie franchise, there’s nothing remotely “adult” or “indecent” about it.
Other than certain billionaires capitulating to a certain other fake billionaire politician who wants trans people eradicated from public life.
This is some bullshit.
The publisher has seemingly made no progress in resolving the situation, but this past week Tilly was contacted by a trans journalist who was very interested in investigating this seemingly intentional deplatforming of a very trans book.
Tilly’s publisher only reports royalties every six months, and they’re for the six months prior to that for reasons that remain unclear, so we won’t even know how badly this is affecting sales for another year. But the publisher previously insisted the vast majority of sales came from Amazon, despite the lack of detailed breakdowns of sales on the royalty reports. Who knows, this is a mess. We’ll see what happens! But, we reiterate:
THIS IS SOME BULLSHIT.
So let’s talk about something good!
Look at this cool promo art IDW made for our Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming comic! It continues to astound us to work for a company that has an actual PR staff and promotes your stuff. What a concept!
So yes, Voyager: Homecoming issue 1 is out one week from today! We hope you love it! We’ve probably mentioned this before, but are too busy and tired to go back to old newsletters to check, but the first issue was an extreme challenge.
We had to recap a thirty year old finale to remind folks where it left off and where our story begins, we had to recap the show itself for people who are brand-new to Voyager, and then we had to set up and kick off the story that we are telling, all while trying to juggle eight main characters (and a dang baby!) with limited page real estate. From the folks who received an advance copy of issue one, many of them told us the first issue was really good and they loved it, which means so much to us! But we truly believe the next four are even better, because this fab story we have for you has barely just begun. We have such sights to show you!
Last week we did an interview all about the book, and our lifelong love of Star Trek, and it goes more in-depth on us, the book, and what we’re trying to do with it, than any of our other interviews so far. You can read it at The Beat!
We were then on the Word Balloon podcast, talking about much of the same stuff! It was a livestream, and the first of those we ever did. We think we did okay? Let us know! (On second thought don’t, if we sucked just keep that to yourself.) You can watch the recorded livestream on The Word Balloon youtube channel!
And then just today we were guests on The Clonestar Podcast to help kickoff their Women of Strange New Worlds series, talking all about how amazing the character of Una Chin-Riley is, especially in regards to the trans allegory of "Ad Astra Per Aspera" that Tilly recently did a Trans Tuesday writeup on. Check it out here!
These SDCC Star Trek preview ashcans nearly sold out from Tilly’s store, but then we discovered a couple more of them we had misplaced. As of the sending of this newsletter there are only four copies left, and again, we will never get any more of these (trust there is not a dozen we misplaced that are lying around somewhere), so this is your only shot to get one.
Final order cutoff for Voyager: Homecoming is September 15! Get your orders in to comic shops before then (if you didn’t already ask them to pull the entire series for you).
Also!
THE SOLICIT FOR ISSUE THREE IS ALREADY OUT AND CONTAINS MASSSSSSSSIVE SPOILERS.
Please do not read it if you’d like to experience the story as we intended it.
We’ve also noticed there’s a longer than normal gap between issue 1, which releases Sept. 3, and issue 2, which releases Oct. 22. We have no idea why the release shifted from the first Wednesday of the month to the next-to-last Wednesday of the month. Issue three is set to release Nov. 26, so perhaps it’s sticking to later in the month from issue 2 on?
Listen, they don’t tell writers these things. In fact we only even know about release dates and final order cutoffs from comics news websites that report on those things, soooo… we have no answers for you.
But the book is coming out, fear not! And we really think you’re gonna love it.
We hope.
We know!
But also we hope.
WHAT WE’RE WORKING ON
We’ve gotten notes back on the final issue of Voyager: Homecoming, so we’re busily revising it to turn in soon.
An editor we had a lovely meeting with at SDCC requested some original pitches from us (after already mentioning she’d like to try to bring us in on a licensed property), but she got back to us pretty quickly to say she didn’t think any of our pitches fit what the publisher was looking for right now, even though she personally liked them (so she claimed! I mean, she has no reason to lie to us, we’re just trying to build a little intrigue and mystery for you).
But! She then asked if we had a horror pitch, because those are doing really well right now, and we did indeed have one ready to go. So we sent it to her and she really dug it, and had a suggestion for a tweak she thought would make it an easy sell to The Deciders at the publisher, and we really dug that suggestion! So we made the tweak and sent off a bigger pitch, going into detail on the concept, format, characters, and story. So now we wait to hear back.
