Hazel: A Witches' Lifestyle Zine

Interview with Jennifer Chan: Minicomic Artist & Dog Lover
over 3 years ago – Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 02:58:42 AM

Week 2 for the campaign is wrapping up, and it's been such fun to see all the wonderful things our contributors have been sharing on their social media accounts (you can find all of them linked in the Kickstarter campaign page). Join our Draw This In Your Style Challenge posted on the @cottonbook Instagram, or check out ones that our artists have started to create, like @littlemousedeer - all entries will be featured in @cottonbook's instagram stories from now until the end of August! While we're having so much fun getting some drawing in (and still working on laying out the book behind the scenes), littlemousedeer has another interview to share with comic artist Jennifer Chan, creator of minicomics such as Nanners and B.E.T.H, whose pieces appear in this year and last year's Hazel, and we can't get enough of their work! 

You created a really cute all ages coloring book in June 2020 called, Wild Animals, with all proceeds going to the Okra Project. Can you tell me about the intersection of being a freelance artist and supporting community-based programs?

Jen: I think for me personally as a Nonbinary-Womxn, I wanted to help out a marginalized community that needs support. It’s just the right thing to do, to help boost others and pitch in when you can, no matter what kind of artist or whatever career you are in. If I can be useful in some way by using my skills of drawing and creating something fun to raise a few dollars with my gumroad shop to make a change where change is greatly needed, it’s the smallest gesture of support I can give.

It's great and so important to offer help when and where you can! In the description for these coloring books, you also mention that they're perfect for all ages. What’s the importance for you of engaging people in art and comics at a younger age?

Jen: I think drawing and comics gave me a safe space when I was a miserable kid. If I can provide the same feeling of safety and joy for someone else then that makes me happy. But then there’s that other side of my personality that naturally fits with drawing things that are a bit younger and whimsical. My family would say that I have “Peter Pan syndrome”, but this is one of those weird myths that all children's media is for children, and not a form of compelling storytelling/art, when we know that’s not true. It’s probably why I use the term “all ages.” Anyone can have fun with it. I’m not going to judge others, that’s not my place.

I think that feeling of enjoying whimsy is one that a lot of Hazel fans and contributors can identify with. It also opens you up to more opportunities for adventuring. Your currently running all ages webcomic, B.E.T.H.: Boss Ectoplasm Treasure Hunter, features three friends seeking out the paranormal. Have you run into any spooky situations yourself?

Jen: Thankfully, I have not experienced any paranormal activity that I know of… I certainly wouldn’t be able to handle it if something did happen. I’m already a chicken when it comes to watching horror movies by myself. I have to have a pillow or a blanket at hand if it gets too spooky. I do have serious family members who have told me that they have seen and experienced things, but maybe I’m too much of a goofball to be haunted.

The B.E.T.H. team is currently hunting down the fabled Jersey Devil in your webcomic. You said you're a bit of a scaredy-cat when it comes to the paranormal but if you could travel to track any cryptid, where would you go and why? Who would you track? If you did find something, would you run or would you invite the cryptid to get some pizza with the gang?

Jen: Oooh! I’d love to explore the Scottish Highlands to spot the Loch Ness Monster. The scenery is gorgeous with moody rolling hills surrounding the lake and it would be such a fun cozy place to visit. Also I’m a sucker for a tartan pattern souvenir.

Nessie seems like a shy and chill creature who would be up for pizza anytime, so I wouldn’t mind sharing a few pies with the water beast, as long as it doesn’t try to drown us in some way. We’d probably have to keep distance, so it wouldn’t be threatened.

Nessie's one of my favorites! I totally agree that she seems super chill & down for a pie! Are there any plans for the B.E.T.H. team to maybe take a trip to Scotland then?

Jen: Ha! I'm not sure if the B.E.T.H. team can afford such luxury to travel that far, but nothing is written in stone. Mysterious events happen in their own neck of the woods every so often. I would have to talk about it to my collaborators about it. 

