Belle Yang's Graphic Novel goes to W.W. Norton

Sorry, guys, for being so brazen by starting a thread on my book, but I've worked eleven long years on "Forget Sorrow" which just sold THIS VERY MORNING to my dream publisher, W.W. Norton. They are the publisher of Will Eisner.

I've worked on the book as a prose nonfiction project but waited long enough for the alternative graphic novel audience and art to develop. I will never go back to pure prose again. (Okay, never say never.)

In two or three year's time, I hope to come back to this thread and announce it's official publication.

This image is where Yuan the Idiot warns my great grandfather about the coming of the devils--the Communists would soon arrive to sweep the Patriarch out of his own home, leaving him to wander a beggar.

>1 belleyang: They are the publisher of Will Eisner.

May "The Spirit" be with you. Well done!

Yeah!!!

Excellent! I was impressed by your work that you posted on another thread. I wish you great success. Plus it's fun having you here with us at LibraryThing so we also can share and enjoy your success.

I thank my son and daughter for having gotten me interested in looking into graphic novels...and Will Eisner for having written one that actually enticed me to try my first one (which I borrowed from the library). It was A Contract With God. I've never looked back. I'm happily exploring the wonderful world of graphic novels now.

That's FABULOUS news, Belle! They're a terrific house, and they're as lucky to get you as you are to have them. Congratulations!

Thank you very much for the good words! I was introduced to graphic novels just last October. I was elated to find this comics group and started asking questions about the medium, book suggestions, tools and equipment. It's amazing that I've gained knowledge from strangers all over the world: Australia, Canada, England and across the US. Thank you all

Wow, happy to meet the Fogies in Comics. We miss you in Ancient China Group.

Congratulations, Belle!!! That's absolutely fantastic! I'm pre-ordering... :)

http://www.redroom.com/blog/belle-yang/2-a-good-day

I've only just received notes from my editor at W.W. Norton and so I pick up my tools and begin working on the rest of "Forget Sorrow: A China Elegy."

If you would like to see a photo journal of a day's work, please visit me at the above link.

I estimate my pub date to be Fall of 2010.

This is a page from "Forget Sorrow: A China Elegy." Sorry the image is warped from the camera lens. It took me 11 years to sell this project and I needed to change it to the graphic novel format from a prose manuscript with color art inserts. In many ways I feel lucky that I had such a hard time of selling "Forget Sorrow." Comic books have "matured" enough in the meantime, and I get to give it a whole-hearted go at this burgeoning medium

This is a link to some more images as I keep a photo journal of my progress in www.redroom.com.

http://www.redroom.com/gallery/i-am-currently-working-ww-norton-company-a-adult-...

Please go to the link below for the art I've completed in the last few days:

http://www.redroom.com/blog/belle-yang/killing-great-grandfather

I have to do it all over again. Kill my great grandfather. A friend tells me I am the reincarnation of Yang Junchen, who died in the middle of the great famine, unleashed by the Great Leap Forward. I came into the world in 1960 on the Island of Taiwan, where food was scanty, but I did not go hungry.

I am working on the final chapter of "Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale." My editor, Alane Salierno Mason at WW Norton and Company, said I cannot simply let the abuse and anguish suffered by the Patriarch after the Communist takeover be enacted off stage. I have to put the "murder" of a good man, a man who I love, front and center.

I've been sleepless, trying to work out the sequence of panels to depict his torment, his wandering in the wilderness, guided by his friend the Taoist beggar, leading him from one abandoned temple to another in search of shelter and food. I don't want to make it maudlin with exaggerations. I want it to ring true, even in this comic book format.

Yuan the Idiot is to Great Grandfather as the fool is to King Lear: the truthsayer and one of the angels in the storm.

I want to finish this book on time, yet I want it to go on forever. I appreciate the vehicle of pain, which pulls me to write/draw and tell the tragedy, but I also want to move beyond the sleepless nights and the pain I feel for an ancestor who deserved to live warm, dry and full-bellied in his last decade.

As I read the book, "Revolutionary Horizons, by my friend, Sinclair Thomson of NYU, a history of Bolivian land distribution, I have a keener awareness for those displaced, the fleeing landowners. We take sides when we look back on history and decide to take the part of the Indians who were oppressed by the ruling elites. But flesh and blood people's suffering are much more intricate, multi-dimensional than historians are able show us. It is not black and white, the good against the ugly. There is pain on both side of a revolution

Below, my grandmother and great aunt go begging on a winter day. I try to inject humor into the pain so that the pain by contrast looks darker.

P.S.--I know my handwriting is atrocious. The print will be substituted with a Belle font, once we develop them with a typeface designer.

First pre-publication starred review by Kirkus, the industry standard. To Be published May 10, 2010.

http://www.redroom.com/blog/belle-yang/kirkus-weighs-in

Congratulations!

Thank you. This comic took 14 years to write, draw and sell. I read manga in Japan and came to the US at age 7. Manga disappeared from my life until I returned to making my own at age 47.

http://redroom.com/gallery/forget-sorrow-an-ancestral-tale-a-graphic-memoir

This link goes to a slide show of the first 9 pages of FORGET SORROW. Please take a two minutes to take a look.

I will be in NYC at the Asia Society on May 10th to launch the book.

Congrats! I love the fact that, at 47, you decided to creating your own graphic novel, you really are an inspiration.

And I adore your handwriting in the samples, I can't imagine it being replaced with a font. It adds to the charm of the graphics.

Belle, please come to Hobnob with Authors to promote your new book. That's LT's new author-member group where book promotion *is* permitted!

Wishing you great success now that your graphic novel is ready for public purchase!

Congrats! I saw that your book is in the Early Reviewers for this month!