Hello to all you loyal followers of Wyvern!

I realize that it has been some time since this site has seen an update – the reason mostly being professional, as my work has swallowed me up and spat me back out as of late – but since we are well on the way to Spring and pretty much on the clock, I thought I’d pop on here and deliver an update to you!

The Editing Process

Depending on whether you are connected with the Facebook or Kickstarter pages, you may already know that my wonderful editor, Leslie Godfrey, is almost done with her revisions on the draft of the novel. That means I will soon be conferring with her and making those revisions official.

With any luck, that also means the manuscript will definitely be done by the spring. My hat goes off to Leslie for the amount of fantastic work she has done.

The Artwork

It is my hope that at some point today I will be able to update this site’s gallery with the latest artwork, but suffice it to say that Toby has been an artistic force to be reckoned with. Please feel free to go check the gallery for the latest additions!

The Plan From Here

Though it may be a stretch, our goal is to have the published product ready and available for mass consumption by this May. When that happens, every avenue I have to pass along the details on where to find it and how to obtain it will be used – stay tuned on that front.

What I can tell you is that our partnership with Glad Day Bookshop means that when Wyvern is ready, your first and best spot to find it will be right there at Glad Day – which is also where we will be holding the launch! All of Wyvern‘s backers are invited to attend the launch, and more details on that will be coming in the next few months!

Going forward, I will do my best to provide snippets, teasers, and the latest news and updates from here. and I will cross-post these updates to Facebook and Twitter to keep everyone in the loop!

We’re on track – and looking forward to the spring!

It’s official: the Wyvern Kickstarter campaign has been successful! We’ve raised our base goal of $5,000, which means that if all goes to plan, Quinn’s story will be available to everyone both electronically and in print by this coming Spring!

I won’t go on and on here–

(I have returned to this spot in the post after writing the rest of it to say, oops, I kind of did go on and on. Sorry.)

–but I feel the need to say some brief but important thank-yous.

I want to thank all of the donors who contributed to the project:

Thank you to friends and family who donated. Your support and your belief in me means more to me than I can describe, and I plan to justify that belief and give you something that makes your donation worthwhile.

Thank you to the strangers, the ones who didn’t even know my name and yet still gave me this chance to create something wonderful, meaningful and important.

Thank you to everyone who helped me to spread the word about Wyvern and this fundraiser, and I hope I can continue to rely on your support as things go forward!

Thank you to the organizations and groups that have put their support behind this project, including Glad Day Bookshop. I’m looking forward to the work we’re going to do together.

Thank you to the former and current students and parents I work with who have given me their thoughts and ideas, and helped me give Wyvern an audience thus far.

Thank you to the Wyvern team: Leslie, Toby, Brian, Veronica, Virginia, Adam, Parker, Isaac, Chester, James. We still have a lot to do, but already the work you’ve done and the support you’ve given have made our start possible.

Thank you to my loving partner Rhys, my sista’ from another mista’ Jillian, and my dear friend who inspired the whole thing, Matthew.

And finally, thank you Mom and Dad – my biggest fans (I’ll let them battle out who’s Fan #1 and #2), who have shown me nothing but unconditional encouragement and support, and who have believed in me, and in the success of this project.

It’s time to throw our eyes forward! Thanks to Leslie’s editing wizardry and Toby’s artistic talent, the process is already well underway. Stay tuned, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or right here on our website to follow its progress. And don’t forget to spread the word! Wyvern is coming – and I plan for it to make an explosive entrance!

Donate $40 or more to Wyvern and receive a special offer from Glad Day Bookshop!

Potential supporters of our campaign, we have good news for you!

In an exciting new partnership, Glad Day Bookshop, located at Yonge and Wellesley in downtown Toronto, has made a special offer to anyone who makes a $40 or higher donation to Wyvern before Friday, December 4th!