They probably have enough to deal with locally! Aside from cryptids, dogs make regular appearances in your illustrations. How would you say that dogs (and other animals) influence your art?

Jen: Oh gosh, dogs really are my favorite animals. They’re such sweet idiots and are fun to play with, and for a while I was a dog walker for a side gig. I guess it’s pretty noticeable every time I’ll try to sneak one in an illustration for myself even when it’s not the focus of the drawing.

Animals are generally good subjects for children’s books, but also I just find them so fascinating, mysterious, and weird. I think it’s amazing we have such a range of biodiversity on the planet. It’s a shame not more people care about wildlife and nature in general. 

Your comic, Popo’s Gift, gets its title from the Cantonese for "maternal grandmother." How do you see language and illustration as a bridge between generations and cultures?

Jen: Honestly, my family never really spoke Cantonese in our house, and the only time I would hear it would be when we went to go visit my cousins out of state. They weren't strict about keeping up with traditions or actively teaching us things about our culture. I don't think living in a very white town helped much either, but even that's complex, because you find small ways to thrive and teach culture. The little things I do know, I want to keep in some form so I tend to make art related to that to show my niece and nephew because I know they won't quite get the same learning experience that my siblings and I had. 

I had kind of a similar experience growing up, too. Spanish is my first language but I was dissuaded from using it by teachers when I was a kid so I lost a lot of it. It's hard to hold onto your culture while trying to also fit in! It's really sweet that you make some of your art and zines with your niece and nephew in mind. Are they old enough to have seen your art? Do they think it's cool? (Are any of us cool to kids??)

Jen: Oh, that's sad to hear you were dissuaded from speaking it. That must have been so frustrating. I want to show my niece and nephew things and take an interest, because I don't think I really had that mentor/ideal family member who did that with me. They're both in their prime toddler years right now, so they've seen my art and I've made coloring sheets for them for their birthdays with characters based off of them. I think my nephew enjoys them, but my niece… I like to call her a diva, so sometimes things are a hit and other times she'll break your heart with the truth. (Pff, I'm definitely not cool to them. They're extremely smart kids who need to be persuaded by bribes.)

Being bilingual wasn’t valued yet where we lived and my teacher said I was mixing up Spanish and English, but I was probably just being a bilingual kid. It's frustrating as an adult because my Spanish still isn't great and it’s what my older relatives primarily speak. We communicate, but conversations are kept pretty basic so that we can understand each other clearly. It leads to feeling cut off from one another.

Jen: Teachers who do things like that think they are being helpful, but children know more than adults think they do. It’s gross that people are taught to think one language is superior to another when it’s just a different language. Can’t we have both nice things and not be weird about it? It wasn’t until only the past few years that I finally met people who shared the same experience about not being able to connect with their relatives through language, and there’s such a weird feeling of guilt around it. That’s actually a subject of a journal travel comic series I am making based off of my first trip to visit my dad’s family in Hong Kong, but it’s been really hard to unpack it all and write it down in a thoughtful or interesting way without having that guilt associated with it. Not to mention so much has changed since then.

Your niece and nephew sound little, but they'll probably appreciate these things a lot when they're older. Are you going to keep making coloring sheets and activities for them as they grow up? It might be cool to see all the sheets collected together one day.

I think I’ll keep making stuff for or with them as long as they are interested… maybe it’s also for me. Art is such a selfish unexplainable thing. I certainly don’t want to force them to like certain things. They have their own personalities. 

Being unable to communicate is how a lot of family history gets lost to time, too. Is the travel comic available anywhere? I love travel comics so much, and it would be cool to see yours!

Jen: It’s really sad when these things get lost and that’s why I started to record them, and that naturally turns into autobiographical comics. I haven’t released any from that series yet because I still want to workshop them a bit more, but I probably should post sneak peeks of it on my Patreon or Instagram soon to motivate me to actually complete it to then pitch it somewhere. 

