First off, the most important thing: Magical Women is now live! You can read it right now in early access, and pages will be posted publicly a month later. This is a story about a group of magical girls who failed to save the world 20 years ago and now they're all middle aged women trying to fight the bad guys after they've taken over the world. It's very much about how it's never too late to fight injustice, something that I'm sure we've all got on our minds these days. I started working on this in 2017 after thinking about how every magical girl story stops before they become adults. I wanted to know what kind of adulthood would follow that kind of childhood. You know nobody is going to be well adjusted! I've literally never been more excited about making comics. Taking a couple years off from doing it full time has me officially recovered from burnout and I'm glad to be back to doing webcomics. I'll be posting 2-3 pages per week. Please tell your friends! Word of mouth is so crucial for this sort of project.
Chapter One of my novel Cruel Muse is available to read. We meet Valentina, the main character, living her normal life before everything goes topsy turvey.
I had a great meeting with my agent a couple weeks ago, and we've got some really good plans for 2025. Without going into too much detail, these were plans we had for 2024 but were prevented from implementing due to circumstances. We're much better set up for success now, and some really cool stuff might be happening this year! I've been working on another novel and it's close to being finished with the second draft. It's another horror novel, and it's got not one but TWO unlikable and unreliable female main characters, so I expect to be ripped to shreds over it since these are qualities much more forgivable for male characters. It's going to be amazing.
It's wild to have so much good stuff going on in my personal and professional life and meanwhile I am more and more politically vulnerable with each passing day. It feels like I'm living two completely different realities simultaneously.
My legal name change will be official mid-March, and I'm so excited. I'll finally be Rowan everywhere forever. I'm changing my last name, too, but I'm keeping it a secret from the internet. In a lot of ways, I regret using my birth name professionally, and not just because of the headache of changing my name mid-career. When I first started making webcomics (before YU+ME was even a twinkle in my eye), I just posted them as "anonymous manga," since I was emulating manga at the time. My work was queer, and I was not out to anyone yet, so I wasn't going to use my name on it. Then I came out, and felt safe enough to be myself, including using my name. I was 17, it was 2003, and I was not really thinking about stalkers and creeps. My early comics were read by about 100 people. I didn't think I was going to make a name for myself, so the name I used wasn't all that important to me. A year later, I started YU+ME and suddenly had a quarter million people religiously reading it. Things got kind of scary. I intentionally avoided growing my audience because of it. I sabotaged my own career to keep myself safe. I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want to fear success. I want to grow AND be safe, and that means heavily enforced boundaries. I am Rowan, call me Ro, and as far as my professional life is concerned, my last name is Salarian. Nice to meet you.
I'm also getting the ball rolling on scheduling top surgery! It's a bit of a long process, but I'm finally feeling ready to work towards it. I'm so excited to not need to wear a bra or a binder (or a big baggy sweater) to keep the tiddies tamed. I'm even more excited to take a cast of my current tits to make novelty fake tits that I can wear onstage. My main problem with boobs is that I can't take them off and they don't do any cool tricks. I am going to rectify that and become the Mr Potato Head I've always longed to be.
I finally got some meds that manage my pain better, and it's been a lifesaver. The zine workshop I did in January turned what might have been a minor fibro flare into a full blown six week torture session. I spent a full month stoned every moment I was awake, because otherwise was literal torture. I had to skip a lot of plans, including a lot of protests and in-person activism. Heck, even internet and phone call activism was hard because of the whole constantly stoned thing. I'm so glad to be able to move without pain again.
Things I'm into lately:
Oranges. I cannot stop eating them, especially the little ones. After I quit drinking, my body has been craving sugar like crazy, and also during that time of being stoned 24/7, I had the munchies constantly. Instead of eating cake all the time, I make sure to always have oranges in the house. I can also tattoo on the rinds.
Ballionaire is a game I've been playing to relax. Between this and Balatro, I can satisfy the little gambler part of my brain without spending any actual money. Fun fact: I won the jackpot on 3 slot machines the summer I turned 18 and it paid for a full year of community college. I swore to myself I would not let this turn into a gambling addiction, and 20 years later I've spent maybe $60 total at the casinos I went to (mostly for the buffets).
I've been having fun with fusing glass in my little kiln that my BFF gave me. None of these are meant to look good, they're about experimenting. It's fun to learn new things and be bad at something with low stakes. Most of the glass is scrap glass that I can buy for $2/lb, and I can take all of these wonky pieces and crush them into pebbles and re-melt them into new glass.
Okay, I'm gonna go and draw some Hexual Fantasy comics. I've been a little bit behind because of that chronic pain putting me down. See y'all next month!
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