By Naomi Nowak
NBM/Comicslit
The field of comics, also sometimes known as graphic novels, is dominated by male creators and readers. However, there’s been increasing push in the last few decades by women to enter the field and make their mark. Though comics drawn by women are gaining popularity, most are classified as “indie,” distributed by small [...]

By Kate Perry
Forever
Kate Perry is a pretty kickass chick. Her childhood dream was to be a ninja, and she’s now a seventh degree Kung Fu blackbelt. The serious study required in kung fu appears to have colored her novel, giving the ‘paranormal’ elements of this paranormal romance a more grounded feel than most Asian-inspired material [...]

Marni Bates comes from a dysfunctional home. Her parents are estranged long before they divorced, and her sister is her rival. Young Marni wants to be loved, so she plays into the manipulative games her father contrives. The shocking realization that her father sees her as a tool, rather than a daughter to love, is the first of many sledgehammers to Marni’s self-esteem.

The first time that she wore pink,

Nobody recognized her.

She was the tough girl,

The rough girl,

The badass, Do Not Touch Me girl.

There’s a whole room full of kids. There’s a whole school full of ‘em. They’re all kinda different, and they’ve all got stuff in common. Each is a unique individual, and all together, they make up this complicated whole termed a high school. These are their stories, better than even they could tell them. Because they don’t know how; Underneath it all, they’re still just kids.

Peggy and Luke meet in Vegas where inhibitions go to die. Aunt Abigail, clearly having her priorities straight, says she will allow Luke to sell the house if he and Peggy remain married for one year. Needing her share of the house’s selling price, Peggy starts leading a double life. During the week she lives and works in the city and on weekends she rents a car, drives to Connecticut, and pretends to be the happily married wife of a genuine, full-blooded WASP.

Pickled chilis- there were enough of them there to burn down a Midwesterner’s family tree to its very roots. No spice in those people. None at all. Angelina moved on past the pickled mangos and more pickled chilis to the plain old chili powder. Product of India.

Once upon a time, Angelina had been from India, too.

Martin pats worrisomely at his forehead, shining with sweat in the bright dancing hall lights. His handkerchief comes away greasy and moist, and he tucks it back into its pocket, mortified despite the fact that this is not at all unusual for him anymore. In the privacy of his own home he dries his bald head without a second thought to propriety. In the dance hall, however, he is one of many, many, uncomfortable bachelors trying to appeal to a lady—any lady.

I hunched over in the white ash, my long, thin tail twitching behind me. My knobby fingers dug through the dust, searching at the roots of a twisted plant. The wind brought the scent of more burning, and a quick glance across the mountain showed that the men were herding flame again. When I was young, I had feared the fire and the humans who controlled it, but having only narrowly avoided the ravages of a natural bushfire, I had learned a healthy appreciation for this strange activity. Besides keeping the mountain from burning up in one fell swoop, their fires created a steady and predictable supply of my favorite treat:

Burnt protea flowers.

The old man stared torpidly into the distance, his head held at an odd angle. Perhaps not really held so much as left there to hang. He didn’t appear to have the strength to hold it up. His body and face were sunken; the emaciation of the old, and his head could hold on to only a few stray hairs, whispy like cirrus clouds. Dolefully he stared, unmoved from where he had been abandoned by the nurse in his wheelchair.