You've got at least one person who would be super interested in seeing them & I'm sure there are a ton more!

Count us in on that, too! Thanks so much, Jen, for sharing your experiences with us as well as your wonderful work. We're so happy to have you this issue!

New Wooden Pin Stretch Goal Reached! Plus, International Shipping Added (Limited)
over 3 years ago – Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 09:32:56 AM

What a wonderful campaign we're having so far! Our contributors got a raise, we've unlocked a new wooden pin design you can choose from for the tiers that include wooden pins such as the Early Bird Spellbook Collector, The Well-Read Witch + Charm, and the Patron of the Light Arts tiers. We are having a hard time deciding about whether this should be a pin, a charm, or a keychain, though, and we were wondering if you could help us choose! Do you have a preference? Please comment on this update or the campaign page to tell us what you think, and we'll tally up the votes to help us make our decision. All options would still be the printed artwork on wood. 

In other great news, we've added international shipping tiers! We can't alter a reward once it's already chosen, which is why these are new tiers instead of included in the previous ones. So far, it's only for the individual book and the set of 4 books (plus PDF for the out-of-print Issue I), and while the individual book is unlimited, the set is limited to only 10 slots. Why? Because we're actually running out of Issue II as well now! After this, Issue II will also be out of print, so it's a great chance to snag it. We're still inching our way towards the distant stretch goal of reprinting Issue I, let alone Issue II, but in the mean time, our solution will be to offer a new tier with issues 3-5 available as a set. 

Thank you so much for helping us spread the word high and low about the Hazel Issue V campaign, so we can reach these goals and unlock even more rewards and good things! Coming together to create this is our favorite kind of magic. 

Best wishes, Lucy & the Hazel Coven

Interview with Melissa Brinks, Hazel Writer and Magical Beasts Compendium Author
over 3 years ago – Sun, Aug 09, 2020 at 12:13:49 PM

It's officially been one week since the start of the campaign, and we've unlocked our first stretch goal! We're so thrilled to be able to share more features and interviews with you throughout this period, including this spotlight on Melissa Brinks, a contributor to this issue of Hazel as well as the author of The Compendium of Magical Beasts. littlemousedeer brings us their discussion on bestiaries, writing, and werewolves here. 

Hazel’s last volume has an overarching theme of the spirit or spirits. While spirits are a little different from cryptozoology, they do both belong to the paranormal in a way. In 2018 you published The Compendium of Magical Beasts: An Anatomical Study of Cryptozoology's Most Elusive Beings. What led to your interest in magical beings and what inspired you to write a book about them?

Since I was a kid, I've always been fascinated with things that are a little bit creepy or a little bit weird. I devoured the metaphysical section at my middle school library. My first internet search was Bigfoot, and I just went for it. So yeah, it's always been something that I've been fascinated with.

In college, I was in a writing group where I met my now agent for The Compendium of Magical Beasts, and also my second book, The Little Book of Video Games. She became a literary agent after we graduated and she had this idea of a book that would answer questions like "how do mermaids reproduce?" Because if you just Google something like that, you're gonna get 1,000 answers. And she asked, “What if there was a definitive answer?” She ended up reaching out to me to write it, so I had a very unconventional approach to book publishing. Somebody came to me to write it rather than me going to them to write it. But when she asked me, let me tell you, I was just like, “Oh, yes, there's nothing I was born to do more than write this book.”

[Writing this satisfied] the child in me that grew up watching nature documentaries and being horrified at things like how squids reproduce. They have these little egg cases that are shaped like little tubes and it freaked me out so bad as a kid, and that information has been stored in my brain ever since. When I finally got to use it in this book, I was like, "Oh, finally!" It's like exorcising this demon that's been haunting me my whole life.

You're talking about how you've kind of been researching for this book almost your whole life, but what was your favorite part of doing the research for The Compendium of Magical Beasts?

