Want to read: Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

I found this book while looking up Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge, which I'll be blogging about soon. I bought that yesterday at Comics Dungeon in Seattle (Wallingford). I'd met the author and was interested in the book and am super impressed with it; it's definitely going to be a gift for my cousin who is getting bat mitzvahed this summer. I'm the type who can be sucked in by a book cover, and this one did it for me:



Official description:

Anya could really use a friend. But her new BFF isn’t kidding about the “Forever” part . . .

Of all the things Anya expected to find at the bottom of an old well, a new friend was not one of them. Especially not a new friend who’s been dead for a century.

Falling down a well is bad enough, but Anya’s normal life might actually be worse. She’s embarrassed by her family, self-conscious about her body, and she’s pretty much given up on fitting in at school. A new friend—even a ghost—is just what she needs.

Or so she thinks.

Spooky, sardonic, and secretly sincere, Anya’s Ghost is a wonderfully entertaining debut from author/artist Vera Brosgol.

Book trailer:



So anyway, I know very little about it but Anya's Ghost looks great (thank you, Amazon, for your customer recommendation pages). Click here to check out a 17-page preview. Here's a little bit from author Vera Brosgol's blog, but do check out that blog post for a more in-depth look at her artistic process:

Anya’s Ghost is my first book. Consequently everything I did was a bit trial and error. Maybe wasn’t the most efficient way to get the job done, but it worked for me.

I didn’t work from a script. When I write the art and the dialogue come at the same time and one suggests the other; it’s really hard for me just to come up with dialogue onto a blank computer page. I try to show more than tell with my comics and that seems to work best starting with thumbnails rather than attempting to get it across in a script. I did work up an outline for the entire story and plotted it out very carefully, but I let each scene form itself in thumbnails with the dialogue being written as I drew. I’ll run you through a process of some sample pages from writing to drawing to final color.

Check her out @verabee on Twitter and in person:

San Diego Comic Con
July 22nd-24th

Portland Wordstock Festival
October 6-9

New York Comic-Con
October 13-16