The Dreaming - Table of Contents

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QueenieChan
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Hello all! It's 2014, and it's time to do a retrospective on the last 10 years of my career as a 'professional comic-artist who works in an OEL-manga style.' That's a mouthful, but there's no way that I will call myself a 'professional OEL-manga artist' - that term is long dead and buried (not to mention rife with negative connotations.)

Anyway, I'm in a reflective mood, so there's something I want to do: I want to share with you the first 2 volumes (out of 3) of The Dreaming, my first ever published work.

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PURCHASE THE BOOKS

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The Dreaming: Perfect Collection by QueenieChan


The Story


'The Dreaming' is a 3-volume mystery-horror series, published by TOKYOPOP from 2004-2007. It's written and drawn by me, and the story is about Amber and Jeanie, a pair of twin sisters who arrive at a mysterious boarding school deep in the Australian bush. Soon after, they start having strange dreams, and discover that there is a long history of students disappearing from the school, covered up by the vice-principal of the school. Just what is the vice-principal hiding? And can they unravel the mystery of 'The Dreaming' in time?

You can also read this on SmackJeeves (thedreaming.smackjeeves.com), Tumblr (queeniechan.tumblr.com), MangaFox (mangafox.me/manga/the_dreaming) and on my own website (www.queeniechan.com/manga/the_…).


Table of Contents

I will be posting the first 2 volumes of the story, at the rate of half a chapter every Friday until August. If you want to read the last volume of the story, then you'll have to purchase the book:


Background Information

'The Dreaming' consists of three books (180pgs each) + 1 short story (21pgs), making around 560 pages in total. It took about 8-9 months to do each book, and that counts from the script, to pencils, to inks and to tones. I did all of it myself, and darn, it was exhausting.

I first submitted 'The Dreaming' to TOKYOPOP in 2004. It was the fourth story I've pitched ot them, and it was pitched 'on spec,' meaning that I was asked to write a 'haunted school' story since my previous three pitches were rejected.

This was interesting, because I'm the only person I'm aware of from that era of TOKYOPOP who had to pitch so many times. Most people got in at the first or second tries. My own experience was 'spe-shul'. I know because when I was once helping a friend pitch her story, she told me her contact at TOKYOPOP told her not to get discouraged at her first rejection because some girl from Australia got rejected four times. Gorsh, I wonder who that person was.

Anyway, 'The Dreaming' sold quite well (enough to get a collected edition), but it was never much promoted by TOKYOPOP. One of the biggest myths about traditional publishing is that if you get published by a traditional publisher, they will promote your work. Uh, having worked in traditional publishing for 10 years, I know it's not true. Authors are expected to BYO audiences these days, and publishers won't publish you if you don't already have a fan following.

Still, I gained a lot of fans with 'The Dreaming,' and it's amazing people are still talking about it 10 years later. Since it's my first published work, it's rough and unpolished, but I still like it despite it having been written 'on spec.' 


Foreign Editions

It also got a fair number of foreign editions, ranging from French, German, Spanish, Finnish, Icelandic, Italian, Turkish, Russian and a whole host of others I can't remember. When TOKYOPOP was still functioning, I would randomly get copies of the foreign editions in the mail. I've got a shelf-full of these at home.

I also got a trip to Turkey in 2010 out of 'The Dreaming', courtesy of publisher Tudem! It was totally worth it! I wrote about my trip here: www.queeniechan.com/2011/05/21…

All the foreign editions of 'The Dreaming'

© 2014 - 2024 QueenieChan
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death-g-reaper's avatar
death-g-reaper
I remember how I discovered this series! My friend brought it on a camp out and all of us that read it got really freaked out that night! Then I hunted down the series when we got home (took me two years to find book two).