Glad Day is offering a $5 coupon toward any purchase from their online store to any new backers that pledge $40 or more before Friday at midnight! If the campaign is successful, these backers will receive this coupon in their email, courtesy of Glad Day.

If you have already backed the project and are not able to add another $40 to your pledge, don’t worry, you can still take advantage of this offer by sharing this campaign and referring new backers. If someone you refer to us makes a donation and tells us you pointed them our way, you’ll also receive a $5 coupon at the end of the campaign!

Check out Glad Day’s website to see what they’re all about!

In other news, we are now live on Twitter and also on Tumblr! Follow us for more updates and sneak peeks!

 

Wyvern’s Kickstarter is now LIVE!

We are now accepting donations to help get Wyvern off the ground and into your hands! With your help, the story and all its resources will be a reality!

Help us reach our base goal of $5,000 to get the book out into the world – and get us to our $7,000 or $9,000 reach goals so that we can create educational resources for parents, teachers and kids!

Please consider making a donation by visiting our Kickstarter page!

As we move into a month of trans awareness, and as our work on Wyvern continues and grows, I want to stop for a moment and pass the torch to a member of the team whose enthusiasm for the book has brought it so much closer to completion.

Toby Medeiros is Wyvern‘s illustrator and in addition to his artistic talents – which are considerable – he has also given the project his thoughts and reflections as a trans man himself. I asked Toby if he would share some thoughts with us as we approach the Trans Day of Remembrance.

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I’m no stranger to having to write about myself when it comes to my gender identity. I am used to having to write blog entries, emails, comics and essays regarding the topic of trans* individuals and my own identification as a transgender man.

So you could say I am a man of many, many words, yet when Kyle came to me about writing a personal blurb for Trans* Awareness month, I found myself stumped.

I could take this chance to tell you that whether you’re in or out of the closet you’re not alone, and that if you identify as trans* you have a whole community willing to back you up. I could also use this chance to talk about the importance of the friends and family who accepted me and supported me when I came out. I could write about those things, but like many other trans* writers, I have covered them before and I really wanted to explore something different with this.

What I really wanted to say was something that isn’t said enough these days, which is surprising seeing as it’s one of the major topics that seems to come up when you first come out. Loved ones may accuse you of suddenly being a different person. Mine did, and I couldn’t help but feel as though that just wasn’t true. When my mom turned to me and told me that I just wasn’t the same person, I felt hurt. Regardless of gender, I was still me, and I still loved all the same things I did growing up. I still found the same jokes funny and I still harboured a deep seeded hatred for banjo music and the artwork of Rob Liefeld. I could understand her in a way, but I knew myself better than she did and I knew I was still me.

I didn’t change because being Transgender doesn’t define me as a human being.

I am an illustrator.
I am a comic book fan.

I am Toby Medeiros, and I am just like anybody else. Who I was, and who I am, they’re the same. The way I define my gender should never impact the way others treat me.

Seeing as I am a comic illustrator I did draw a small comic to drive my point home.

(Click here to see it on Toby’s Tumblr page) 

Don’t ever be ashamed of who you were and never let anyone tell you who you are. At the end of the day you have to be cool with your awesome self. You owe that to yourself.

Keep on spreading awareness and as that Zac Efron guy once said “We’re all in this together”. 

– Toby.

It is officially November – which is weird, because it feels like it was September yesterday – and with the fall come a few important days to remember.

Wyvern, being a story centred around a boy who would likely identify himself as transgender, is a book hoping to fill a void that very much needs to be filled. This month we are taking the time to recognize that void by marking November 20th as Transgender Day of Remembrance.

For those folks who may not have as much experience with or knowledge of the trans community, it is important to know that the struggle for recognition, advancement and acceptance is very different for transgender folks than it is for the rest of the GLB rainbow. North America is rapidly becoming a place where seeing a gay couple has a certain air of normalcy around it, which is fantastic. However, we still run into controversy when we discuss the rights and treatment of trans people, for reasons that I admit are not entirely clear to me.

