slr2moons

I can't think of what to talk about today. Too brain dead, maybe? But to keep from missing a day, here's where I am in lettering manga:

Behind the Scenes (Urakata!!) by Bisco Hatori: in the middle of volume 7, the final volume.

Chainsaw Man by Fujimoto Tatsuki: I'll be lettering chapter 19 this weekend. (This one runs a chapter a week, rather than in volume chunks. IDK if a volume release will eventually follow, but I wouldn't mind. C: )

Natsume's Book of Friends (Natsume Yuujinchou) by Midorikawa Yuki: finished volume 23 about a month ago. Series still ongoing.

Requiem of the Rose King (Bara Ou no Souretsu) by Kanno Aya: finished volume 10 right after the new year. Series still ongoing.

Seraph of the End (Owari no Serafu) by Kagami, Yamamoto, and Furuya: I'll be starting volume 17 in a few weeks. Series ongoing for a bit longer; we're definitely in the endgame. I'll also be lettering chapter 78 in a few weeks. This one first appears in English in monthly chapters, then a volume release follows about a year later.

Skip Beat by Nakamura Yoshiki: I'll be starting volume 43 in a few weeks. Still ongoing, and I've lettered every single volume. This is by far my longest-running title. C:

New Title #N: I'll be starting this one in a few weeks, too. It's going to be a busy spring and summer!

Series I finished last year: After Hours by Nishio Yuhta, ended at volume 3. Bloody Mary by Samamiya Akaza, ended at volume 10. Build King by Shimabukuro Mitsutoshi, a oneshot chapter that appeared in Shonen Jump magazine. COMIQ by Takahashi Suzuki, a short seven-chapter series that also appeared in the magazine. Again, IDK if a volume release will happen, but it is the perfect length. C:

I thought I'd do a shigoto update, since it's been a while. C:

Behind the Scenes (the college club comedy) - Volume 1 was finished a couple of weeks ago. I don't have the tanko (Japanese graphic novel) for vol 2 yet, but the raws are up and ready for me. No script, either, so not currently lettering this one.

Bloody Mary (the vampire comedy) - Volume 2 has corrections left. I do have the tanko for vol 3 already, but no script. My editor said I should have script pretty soon. C:

Natsume's Book of Friends (quiet teen boy who sees spirits) - Volume 19 was also finished a couple of weeks ago. They print Natsume quickly, so hopefully it will be out on shelves soon! No word yet on volume 20, but I'm sure it's coming, probably in early spring next year.

Requiem of the Rose King (retelling of War of the Roses, shoujo manga style) - Volume 3 should be out soon, if not already. I've just started lettering volume 4!

Seraph of the End (vampire action) - Volume 8 was finished a couple months back. I have everything I need to start volume 9. Chapter 39 (which will be the first chapter in volume 11) came out this month in the magazine. Things are getting verrry interesting.

Skip Beat (showbiz comedy) - Volume 36 was completed last week. It ends on a killer cliffhanger. :D

And those are my six ongoing titles! ATM, I'm only working on Requiem and Seraph. But Behind will start up again sometime this month, most likely. Possibly Bloody, too. No random BL books right now, either. If the pattern holds, this time next year I'll have Lost Letters vol 3 (overall vol 4 for the series, since volume 1 was called "The Match Seller".)

Requiem is due in mid December, but this will be an easy volume (mostly dialogue, spare FX), which means it will be quick to letter. Seraph is due after the New Year. I am cautiously optimistic about my current work load! :DDD

Almost two months since my last update. So much for being the change and posting more, huh? Ugh.

Okay, so...

tl:dr: I have been very busy lately. Lots of stress. Staying in my current apartment for almost another year. Spicer is not doing well. Work is crazy-busy. Haven't been able to do anything creative since Yuletide.

( The whole nine yards, for those not yet given in to the influence of the brief-content platforms of FB, twitter, and tumblr. )

Interesting things happening in the manga world that are relevant to me.

