Finishing up GIRL GOT GAME VOL. 8 this morning, and I need to get back to it, but I wanted to mention that the purchase link for the BLUE SPRING MANGA is up on RightStuf.com. I urge you to buy it. Seriously. It's not going to put a penny in my pocket, but if the BLUE SPRING sales are good, we might be able to convince Viz to license PING PONG and then my life will be complete and all nations will live in peace. Dog and cats will learn to speak, and children will stop picking their noses in public. You will all lose weight and start to smell good. Spontaneously. It's very important, you see?

Taiyo Matsumoto makes my heart go pitter-pat -- he's hands down, my favorite manga creator. I've been BEGGING Viz to acquire PING PONG for some time now, but the sales figures on Black & White and No. 5 were less than exceptional, so they're understandably guarded in acquisitions. I did, however, get the opportunity to work on BLUE SPRING for Viz and I can say without reservation that it's easily the best book I've had the privilege of adapting.

Now, it's not an easy book -- it's too smart to digest in a single sitting. You'll want to take this one in slowly and give it a repeat reading or two. The more time you spend with it, the more you'll get out of it. I recommend taking in the film as well. (I am currently obsessed with Thee Michelle Gun Elephant because of the soundtrack.)

Now get out there and do your duty!

(I'll post the Amazon link once it goes up. In the interest of full disclosure I should tell you that ordering the book through Amazon via this site will put pennies in my pocket, but honestly - I'll be grateful if you pick it up, no matter how you choose to do so.)

Got my DOD comp last week; that book was an *insane* amount of work, but I think it reads well. DOD's got a devoted following and we tried our best - we kept terms like "shinigami" and "kiseki" and added a fun little culture glossary with food notes at the end (cut down for space, alas!). Fingers: crossed. (Eric and I turned the book over to Richard Kadrey and a new adaptor as of Volume 4, I think. So...out of my hands at this point.)

Looking forward to seeing Kare, too.

I need to do something to this site to separate the business from the personal more distinctly. I pretty much post everything to the main blog and ignore CURRENT PROJECTS all-but-entirely. I'm leaning toward putting a simple illustration up on at kellysue.com that has two links - business and personal. The personal page will then get all the house and dog updates (and my business contacts will be spared that embarrassment) and all comics/manga/and writing entries will go on CURRENT PROJECTS. How hard it will be to make that happen, I have no idea.

In the meantime, here are my current projects:

Viz
Sensual Phrase
Kare First Love
...and two unannounced titles

Tokyopop
Girl Got Game
Slayers! novelization

IDW
Untitled vampire short story

Misc
Two book projects with Nikol Lohr
Original 5-issue action comic series pitch