I'm not dead even though I might wish it so!

So I don't really wish I were dead. I'm not that gloomy. I'm sure you thought I was, though, unless you know of my other super secret blog (with over 60,000 hits). Maybe not such a secret, eh?

I received my reviewer copy of my very first academic publication a few weeks ago. My review of Bill Willingham's Fables series appears in the Fall 2007 issue of MELUS (The Society for the Study of theMulti-Ethnic Literature of the United States). My review focuses on the ways in which the Fables series tackles issues of ethnicity often in an understated, sort of unobtrusive way. But it's definitely all there flittering beneath the fairy tale retelling facade.

The issue (picture forthcoming) is pretty spectacular. The cover was specially designed by Gilbert Hernandez of Love & Rockets fame. The issue features some great essays and reviews of graphic novels, comics series, and some critical works in comics theory.

Another nice surprised arrived in my mailbox recently--the bound version of my Master's thesis, "'More Than Interesting Dead Things': The Reanimation of the Oral Tradition Through Narrative Subversion and Visual Narrative Performance."

How's that for a tongue-twisting title?? In academia you earn extra girth for lengthy, complicated titles with colons in them.

On the fiction front, I got turned down by the Very Swanky Journal to which I submitted my first piece. It's not a big surprise, I just really needed to get over that first rejection. It's nothing to be scared of, just a big fat "NO." So I've submitted another piece to a slightly less swanky journal (still fantabulous, though), and I'm expecting that rejection letter any time now.

I shall try my best to keep you (four readers) updated on more of a regular basis, so I don't have to go through the whole apology spiel and then dump all of my life happenings on you at once.

Be diligent! Be diligent! Write! Write!