I was going to write a review today of something no one but me cared about (/cough/Hana no Asuka-gumi/cough/) but much more interesting news popped up that I want to share.

Today, Dorling Kindersley (DK), announced that Manga The Visual Guide is available for pre-order! This was the massive project I worked on all summer 2023.

I join luminaries of Anime/Manga researcher Frederick L. Schodt, Jonathan Clements, Rachel Thorn, Zack Davisson to present a pictorial history of manga in the 20th and 21st centuries. I wrote the chapter on 2010s.

Did I mention Yuri, BL and queer manga? Yes, of course I did. ^_^ But the series to write about were given to me, so I did not get to choose (IOW, don’t come at me. ^_^) It was a herculean effort on my part, as I was severely ill when they first approached me about this. But it was done and I am pretty happy with what I gave them – and, of course, I learned a lot while writing it. I think the only series I wrote about that I had read or watched previously to beginning was Golden Kamuy.

I want to thank my local library system for providing me with all the manga I read in order to understand these series. I could not have done it without that. Show your library some love – they are supporting graphic media and helping the next generation get into manga.

Thanks to DK for stalking me down alleyways and cudgeling me into doing this. Thanks to Rachel and Zack for being my emotional support authors, you definitely kept me grounded. And thanks to Cefn for his patience with my slightly addled brain.

This beautiful book will also be a useful starting point for people who want to know more about anime and manga, but don’t know where to begin. And when you are done with it, go look up all the other contributors’ work. They are amazing.

So…that’s what I did last summer. It is slated for a November 2024 release. Hope you like it!