We had a meeting with another editor that a writer friend of ours introduced us to, and we seemed to vibe pretty well, and she also said she’d love to see some original pitches, so we sent a bunch over. And now we wait to hear back there, too.
The new pilot we said we had outlined and were going to dive into scripting? Yeah sooooo we hadn’t had time to work on it for like nine months and, uh, kinda got it confused with another new pilot we’d been developing before switching that one over to a comic pitch.
So it turns out this new pilot actually had nothing done but brainstorming notes on the story and characters. Oopsie-dang.
It has since been outlined, but that outline needs some work, so we’re busy revising that until we get it to where we’re happy with it. And then we’re gonna script it!
Unless some other paying work gets in the way first.
Which would be good, because dang do we need money, this year has been financially very rough. But also we do want to write this pilot!
It’s all a juggling act.
Also very related to “dang do we need money this year has been financially rough,” please have a friendly reminder that this here newslettery thingamabob has a paid version with exclusive goodies, including stuff we’ve written that’s not available anywhere else, and deep-dives into all sorts of our writing and creative process stuff. It is but a mere five buckos per montho! What a steal! Maybe sign up for it at birdguestbroadcast.com! 😊
TRANS TUESDAY UPDATE
The past two essays were on the findings of the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey, the largest of its kind ever conducted. Trans Tuesdays previously covered the Early Insights from the report, but we’re only now, three years later, getting some official results. Because the survey had ninety-two thousand respondents!
There’s a wealth of really important data in there, like how 41% of us who try to find doctors for our trans care end up being refused because the doctors say they don’t know how to treat us (but Republicans will tell you doctors are forcing transition care on people) (lol, lmao even), and that gender affirming surgeries have a regret rate of less than one percent (when the regret rate for all surgeries for everyone is 14.4%!).
Trans care comprises some of the most effective medical treatments in existence, so don’t for a second buy anyone who tells you it’s untested, or new, or dangerous. That’s some bullshit!
Anyway, check out THE 2022 U.S. TRANS SURVEY RESULTS, PART 3 and PART 4, and learn what trans people’s experiences with medial providers, our mental health, detransitioners, and the success and efficacy of gender-affirming healthcare are really like.
RECOMMENDATIONS
We’re suckers for good sci-fi, and Alien: Earth on Hulu is definitely off to a fabulous start. It leans more into the horror side of things ala Alien (more than the action side of things, like Aliens), and half the show feels remarkably close to exploring something tangentially/subtextually trans, which is fascinating.
But more than all that it’s about something underneath the sci-fi and monsters, and that’s fabulous. It’s dealing with the evils of capitalism and cynicism, but also the evils of treating people who are different as “the other.” Can’t wait to see where it goes.
also, sorry but… the eyeball octopus is amazing and also somehow kinda cute?!
THE DIRTBAG DISPATCH
Look at the poor Dirtbag inside his carrier, so mournful and sad. No other cat has ever known such indignity at the hands of his humans, just ask him.
Unfortunately this dingus has a predilection for burying his entire chin in his wet cat food every time he eats. We even shape the food into a ring around the outside of the cat dish to try and thwart him, but nay! NAY HE SAYS, I SHALL STICK MINE CHIN INTO YON MEATY FELINE PATE!
And the result is that he gets horrible acne on his chin, and this time it somehow got even worse and he had some kind of bacterial infection swelling up his entire chin. He is a dirtbag, we remind you, and he also loves to rub his face all over our filthy shoes because he loves things that smell bad. He is the dirtiest of bags.
Anyway, he got some meds and seems to be doing better now, though every time we put the ointment on his chin is another instance of NAY HAS NO CAT EVER FACED SUCH GRIEVANCE AT THE MONKEY HANDS OF HIS COHABITANTS.
Such an emo little dickhead.
Izzy, meanwhile, is growing up but still hasn’t lost those kitten moments where she’s just nothing but a pile of flailing limbs, and that’s a lot of fun.
WHAT’S IN THE BIG TIME?
Big Time issue 20 goes into writing for an ensemble cast, and how tough that can be when you have a very limited amount of space to let them all shine.
And it’s got the final exclusive page of our old black and white action thriller comic pitch, Bulletproof, that no one else has ever seen!
Sign up for it at birdguestbroadcast.com and help us pay rent and eat food and stuff!
THE END
See, this newsletter was shorter!
Well, kind of. A little.
But sometimes a little is a lot!
SOCIALS
