The good news train continues!

Wyvern is now available from a few more electronic sources. You can now find Book One of Wyvern on the shelves of Kobo, Scribd, and iBookstore. Links are below for your convenience.

The estimated time of arrival for the print version of Wyvern is early in the new year, hopefully by the end of January. Until then, feel free to pop over to Amazon, Kobo, Scribd or iBookstore to check it out!

Find the right Wyvern for you! Don’t forget, you can find updates and shop links on our Facebook Page!

   – Click Here to find Wyvern on Scribd

   – Click Here to find Wyvern on iBookstore

   – Click Here to find Wyvern on Kobo

 

It is with immeasurable pleasure that I announce:

Wyvern is LIVE on Amazon Kindle!

Click here to go to the Amazon Kindle store and check it out for yourself!

 It will be a matter of time before the ebook is available from every distributor BookBaby works with, but it is official: Wyvern can be purchased for Kindle from the Amazon online store. We did it! 

Hello again! I have the most exciting update to give you. You can read all the detail work below, but here’s the gist of it:

The electronic version of Wyvern is just about ready to go!

Here’s some relevant updates:

The Editing Process

In this utterly glorious selfie, you are seeing the last meeting that I had with Wyvern‘s fabulously talented editor, Leslie Godfrey. This was taken at Tim Horton’s in Orangeville on a nice, sunny Sunday afternoon. The end result of this session: the editing was complete! Thankfully, the long, arduous process of refining, tweaking and rewriting is finished.

I hereby take this opportunity to thank Leslie again for her tireless work, and for allowing me to take this picture despite that she’d just been riding her bike for several hours. She’s a champ.

The Illustrations

This masterful piece of work is the newly-completed cover art for the book, which Toby finalized just this week. He’s a saint, because he had to deal with me being picky and asking for all sorts of little changes. As usual, his work is fantastic.

We are continuing to get through the illustrations that will be inside the print copy of the book – stay tuned for an ETA. However, with the cover art complete, the electronic copy has everything it needs, art-wise!

The Housekeeping

The time since the end of the editing process has mostly included the foreword, acknowledgements, appendices, and the appropriate research into the best way to go about getting the ebook into the marketplace. At the moment, I expect to be making Wyvern available via BookBaby.com, who will take care of distribution to Amazon, Kindle, Kobo, etc.

I will also be getting back in touch with Glad Day Bookshop, who have also agreed to act as an online vendor for the electronic version of the book. Stay tuned for further updates!

As always, thank you for your ongoing support and encouragement. I’m thrilled to see this coming together and I can’t wait to get the long-awaited result into your hands. Stay tuned for further update!

 

Hello, hello!

It’s time for a long overdue update of things. I suppose the most important part is that this is what Wyvern looks like right now:

Not exactly glamorous, but hey, it’s all part of the process, right?

That process, right now, means that I’m going through all of these detailed edits and revisions (which was a massive investment of time by my esteemed editor Leslie), making some tweaks, fixing things, and getting ready to go into the digital file and make those changes real.

This is, obviously, a long process.

So, given how much time is left before this project can be considered finished, I am revising the estimated time of arrival of Wyvern.

I am now aiming for the end of August 2016.

My hope is that by the summer, this round of edits will be done, and I’ll be moving into the second round and polishing. It’s safe to say I underestimated the self-publishing process just a little – but I am committed to making this a reality!

I am otherwise happy to report that our talented illustrator Toby has been hard at work continuing to pump out the Wyvern artistry. If you feel like checking out the newest additions to the pile of visuals (such as the one I’ve included below), head on over to the Gallery and check them out!

Updates will continue coming in as they exist in a significant enough manner to be given!

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.

---

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.