The Thingity-Jig by Kathleen Dohertyillustrated by Kristyna Litten The Thingity-Jig is my new favorite book! It is a joyful, readful, inventive thing that bounces and sways and turns reading to play. Perfectly-paced with tasty prose and warmed with wonderful, whimsical scenes. An absolute delight to read and a marvelous feast for the eyes—get ready for The Thingity-Jig…
Winner of the Revelation Prize, Liberation Readers’ Prize, and Poland Prize from the Angoulême International Comics Festival and named one of FNAC’s “Top 10 Graphic Novels About Illness”! From the publisher (Top Shelf): A triumph of graphic memoir, Parenthesis narrates the author’s experience with tumor-related epilepsy–losing herself, and finding herself again. Judith is barely out of her…
I’m happy to share that I FINISHED WRITING THE ROUGH DRAFT of my gritty sci-fi adventure novel last night! Clocking in at 175,000 words and exactly 700 pages, my sketchbook ideas are now fully fleshed-out characters, creatures, and technologies that make up a single, cohesive story. Is it perfect? YES! Just kidding. Among other things,…
This is your LAST CHANCE to be the FIRST to read my next graphic novel—for free! There’s no catch. This is not a gimmick. I just want to hear your thoughts on my book before I send it to print. Sign up for my First Readers Club here or read on to learn more. NOTE: NEW READERS MUST APPLY…
I’m always on the hunt for another great book to read or to listen to while I work. Thank Heaven for these 1,000 free audio books via Open Culture, featuring books by Margaret Atwood, Isaac Asimov, L Frank Baum, Ray Bradbury, William S Burroughs, and more!
Read part 1 here, read part 2 here, or read on to find out how I used the feedback I collected from beta readers and used reader suggestions to improve my all-ages graphic novel. Getting Feedback From Readers I started getting reader feedback on the same day I sent out the link to the rough…
Read part 1 here or keep reading to learn how I found and reached out to beta readers, and shared my all-ages graphic novel before it was published. Finding Beta Readers It might be somewhat easy to find people online who want to read a book for free, but I figured I would need to…
Read on to learn more about: Creating my 224-page rough draft in 3 weeks while stuck in bed Finding beta readers to proofread my graphic novel Setting up surveys and forms to gather feedback from beta readers Using reader feedback to revise my graphic novel Hi! My name is Jess Smart Smiley. I’m an author/illustrator…
Over the last 4 or 5 years, PEOW has quickly become one of my favorite indie comics publishers. Founded by Elliot Alfredius, Olle Forsslöf and Patrick Crotty, in Stockholm, Sweden, PEOW publishes a unique brand of beautifully-produced risograph comics from around the world. While the heavy shipping costs to the US have been cost-prohibitive for…
The Good News: being stuck in bed with constant, debilitating pain for the past 14+ months afforded me more reading time than I usually get. The Bad News: much of my reading time and enjoyment was cut short by the effects of medicine (headaches, brain fog, memory and concentration issues). That being said… 2019 was…