Issue 42: Princesses for DC, film fests, and pre-orders!
July is here and that means SDCC is right around the corner.
Ahhh!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
NEW STUFF
Soooo yeah, that news that happened right before the last issue of this newsletter went out was that our other graphic novel was finally announced… Princesses of the DC Universe! Let’s see that cover one more time, because holy crap is it amazing.
Cover art (and all interior art, including the colors!) are by Alba Glez, and what a blessing it was that our editor found her. She’s so freaking good, and fits the tone of the book perfectly. And she’s been a total joy to work with!
PotDCU is a middle-grade girls’ adventure comedy, but it’s so much more than that. It’s for kids in the way Pixar movies are, in that it’s absolutely for them (and they’re going to love it), but it’s just as entertaining for adults. We worked really hard to make this appeal to everyone, so please do give it a shot even if you don’t have kids!
It’s also for girls, but it’s not just for girls. Part of the origin of this book is that we wanted girls to have their own sci-fi space adventure, which is a thing they don’t often get. Boys get a million, but girls never do. But also it’ll be great to give this book to boys too, because there’s plenty for them to love in it and it’s important they see girls going on adventures and being heroes, too. It’s important for kids of all genders to see that!
This is a literal dream project of ours, and that we’re getting to actually make it and tell this story, set in the DC universe, with DC characters, is extraordinary.
The first version of the pitch for what became this book was done in 2019! We had a contact at DC who offered to get a pitch in front of editors for us, and he said they were especially looking for YA books (DC was just launching their extraordinary YA line at the time).
And the concept for this book is what we came up with. Unfortunately he never got to show it to anyone as he was laid off shortly after we sent it to him, and so we figured the pitch was dead.
Fast forward four years to SDCC 2023, and Tilly was on a panel about writing stories for LGBTQIA+ youth. On that panel she met prolific writer Brandon T. Snider, who’s since become a lovely friend.
On that panel, someone in the audience asked what we could do to get more trans stories out there, because they can be so hard to find. And Tilly’s answer was that more cis creators needed to open doors for us, because they have connections and resources that most trans creators just don’t have.
Brandon took that answer to heart, and immediately after the panel offered to put us in touch with his editor at DC, Kristy Quinn. He thought we’d really vibe with each other, and he was right. She’s lovely and we hit it off right away.
She asked if we had any pitches for DC characters, and we were like… well, actually, we do! Because we still had that old pitch from 2019, and it was ready to go.
We sent it to her in the fall of 2023, and after several months of refining and revising (which included swapping out half the cast for different characters for various reasons, and aging it down to middle-grade), she got it okayed by everyone at DC and we got the official greenlight. That took several months.
And then on April 29, 2024 we officially started scripting. And we remember the day, because Tilly took this screenshot as she began the first draft and got all misty-eyed at officially getting to write this.
It’s even got an authentic dyslexia-induced Tilly typo in it!
We finished scripting it in early fall 2024, and ever since then it’s just been Alba drawing the entire book, coloring the entire book, and right now we’re going through lettering (our amazing letterer is Jodie Troutman, we asked for her specifically and were thrilled we got her).
And now the world knows about it, and it’s got a release date: March 2, 2027! And pre-orders are already open! Look for a link below.
This book is so much fun and so dang funny, you’re gonna love it. It’s a good, good time, and we cannot wait for you to read it.
WE’RE WRITING A DC BOOK!!
Wow. So cool. 😊
A friend of ours, writer Collin Lieberg, hosts a fairly regular virtual mixer (on Zoom) for creatives. He’s asked us to do a Q&A for the next one, so if you want to ask questions about our career or any of our work, or even just hang and chat with us for an evening, you can register for that here. It’s free!
Comicon.com did a lovely interview with us about Just Another Summer, so have a read!
We have another comic anthology appearance coming up, this time in SYSTEMIC volume 2. It’s an anthology about the way societal systems intersect with (and damage) the people living within them. Our short is called Battles Lost and Won, and it’s about gay witches! Art by Andrea Rosales, letters by Ariana Maher. Stay tuned for more info and sneak peeks! It’s coming soon to Kickstarter, so hit the link and click to get notified as soon as it launches!
In Long Away news, it screened as part of the FP Arts film festival in Scotland last week! We’ve not heard any details about how it went, so if you were there, let us know!
Also, we recently found out that it’s an official selection of the Out South film festival! This is one of the biggest queer film fests in the country, so that’s really cool! No details on the day and time of the screening yet, but the festival runs August 13-16, at the Carolina Theatre in Durham, NC!
Long Away is also still screening at SDCC as part of the Comic-Con International Independent Film Fest! We should have the time/date/location info for you, along with our entire SDCC schedules, in the next issue!
We certainly hope so, because that’ll only be a week before the con!
Remember! Preorders make or break books, here’s the links to our two books releasing this August… and our book releasing next March!! And we need you to help make them a success!
Our YA queer trans romcom, Just Another Summer, available in paperback and hardcover!
Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming, the complete series collected in a trade paperback! A "second finale" for the show, including all the reunions you've waited thirty years to see!
Titan
Annnnnd our middle-grade sci-fi superhero adventure comedy, Princesses of the DC Universe!
Joan Holub
WHAT WE’RE WORKING ON
New graphic novel proposal for our book agent is revised and done, and on its way to publishers. Cross all o’ them fingers and toes for us!
We’ve also been scripting the new pilot, and the first draft is almost halfway done. This is past where the previous pilot crapped out and we realized it wasn’t working, but this one is singing, so… dropping the other and starting this one was definitely the way to go. It’s coming to us so much easier than the last one, and is just a joy to work on every time. Trying to get pages out on the last one was like pulling teeth, so… pay attention to those signs when they appear!
TRANS TUESDAY UPDATE
We talked with author Mia V. Moss about their upcoming queer epic fantasy novel, The Heresy of Thieves!
Tilly Bridges
And then we looked at the way RAINBOW CAPITALISM (which was always bad but complicated) has recently gotten so much worse, as mega-corporations cave to the bigoted bad man in power, and fully abandon those they pretended to care about. And the wild thing is, that’s not even a financially sound thing to do! Even from a nakedly capitalistic standpoint, supporting people from marginalized communities makes you more money. We have the receipts!
Tilly Bridges
RECOMMENDATIONS
We’ve never been super into vampires. We don’t hate them or actively avoid them or anything, but when we end up liking some vampire media, it’s usually the exception more than the rule (like What We Do in the Shadows, though that’s kind of been ruined for us now that Matt Berry has signed on to queen TERF JKR’s new audiobooks… thanks for telling us you care about a paycheck more than trans rights, apparently).
Anyway! The first two seasons of Interview with the Vampire were good and we enjoyed them, but this is… something else (complimentary). We were wondering why you’d retitle a show technically in its third season, but it actually makes sense given the entirely new direction and tone the show has taken.
It still fits right in with the first two seasons, which is the wild thing. But this show is just a cacophony of charisma and chaos, and we’ve really been digging it.
It also doesn’t hurt that Sam Reid is perhaps the most charismatic man on earth.
THE DIRTBAG DISPATCH
Sometimes the kitties entertain themselves, and thank goodness.
WHAT’S IN THE BIG TIME?
Big Time issue 42 talks about how so much of the creative life is filled with waiting, probably even more than you think, and how to cope with it. And there’s the third page from one of our earliest comic anthology stories, the gritty 70s crime story, Morrow!
Sign up for it at birdguestbroadcast.com and help us pay rent and eat food and stuff!
THE END
We have three books available for preorder at the same time?
Bet that’ll never happen again.
But it’d be cool if it did.
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Tilly Bridges
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