Marjorie M. Liu's Blog

A bit of good (and unexpected) news.  Monstress was named Best Comic of 2018 in Entertainment Weekly, which was a lovely surprise. Team Monstress is deeply grateful for that honor.

Also, Image just released the cover image for next year’s hardcover deluxe edition, which will compile Vol 1-3.  Clocking in at over 500 pages, we’ll include never-before-seen art and other goodies. Expect that to hit in July 2019 — and in the meantime, Monstress #19 kicks off a new arc on January 23, 2019.  Get r...

Being a full-time professional writer is a double-edged sword. There’s the beauty and blessing of making your own schedule, of working from home (or anywhere, really), of living in your imagination and telling stories for a living.

And then, there’s everything else: the uncertainty, the unreliable money, the  vagaries of publishing and life, the fact that your imagination is how you survive and if your imagination and your ability to produce stories isn’t at 100% you might just be in a little...

Some weeks ago I had the pleasure of hosting a rare conversation with Brian Bendis at MIT. Thank you, Brian, and many thanks to the university for arranging the event. The video and audio have been posted online.

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In 1824, the Italian poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi decided to take on the subject of whether ‘writing is worth it’.  I mean, I guess?  But not for glory (at least, not for me).  Just because I love to tell stories. I love reading stories. I love living in stories. That’s...

Boston folks: I’m signing on December 1st at Barnes & Noble in the Prudential Center.  I’ll be there for about an hour, so if you’re hanging out at the mall, stop by and say hi!

Also, Monstress #19 is returning on January 23rd, and you have until the end of December to remind your local comic store to reserve a copy for you.  That’s actually super helpful, not just to creators, but to your local comic shops.

In other news:  This is a big cow.

Meg Cabot, on suicide and depression: I know most people think that those who take their own lives must be suffering from long-term depression, but that isn’t always the case. Most people with depression never attempt suicide, and some people who attempt suicide aren’t depressed. They’re upset, certainly, but it can be because of a specific event or sudden crisis in their lives.

Athletes and the ‘quiet eye’: Psychologists and neuroscientists have now identified some of the common mental proc...

Powerful, powerful, powerful: Forty-Five Things I Learned in the Gulag

1. The extreme fragility of human culture, civilization. A man becomes a beast in three weeks, given heavy labor, cold, hunger, and beatings.

4. I realized that the feeling a man preserves longest is anger. There is only enough flesh on a hungry man for anger: everything else leaves him indifferent.

15. I realized that one can live on anger.

16. I realized that one can live on indifference.

19. Both my physical and my spir...

I grew up in Seattle, not Indiana, but the farm I’ve been posting pictures of has been in my family for over one hundred years. What’s growing here now is mostly wild (persimmons, for example), or what was planted decades upon decades ago (the black walnut grove). There’s an immense peach tree that sprang up around ten years ago next to the porch of the old farm house, from a summer when I got lazy and just threw pits over the side when I was done eating (hey, sometimes littering leads to goo...

It’s the Fourth of July, and I’m going to spend it contemplating a better future for our country.  Despite the news of late, I refuse to waste my energy on despair.  Despair is boring.  Despair brings nothing of value.  Hope, however, is a generative, powerful force. Hope and determination. Hope plays a long game, hope is a marathon, hope demands of us a beautiful endurance that will outlast all else.

I truly believe that.  I truly believe in us.

I’m not allergic to gluten and I’m not a vegan — I just happen to enjoy cooking that way.  I like how it tastes, and I tell myself it’s healthier (particularly when it comes to desserts).  Hahaha.

I was first introduced to this because of a vegan friend who I wanted to bake for.  I didn’t know anything about flax eggs (I still don’t understand how they work) and I’d never even heard of almond flour.  I went online, though — Googled “vegan recipes” — and after a bit of a deep dive found some w...