First, the bad news. Clay is ending in the October 4th issue of Jump Square. This means 2 more volumes in English. I already have Japanese Clay vol 26, which was published in June. One more Japanese volume is coming, possibly two if the final chapter is super-long.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I started lettering Clay in fall of 2005. 9 years, guys. It won't be my first ongoing series to end--that was Nana, which didn't have a real ending, but cut off abruptly due to mangaka health problems. Honey, Captive, and the various oneshots all had ended before I began. Clay will have a real ending.

*is at a loss*

In lighter news, apparently Seraph will have an anime. This is early, particularly since it's a monthly title. IDT we know the anime studio yet, but I hope it's Madhouse or Bones, and that they don't stiff the budget. I likes me some pretty animation. I also hope they wait until next spring. That'll give us around 8 more chapters of manga, and if they keep the anime to a short 11 or 12 ep season, that should be just enough. Please no half-baked anime-studio-written endings! *cough* Clay *cough*.

And in news that's relevant to me on a personal, apparently there's a new manga adaptation of Arslan. O.o Being done by FMA's mangaka, Arakawa Hiromu. Talk about a complete change in style from the original shoujo manga adaption. *blinks* And here I thought the Arslan manga people had mentioned reading at Crunchyroll was the shoujo version, and I'd been surprised someone would license such a dated-art-style manga. This explains things, huh?

As for me, I'm going crazy trying to finish everything--or as much as I can--before the week I lose in Texas for family visits and my cousin's wedding. (No one can lay a guilt trip on you like family, amirite?)

I have this fear that my being away for so long will trigger Spicer into another bought of health problems. It's entirely possible. Argh.

I've really flaked on the posting more often, huh? Sorry to say I lost an LJ friend recently, but I gained a new one. C: Can't really complain! Thank you to everyone who has kept me on their reading/friends list, even though I don't talk much here these days. :P

Work-wise, things are...interesting. I finished Natsume 17's first draft a few days early. Now I'm waiting on corrections. Voice 7 is almost done, nicely on time. For Seraph, the mad dash of all those chapters in a row is finally over this Monday with chapter 21--OMGYAY--and now I have a week off before it's time to letter the first of the now-monthly chapters, with #22. (Seraph is monthly in Japan, so it's monthly here now that we've caught up on all the previously published-in-Japan chapters.)

Sounds like things are in pretty good shape, right? Welp, now let me tell you about Clay. Clay 25 is running behind. The constant Seraph chapters were a real drain on my time, and now I'm paying for it. This volume of Clay is due on June 2nd, and it's going to be interesting meeting that. Particularly since I'm trying to have a life and see IRL friends more than twice a month. ^^;;

I have made one big change with Clay: in all the previous volumes, hand-drawn "organic" sound effects were original to every page. With all my other titles--all the way back to Nana--I save FX and reuse them where I can. It's a big time-saver. I figured Clay was too varied to try that, but the opposite is true. I've always said Clay is like busywork. When it comes to creating the English FX and retouching the artwork, Clay rarely makes me stop and think. It's straight-forward, and I have it down to a science. (Granted, a slow science, but yeah.) And thus, I've begun saving my organic Clay FX for use on more than one page. It's already saved me some good time, even in the ~20 pages I've done so far.

The vast majority of readers won't notice the reusing. For one thing, I don't reuse an FX within 50 pages of a previous use. In fact, I doubt anyone but me would ever know I started this, if I hadn't said it here! Heh. When 25 is released, feel free to play "spot the duplicate FX" and ask me if you're right. ^^V

But when Clay 25 is done, I have to scramble to finish Seraph volume 3, which is when I add FX for the GN version. Fun times.

I'm still hoping this summer will be good for me, since the previous three sucked.

This weekend, I saw two IRL friends! On Saturday, knastymike and I went to a German restaurant. It was DELICIOUS! I must go back, even though it's a little pricey, and a drive! YUM. Then today, I drove to mab's house and we walked around her neighborhood and talked fandom, and house buying, and all sorts of fun stuff. ^^

A satisfying weekend, all around! And now, back to Clay 25. Wheeee!

