Archive for the ALC Publishing Category


Stories, Stories Everywhere…

July 7th, 2013

Welcome to Special Announcements Sunday here on Okazu. A happy Tanabata to you.

When I stepped away from events and publishing in March, the most popular question I received at the time was, “What will you do with your free time?” I have an answer for that now. I am spending my time and money on getting things done that have been left languishing for years. So. Today we have two announcements:

Yuriko and Midori by KunThe final chapters of Saiyuu no Ryouko: The Continuing Adventure of Yuriko are (at last!) available on Yuricon.

Shoujoai ni Bouken and Saiyuu no Ryouko, the stories about our beloved Yuricon mascot, out lesbian pop idol Yuriko and her lover, novelist Midori, are completed and up for your reading pleasure.

The first book took a mere 7 months to write, but I had no other obligations and I spent a lot of my days and nights writing.  The sequel took several years to write, but it’s been complete, probably, since 2008 or so. Time just got away from me, with other, more critical tasks.  Looking back over the chapters, I’m still very happy with the stories.  Yuriko and Midori are characters I like to think about, even now.  Maybe one day I’ll even write more about them. In any case, I hope you enjoy reading their stories as much as I enjoyed writing it. ^_^ Please feel free to write fanfic for them. We put SnB/SnR fanfic up on Yuricon. Fanart is also welcome – it will go up on our Yuriko and Friends Gallery. If you are motivated to write or draw about Yuriko and her friends, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. ^_^

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Worldshaking 2.0And, even further down the list of “stuff to get to eventually” was my poor little fan/fiction site, “Worldshaking” Fanfic. I originally built an archive in 1997 when I first started to write Xena fanfic. Like so many other people at the time, I had a free site (not Angelfire ^_^;)  and in 1998, I added my first Sailor Moon stories. It was about then I moved to my own site, “Worldshaking” Fanfic, although the Wayback Machine only has an image from 2001. I remember the first site I built. I was so proud of myself. ^_^  The image here is from my first site renewal. I spent *hours* on that tiled clouds background. /grin/

The site remained substantially the same from 1998-2006, when I ran a contest here on Okazu to get a new design. Kyanite developed a spiffy new site design for me – one that was not terribly different from what most people would be doing shortly thereafter on WordPress. I was writing more Maria-sama ga Miteru stories by then and a lot of Miscellaneous Fanfic from random, obscure series like Amakusa 1637, Transistor ni Venus, Hana no Asuka-gumi, and the like. ^_^

WSF2Also around then I started putting together more original fiction, aside from Yuriko and Midori. Fanfic is a great way to learn the basics of writing, with training wheels. With a fanfic, you don’t have to create the world, the situations or the relationships.  (Although I often do anyway. I tend to create original characters and situations, even while using the ones already established by the series. ) The new site allowed me to focus on whatever I was doing at the time, without losing access to the rest.

I haven’t written a lot of fanfic in the past few years. In 2008, I lost a job, got another one, lost that, got a *terrible* job, left that, had a series of awful jobs until 2010 when I got the job I have now, which I love. Those years were not easy on me – my health and creativity crashed and burned. Duh. And here we are, years later and I am *finally* back to a place where my creativity has returned to close to previous levels. I’m ready to write again. And now I have the time, too.

So, here is my second announcement.  “Worldshaking” Fanfic is back, with a new look  – and a new, original story! And I find myself mentally gearing up to finish a bunch of unfinished stories, (including a cyberpunk novella I have had in my head for probably close to a decade now, which is about 2/3rds done.)

WSF3

Before I wrap up here, I want to mention two things. One – you may have noticed that all the iterations of the site have that dorky little animated gif of Sailor Uranus doing “World Shaking!” I love it, do not grief me over it.  As long as there is a WSF, that gif will be there.  ^_^ (Does anyone else remember those?  They were from some game or other, I think I probably have them all on an unreadable backup disk somewhere.)

Secondly and most importantly, the recent Yuricon, Okazu and WSF site renewals have been worked on by the incomparable Lissa Pattillo. Lissa’s design skills, patience and WordPress wizardry cannot be praised enough. I recommend her with all my recommends for your website needs.

Thank you for reading Okazu and for reading my stories over the years. I hope to bring you many more. ^_^





Hard Decisions

March 18th, 2013

Okay, after a really bad week last week, during which JManga closed up and fans everywhere ignored the impossibly complex business of licensing and publishing to point fingers at individual factors which they, with their years of experience in pointing fingers, believe is “the reason” JManga failed, I have made a decision.

In 2000, I started a fan community for Yuri. 13 years later, it’s still a fan community. It’s not an annual event, or a thriving sustainable manga market. You know that old business adage about “do a thing for 10 years and you’ll be an overnight success?” It’s not true. ^_^

I’m stepping down as Yuricon events chair totally. I can’t run a sustainable event with the money in my pocket alone. I kept hoping one book, or one event would be successful enough to fund the next. I’m also giving up, for the moment, hope of publishing  anything new. I can’t afford print, you don’t want to pay for digital, and all the many differences between JP publishers and US fans are so huge and insurmountable. I don’t have the energy or clout or money to bridge the gap.