My favorite chapter is the werewolf chapter. I am partial to werewolves, metaphorically speaking. I'm really drawn to creatures that look monstrous but have a different side, so the werewolf chapter in particular was really fun for me. I also got to incorporate some of the social justice issues that I'm interested in and apply them in a very fantastical sense. Obviously, werewolves are fictional, and there's not a one-to-one metaphor for werewolves to a certain marginalized group, but I got to integrate some of that thinking into it.

Since it’s written from the perspective of an early 20th century woman, I also got to play around with popular theory of the time. Carl Jung was a big influence on this chapter, with the question being, “Okay, why wolves, though? Like, why, if this is true, why do they turn into wolves? Why don't they turn into something else?” My reasoning pulls from Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious, and the symbol for monstrosity and the opposition to human civilization being the wolf as emblematic of wildness and being a threat to livestock and livelihood. The scariest threat to civilization in the 19th-century mind would be a wolf.

That chapter also relied a lot more heavily on magic. The other ones at least I try to be to some degree scientific. This chapter was kind of just like, “Well, sometimes we just don't know and when we just don't know we're just gonna say magic.”

Could you talk more about your integration of history, popular theory, science, and cryptids?

I don't have a lot of ancient tomes on hand so I went with the basics: I would start with Wikipedia. And that would raise a lot of questions and introduce historical sources that would raise a lot more questions. There are all of these different sources going back beyond Ancient Greece, so I reference historical writings about unicorns and so on. My approach within the book was to say, here's the historical evidence, and here is what somebody in the early 20th century would know about science, and here is a little bit of magic, because my narrator treads this line between scientist and folklorist. She is considered a cryptozoologist, even though the term “cryptozoology”didn't exist until the 1950s. It's mixing that historical element with modern science and then historical science, all of that stuff coming together.

That’s delightful, and absolutely my jam! So what was the most difficult part of your research?

Me too. It was an absolute delight to get to work on. But oh, man, I'm not a scientist. I’m just not. When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a marine biologist until I learned that that's science. You don't just get to hang out with whales all day. It's a real bummer. But I wanted this to be accurate to some degree. The process was a lot of me having to learn about things like parthenogenesis. Thankfully, I have a friend who is a biologist. I would text them and say, “hey, can you explain parthenogenesis to me in the simplest way possible?” Luckily, these creatures have existed in the popular consciousness for so long that if you search for how many stomachs a centaur has, somebody somewhere has a scientific answer. It's just a matter of choosing which answer sounds the most plausible and the most interesting, because there are some answers that are definitely more plausible, but I'm just like, “no, that's boring. We're not going to use that one.”

It makes logical sense that a centaur would have two hearts rather than one. But I didn't want them to have two hearts. Sometimes nature is weird. I like having a few head-scratchers in there—having everything make perfect logical sense (which is impossible, given that they're magical creatures) is less interesting to me than having a few mysterious details.

Lily Jones, the artist, did the most wonderful job transforming my pseudo-scientific knowledge into something that looks beautiful and believable. So 1,000 blessings to Lily Jones, who really brought this together. 

What was your favorite cryptid to research and write about?

Oh, that's a good question. Aside from the werewolf, I would say the ghoul. I've been a big zombie movie fan since I was in high school, and researching the history of the ghoul, and the zombie, and where all of that comes from was really interesting to me. Also, the chapter is disgusting! It was grossing me out as I was writing it, and I thought, “This is fun. This is what I'm here for, to gross myself out.”

So differentiating from your favorite cryptid to research about, which one would you love to meet in real life? And are these the same or are they different?

Which one would I like to meet in real life? There's so many of them. Most of the ones that I put in my book are not evil or even particularly scary. Most of the advice that my narrator gives is like, "leave them alone because you shouldn't go around messing with wild animals or other sentient beings without their permission, because that's a rude thing to do."

I'm just going to have to pick werewolves and be a parody of myself. I have a lot of questions. I really want to sit down with a werewolf over a cup of coffee or some ice cream and ask them how all of this works. What parts are real, what parts aren't real? Why full moons? That association actually didn't come about until the Wolf Man movie in the 50s, which is pretty late in werewolf lore.

