The Gold Ceiling - Page 10
Liza is reassuring - Not sure if this manga iconography works with my art!
I think the huffing in the second panel works. I’m not so sure about the blurred eyes in the first panel. Feedback is welcome.
Some of my recent reads:
Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth. So good I'm reading the sequel now. I'd say it's better than her Divergent series. It's set in an alternate universe where each person has a special power from "the current", which is similar to "The Force" from Star Wars, except everybody gets a power and they are all different. It also deals a lot with fate being prescribed vs made.
Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko - After reading One Last Stop I realized I have read very few lesbian romances, which is especially odd since I've written one, so I picked this one up. Unlike One Last Stop this isn't sci-fi. Her music video by the same name is actually a great trailer for the book. I knew of the video when I started reading the book but it took until almost the end to realize it was the same characters. As a parent reading about kids drink alcohol makes me a bit uncomfortable. It's a great look at homophobia and misogyny.
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki - my co-parent recommended this to me. It's a remarkable mix of fantasy and sci-fi set in modern America. The main characters are a trans girl who is a violin prodigy, a middle aged lesbian who made a deal with a demon to teach violin prodigies in return for their souls, and refugees from a distant galaxy.
Slay by Brittney Morris - listened to the audio book based on @Susannah Go (she/her)’s review. I was a bit disappointed that while the book included a trans character it seemed to spend more time giving positive representation to Dave Chappelle (a noted transphobe). OTOH, it's possible the author didn't know and even if there was a trans sensitivity reader it could have been missed. Also, we contain multitudes and I am against cancel culture, I think it's what radicalized Rowling against the trans community. The book is a good critique of online/game spaces. This was very informative about what it's like to be black in video games. I was aware of the racism in D&D, but hadn't considered it in video games. I like how Kiera wanted to make Slay an inclusive safe space by being worried about including other languages, the one drop "rule" which is an American thing, and the trans player. A lot of us in the trans community explore gender in video games. As a teen in the '90s I used to play a text-based Multi-User Dungeon via Telnet where I played as a female character.
I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston - Unlike One Last Stop, this is a mystery and has no SciFi elements. It's a fun romp of rivals fighting and falling for each other. I'd rate it slightly lower than One Last Stop.
Monk & Robot (book 1 & 2) by Becky Chambers - Robots became sentient and humans realized they could no longer enslave them so centuries ago they freed them and gave them half the planet. The two civilizations have been without contact since the separation until a monk struggling with purpose crosses the border and meets a robot intent on reaching out to humanity. Really needed to read this back to back, they don't work as stand-alone books. It delves into existential questions about purpose. It also does a great job of exploring accepting care from others. Becky Chambers was at WorldCon last week and I attended one of her readings and two of her panels. She said that she's probably done with the Wayfarers series :( but that she might not be done with Dex (the monk) and Mosscap (the robot) :) .
Nice read ♥️