Issue 22: a signing, a panel, and festivals ahoy!
Hey.
How are you?
Yeah, us too. Let’s talk about writing to take our minds off it for a bit.
NEW STUFF
We’ll be at Los Angeles Comic Con for one day only! Sunday, September 28, we’ll be signing at PRISM booth 1420 from 10 am to noon (with copies of Begin Transmission and Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming issue one available to purchase), and on the “What can dystopian sci-fi say about our dystopian present?” panel in room 406A at 1 pm.
One new lovely review for Voyager Homecoming issue 1 went up, if you’d like to check that out!
“…I can honestly say that it has changed my perspective on past episodes and made me rethink past interactions. This only shows just how well these writers know and love the source material. … A great start to a new series.”
Steve Price, Fanbase Press Contributor
Also, despite the fact that preorders for issue 2 just ended, and issue 2 doesn’t even release until October 22, the preview solicit for issue 4 is already out!
We didn’t show the issue 3 preview to you because it was so full of spoilers, and ummmmmm the one for issue 4 is far more spoilery!
You may not be able to avoid them, but we do suggest you try! It won’t ruin the book for you if you get these sneak peeks at what’s coming, but it may impact how surprised by some things you are, so keep that in mind!
We’ll actually talk more about the difficult dynamic of needing to preview stories in the Process Stuff section of the paid version of this letter of news. It’s only five bucks a month if you wanna help two of your fave ladies pay rent! 😊
Tilly Bridges
If you don’t remember, our first toe-dip into writing prose was accepted into an anthology!
It’ll be funding on Kickstarter in October, and we’ll definitely have a link for you as soon as you can follow the pre-launch or back it, but we do want to warn you that the anthology is full of adult stories, some of which are of an erotic or possibly violent nature. Our story is not. We weren’t trying to avoid those things, mind you, it’s just not what this story was.
Our story’s a gentle little sci-fi piece called “Finches,” and it’s about striving for something better even when the universe keeps putting barriers in your way. Anyway, we just wanted you to be prepared for that if you back the book, so you know what you’re getting into!
A short promo video for it with us and some of the other writers was released, if you want to check it out!
Long Away won its first award! The SAN DIEGO MOVIE FEST awarded it BEST LGBTQ SHORT. Hooray! Amazing!
This festival gives out more awards than films it actually screens, and their in-person festival isn’t for a good while, so we don’t know if it’ll screen for that yet. We’ll keep you updated if we hear anything!
Long Away is also an official selection of (yes this is its real name!) the SKATE OR DIE FILM FESTIVAL in POTTSTOWN, PA, where all films show in a roller rink! That’s actually really cool!
It’ll screen on October 4 in their PRIDE BLOCK of short films that begins at 2:30 pm!
WHAT WE’RE WORKING ON
We’ve turned in both of the comic pitches we were working on, one for an IP and one for an original. And then we heard back from an editor at a publisher we’ve not worked with yet who requested pitches from us before. We sent in four or five one-paragraph pitches, and she liked one of them and wanted a slightly longer one-page pitch, so we sent that in as well. Fingers crossed for all of them, hey?
Also we finally were sent to revision on our upcoming new animation episode, and we were so delighted to see it come back to us with very few changes. Why would it have changed from the version we sent in? Great question! Now we know what we’ll talk about in Process Stuff in the next issue of this newsletter. Hooray!
By the way, if you have ideas of things you’d like to see us discuss there, please let us know! We’re always looking for more.
We did the final pass on Voyager Homecoming issue 2, checking for lettering or coloring issues, making sure it’s all ready for print, and we’re also getting more layouts, art, and colors to approve for our YA trans romcom graphic novel. That’s the one with Mad Cave that should be coming out in 2026.
We’ve been told the official announcement is still a ways off, but it may show up on some websites soon, since book publishing is such a loooong pipeline. Books are usually announced and sent for reviews like a year before they publish, so… if we peep it anywhere, we’ll let you know!
We’re also contributing to another upcoming Star Trek Adventures book, so we’ll be working on our assignment for that in and around everything else. But other than that, we’ve cleared the deck (for now), so this week we went back to trying to finalize the outline for our new pilot so we can start scripting it.
Zoom.
TRANS TUESDAY UPDATE
The past two weeks are some of the most important essays and podcast episodes we’ve ever done, about the truth with gender affirming care for trans youth. Republicans have made them a front in their culture war, which is a disgusting thing to do to children… even more so when most trans kids are already dealing with so much.
So get the facts on what care for them actually entails, and the way everything that’s kept from them is forced on intersex kids and willingly provided to cis kids.
Tilly Bridges
And then learn what’s involved for most of them in actually accessing this care (it’s not easy).
Tilly Bridges
Also we’re trying to bring the #Letters4TransKids hashtag back, because they need our support so much right now. So write a little letter to them, about how you will stand with them and fight for them, take a pic, and post it to social media.
You can make a kid’s life brighter today.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Foundation has been such a fascinating show, not just in that it’s really great and intriguing sci-fi, but that it covers the expanse of hundreds of years, showing how societies and empires change and fall over time.
It’s a perspective you don’t get in a lot of shows, which makes it stand out all the more. And it doesn’t hurt that the art direction makes every shot look like a moving painting… which is perhaps fitting given that on the show, there’s a wall in a palace with a painting chronicling a dynasty where the art itself moves and flows as you look at it.
Anyway, it’s some o’ that good good sci-fi.
THE DIRTBAG DISPATCH
The Dirtbag has managed to get another bacterial infection in his chin, while simultaneously getting another eye infection.
He finds more ways to make himself sick without ever going outside than you’d think possible. He is the Dirtiest of Bags.
So every night we have to medicate both his chin and his eye, and he’s got a new eye med that seems to work great but he really hates. So now every night we have to try to fool him about when we’re going to do it, because he’s starting thinking we’re always coming to medicate him (look, he’s a dingus) and there are spots he can hide where we can’t get to him.
Henry is, as ever, an advanced-level cat.
Susan wrote a thread about Izzy over on Bluesky last week, about how much she (and her incredible sweetness) has really been helping us get through the firehose of awful that the news has been.
WHAT’S IN THE BIG TIME?
Big Time issue 21 goes into the necessary evil of previews, finding a balance between enticing yet not giving everything away, and how it can even change the story you’re writing.
And there’s an exclusive comic (from our first ever anthology twelve years ago!) that’s a goofy… rhyming??... take on Frankenstein. No, really. Really! We’re not lyin’ to you.
Sign up for it and help us pay rent and eat food and stuff!
Tilly Bridges
THE END
Hey.
Hey you.
You are loved.
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