It’s the holidays, what better time for us all to enjoy the sparkle of the season? ^_^ We’ll start with a new look at Sparkler Monthly, the magazine put out by Chromatic Press.

Sparkler was launched to be a venue in which female writers, creators, and fans are given an open and LGBTQ-friendly space to enjoy manga and manga-derivative works – in effect, an English-language Josei magazine. Sparkler Monthly lead their first year with a license rescue of Tokyopop Rising Star Jen Lee Quick’s BL story Offbeat. They’ve also published volumes of other series, a few one-shots, prose stories and an Audio Drama.

Last year they had Denise Schroeder debut with a cute “Story A”, girl-meets-girl, Before You Go. Well Denise is back for the December issue with a sequel and our friends at Sparkler have given her characters the cover!

Sparkler Monthly is periodically open to submissions, so if you are a writer or artist (or team) do check their submissions schedule and guidelines. They are closed right now, but bookmark this link and keep it in mind for future use.

More importantly, Sparkler Monthly is run by people like you – fans of manga, who feel that there ain’t nothing wrong with Shounen Jump, but there’s room in the universe for something that’s female-friendly. This is not just a doujinshi, either – the editors are experienced industry professionals and they know what works. Sparkler is available by subscription – 12 months for the price of 10, plus a free ebook. A one-month trial is a mere $7. If you want to try them out before you hand over a cent, you can – they have chapters of their manga up for free and I gotta tell you – new series Windrose looks mighty nice.

Sparkler Monthy wants to get us all in the holiday mood, so they are doing a big Holiday sale. Use the code HOLIDAY to get 15% off almost everything in the Sparkler shop! And hey when you’ve subscribed, let ’em know what *you* want to read and buy, because they actually do care about that. ^_^

Personally, I’d love to see them succeed. It’s long past time for a Josei manga magazine in the west to make it on its own. And this is the one I want to see make it. ^_^ Let’s give ’em a hand, shall we?