Last week I answered some interview questions via email for a Japanese pop culture blog. Several other letterers were asked the same questions. I was asked if I could provide some WIP samples, and after Shoujo Editor 2 and Seraph Editor approved, I did! You can find the interview at the link below. It's a small world, because I know two of the other letterers! Heeeee!

Advice on Manga Lettering from Manga Letterers

LMK what you think! C:

Went to my third Yuletide/Nano/scribing-for-any-reason write-in on Friday evening, where I saw the wonderful snottygirl, saladbats, and mab. There were only four of us, but it was still fun! We even ran into a past NaNo-er, and a small group of others who WERE NaNo-ing. ^^ As for me, I made some serious inroads on my own Yuletide fic, of which I am very proud. I wrote about 350 words, which is a lot for me in the space of 45 minutes of actual writing time. (The rest of the evening being spent chatting or researching stuff for my fic.)

Speaking of, I finally figured out how to work writing on my phone. I can't write to google docs since my phone isn't an iphone or an Android, I don't trust emails to not lose text half-way through me typing (it's happened), and Livejournal's posting page is ridiculously code-heavy nowadays...but Dreamwidth works great. :D I have my Yuletide WIP in a private post on my DW account, which I keep open in a tab on my phone's browser. I can be in the middle of writing something, pause long enough for my phone to go into power-saving mode, wake it up...and my words are all still there. Dreamwidth doesn't time out! OMGYAY! \O/ As long as I have a net connection, I can write on the go! And carry pen and paper with me, JIC I don't have the connection. Score!

The deadline is less than a month away. Today I worked on it during breakfast and dinner. I'm pleased with what I have so far, including catching two plotholes pertaining to aspects of canon I'd forgotten, annnnnd a really big realization that I needed to lighten the mood of the MC. Thankfully I caught all three problems before I was more than 500 words into the fic. :D

Speaking of wordcount, the Yuletide minimum is 1,000. This fic is going to end up much more than that. I'm about half-way through the first scene, and the fic's already 650 words long. It isn't just my inability to write shortfic, though. My recipient loves a particular trope, and for me to do it justice, first I have to establish certain facts before I go ripping them apart. (No, there's no non-con in this one, I swear! X|) My recipient did say in their letter that they loooove the sexy tiems, but with the plot I've chosen, that won't really work. Not without the trope of Healing Cock, which I refuse to write. I hope they'll be satisfied with manly snugglings. ^^

I had kind of intimidated myself about this year's fic. I mean, last year's Yuletide fic by me turned out GOOD. It's the most popular fic I have at AO3, and I genuinely like it. I even read it for fun every couple of months! I worry that this fic can't live up to the success of last year's. But my fanfic sempai Star-chan calmed me down. She told me to just do the best I can. I am a decent writer, after all, *I* wrote last year's fic! And all the other fics on my account, all of which are perfectly readable. I certainly have the potential to write another well-received fic! And besides, what's truly important is that my recipient likes it, and I'm doing my damnedest to do just that! (Even though there won't be any sexy tiems. Hopefully someone will give my recipient a sexy fic treat. Though maybe if I finish ahead of time (HAHAHAHAH!) I could write a 2nd fic for them and load it with the smut. I'd say there's a 5% chance...)

I've enjoyed typing on the fic today. Not only having a full-sized keyboard, but being in my home, where I can relax and not need to tune out the coffeeshop music and conversation all around me. I do love write-ins, but it's more for the creative companionship and ready opinions/help to be had, rather than actual words produced. Though writing sprints work well for me. Let's do more! C:

I keep forgetting that someone is writing a Yuletide fic for me, too. I suspect I know which one, based on a comment in the yuletide-coal community that fit one of my requests. It will be interesting to see if I'm right. ^^ Whether I am or not, best of luck and good wishes to my author, if they happen to see this post! I'm looking forward to reading your words on the 25th! :DDD

In work news, Clay 23 is in the can. Voice 4 awaiting corrections, Voice 5 lettering begun. Seraph chapter 6 in the can, GN 1 being FXed right now. Natsume 16 and Skip 33 are waiting for me to start. Wheeeee!!