I’d like to call on all of us to recognize the importance of learning more about transgender realities, especially this month, as we approach a day to commemorate the losses of trans individuals – often young people – who have taken their own lives, or who continue to struggle or suffer.

As such, I want to take a moment and add to our pool of notable trans talent. Have a look at this:

That is a hat, and that hat says ‘Stand Up Against Transphobia‘. And if you click the words ‘Stand Up Against Transphobia‘, you’ll be taken to a Facebook page which lets you find out how to acquire one of those awesome, swagtacular hats right there.

Stand Up Against Transphobia (oops, I linked it again) is a community group run by a super cool Niagara man named Michael Sherman, who has made it his mission in life to raise awareness on transgender realities, and has shared his story with hundreds of people. He’s now selling these hats at $20 a pop, and I figure, if you’re going to stand up for a good cause, you should do so looking stylish!

Proceeds from the sales of this wicked merchandise are donated to organizations that assist the transgender community, so this is a worthy cause indeed. Have a look. And whether or not you’re wearing a spiffy hat, take some time and recognize the road trans folks have travelled, and the long one still left to walk.

As if it wasn’t big enough news that this website is now live, I’m excited to share more news that you might not yet have noticed: the Wyvern Gallery is live!

The gallery – which, aside from the sidebar, you can find by clicking here – is an ongoing collection of publicly-released artwork by our illustrator Toby Medeiros that may eventually be part of Wyvern itself or the materials we release.

But that isn’t the only art I’m here to talk about. Take a look, if you would, at this:

In case you are wondering, yes: that is, indeed, a Biceratops.

I’m sorry, but this and the story behind it are just about the coolest thing ever.

A couple of days ago, a proud mama bear sent me this link, along with this message:

“My 12-year old daughter loves art. She recently produced this series of t-shirts to raise money for her local LGBTQ organization. She has a show of her original drawings coming up at a local art gallery in a couple of weeks. Oh, and she’s trans.”

This is amazing. Isn’t this amazing? It’s totally amazing. And this talented young lady has completed several artistic renderings of LGBTQ dinosaurs, including the Lesbo-saurus-rex, the Icthy-ally-don, or my personal favourite, the Bron-2-spirit.

It’s girls like this fantastic young artist whom I hope will connect with Wyvern (totally gonna send her a free copy when it’s published), but in the meantime, I am so getting myself a shirt. Julianna, and her proud mamma, you keep dino-rockin’.

And everyone else, remember to subscribe to get more news and updates as they come! There’s a button to the left, over thataway.

After a whole whallop of work and late nights, I am extremely pleased to report – as you may right now be seeing – that this website is worthy of being seen by everyone else! Special thanks to Brian Kremen for kicking my butt into gear, and as always, Toby Medeiros for his graphic design brilliance.

Still to come: there will be a gallery with sneak peeks at new and in-progress artwork for the book – character sketches, scenery, you name it!

We are also in the process of compiling a list of several trans-identified creators including artists, writers, filmmakers – pretty much anything – in the hopes of promoting their work here as well, so watch for that section to pop up very soon!

And finally, we hope that the KickStarter campaign will begin by November, and through that we hope to raise enough money to make Wyvern a published reality. We’ll keep our fingers crossed, but we are deeply grateful for the support!

For now, feel free to pop over to Facebook to get a look at the latest artwork sneak peek, and keep your eyes open for news over the next while.

Peace and sugar!

I had the pleasure of meeting Virginia last school year through her daughter Brianna, who was a student in my class. She heard about Wyvern through her daughter, and asked me if she could read it. She also kindly accepted my request for a review and provided a very flattering one, which I have shared below.

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“I was hooked on this book as soon as I read the words “I have never met a creature as strange as a wyvern.” This prepared me for a story that wasn’t just something to read, but an enchanting memory that I had the honour of experiencing. Sure enough, I was not disappointed. Continue reading A Review of Wyvern by Virginia Erum