On the front end, this will make no difference to you. I’ll still be blogging and promoting good Yuri, collecting and disseminating news and research here on Okazu and on Yuricon. I’m available for writing, lecturing and editing. But on the back end, I’m stopping trying to accomplish anything. 13 years is enough. I’m tired. 13 years is a long time to fail at something. ^_^;

This is not to say I’m giving up loving Yuri. I‘m merely giving up trying to create a sustainable Yuri market here in the the US. 

I’ll be back tomorrow with a review.

Extra credit question: How many sales do you think a JManga ‘Best Seller’ made?

Postscript: More well-wishes (and less “you suck” comments) that I imagined came in after this post. Thank you all. I want to reassure you that I am fine. Not suicidally depressed or anything at all. ^_^ It is one of my magic powers to adapt to change  faster than most people can even envision change. For those of you interested in business management, in the last three years I have attempted to “pivot” this business several times. The market just wasn’t there to make anything sustainable. The number of people who download don’t translate to sales at all.

The answer to the extra credit question is about 300 or so. That means a best seller was taking in roughly $1500. That about covered the cost of  producing the thing. When there’s not enough profit and seed money is gone..that’s it for the company.  Once again, it’s not Dawinian failure, neither was CPM or Tokyopop. (You know how crazy people sound when they blame hurricanes on gays and the like? Fans sound exactly the same when they blame business’ failure on random things.) No company fails because they want to screw fans. It’s just business. ^_^

So again, thanks for all your kind words. I’m fine. I’m still here and that means there’s always another opportunity ahead. (^_^)v





ALC Publishing and JManga Announce Fujieda Miyabi’s Yuri Manga Ameiro Kouchakan Kandan (飴色紅茶館歓談)

January 10th, 2013

What a way to start off the new year, with the official JManga release of Fujieda Miyabi’s Ameiro Kouchakan Kandan! (飴色紅茶館歓談)

http://www.yuricon.com/2013/01/10/ameriro/

Starting off 2013 with this lovely manga, a cup of tea and some biscuits sounds like the perfect winter afternoon for me. ^_^





ALC Publishing announces Tokyo Love ~ Rica ‘tte Kanji!?

October 4th, 2012

Fifteen years ago, Rica Takashima walked into a lesbian bar and set off a chain of events that changed the world. From that fateful meeting came ALC Publishing and the Yuri Manga collection known as Rica ‘tte Kanji!?.

Now, years later, Rica and ALC  Publishing are teaming up again for the definitive Rica collection, Tokyo Love ~ Rica ‘tte Kanji!? Tokyo Love is available in a choice of DRM-free digital formats and is being made available as a free online flipbook (Please tell people you know – especially young people who are looking for positive LGBTQ role models! The online version is rated Older Teen.) In addition, Tokyo Love is available to be shared for personal use or class curriculum. It’s your book – go ahead and share it. ^_^

And from the bottom of our hearts, Rica and everyone at ALC Publishing say thank you for reading Tokyo Love!





Follow-up Note on ‘Tokyo Love’ Delays

September 20th, 2012

So yesterday I told you all about the delays with the print version of Tokyo Love ~ Rica ‘tte Kanji!?

Today Rica and I made a drastic decision. We’re scrapping the manuscript we’re using and starting over from scratch. The original edition of Rica ‘tte Kanji!? was created in 2003, before there were high-res scanners for household use. So many things have changed, the way we letter, and the way we scan, the way we lay pages out…everything.

So, yes, we know this is going to delay the print edition even more than it is, but we’ve decided to remaster all the pages. Re-scan, re-clean, re-letter if needed, re-lay them out.

Why am I telling you this? Because, 1) I want you to see as much as you can into our workshop, since ultimately, this is all about you. Rica and I care about what you see, we care about your reading experience and I want you to know that. And, mostly, 2) Why not? there’s no reason to hide the fact that I made a command decision that didn’t work out. ^_^ We’re human, so of course sometimes we make the wrong decision. And this was one of those moments that “it seemed like a good idea at the time” wasn’t a good idea at all. Oh well. It’s a learning experience.

The upshot is, you’ll get a completely remastered version of the original Rica ‘tte Kanji!?, so everything will look better than it did in the first place. If we have to re-letter those early pages, we’ll replace the ever-hated Comic Sans, with the default I now use (Komika, if anyone cares. And if you hate that one too, oh well. I really like the way it looks. ^_^) Plus, the “More Rica” pages from the Yuri Monogatari collections, and the as-yet unpublished in English work and the brand-new-for-this-collection pages.

At NYCC, we’ll be premiering the ebook version, which will be DRM-free epub – we are committed to keeping all our digital editions DRM-free from here forward. And we’ll launch the online free edition. When NYCC is over, we’ll start taking pre-orders for the print edition, but we still don’t know, exactly, when that will come out. I’m going to pretend it will be available for the holiday buying season and work hard to make that true.

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who (so far!) has helped out with this book: Rica, of course, Takami-sama, Diane, Ed, Masayo-san, Yukiyo-san, Erin, Heather (who let me freak out at her a few times)  and my wife who is probably heartily sick of me talking about this book, and really ready for this to be over.

This has been an exhausting process. It’s not over yet. But when it is, you will have the absolutely best book Rica and I can make for you. That is our promise to you.