Thank you so much for all your fantastic answers to these questions! I'm going to have to check out your book now because I super want to read it.

It was a lot of fun to write. Running Press did an amazing job putting it together and making it look beautiful. Lily Jones' illustrations are just mind blowing, and I got to be really sassy in the footnotes. The angry Amazon reviews really don't like the sassy footnotes. There’s one ranked very helpful that says I am a man-hating feminist! I get upset about things like that because feminism doesn't equate to hating men, and I feel like maybe I should be better about articulating that, but then I remember that there's no getting through to people who are already prepared to believe the worst of me.

It was that review that made me want to do the interview about your book! I know this man is trying to be critical of the book, but now I really want to read it. For me it's actually not a critical review. It's a glowing review!

My husband likes to keep tabs on the reviews. I won't do it since I get too upset, and it's probably healthier to not pay too much attention. He told me, “That review is ranked most helpful and your book sales went up after that review. I think that person left you a mean review and actually boosted your sales.” If there was ever a second edition it would need to be a prominent pull quote. It needs to be on the cover as a sales point. I need to write him a thank you note thanking him for selling my book for me.

Thanks, Melissa! And thanks to you, readers, for helping us share these posts and get Hazel out there! Best wishes~

First Stretch Goal Unlocked! Bonus Printable from Cody Tenaglia
over 3 years ago – Thu, Aug 06, 2020 at 01:05:10 PM

Our contributors are so pleased to have made it to our first stretch goal, and to thank you, Cody Tenaglia has created a little printable booklet to include with this year's backer reward. Every backer will receive this PDF to print at home and assemble as many as you like to fill out with friends or on your own on a rainy day.  Our first stretch goal was all about paying our contributors more, so we'll have lots of other little goodies the contributors would like to share with you to thank you for more stretch goals reached. Goal #2 is to unlock wooden pins or wooden charms, we haven't decided which, but the design will be revealed, and you can help weigh in (now or at the time of the reveal) on what you'd like the design to become! 

After that, it's going to be giving more to our artists and writers, because our budget for them has been so limited by being our own publisher and not having access to the funds that large publishing houses have. Our initial budget was minimal in order to lower the risk of not meeting our goal, so throughout the campaign, we will strive to be able to better compensate our incredible talent, without whom there would be no issue of Hazel this year. Thanks so much for helping us do that and helping Hazel reach more people than ever!

Best wishes, Lucy Kagan

Interview with Lara Smith, Artist & Writer for Hazel
over 3 years ago – Wed, Aug 05, 2020 at 08:00:20 AM

To kick off our interview series for this year's Hazel campaign, we have one of our talented artists and writers, Lara Smith of @larajeandraws! Fellow contributor littlemousedeer interviewed her about art and daily life, which co-mingle naturally in her experience. 

Your art is mysterious and charming, full of life and natural spirits. Your hobbies include both gardening and going on walks, giving you a lot of time with plant life. How does your interaction with plants in person affect your interaction with them on the page?

Lara: I can be a very anxious person, and a lot of why I make art is as a form of self therapy. Plants are a huge part of maintaining a space in which I feel safe and calm, so of course that works its way into my art. My goal with my art is to help myself and whoever is looking at it feel safe and happy, and for me that means plants!

It is kind of funny though, people often tell me, “You must love plants so much,” and yes, I do now, but I used to not really care about plants! I had the south facing bedroom at my parent's house growing up, so my mom always had plants in my room, and it would make me mad. There was stuff in my room that wasn't mine! I wonder now how I could ever have taken that for granted. Here I am, surrounded by plants. I even have a five foot tall avocado tree in my house.

Plants help keep me feeling calm and grounded. I hadn't realized what a huge role they play in making me feel like I'm at home. I need green things in my space, and so plants in my art are a vital element for bringing that peace. 

I love that part of your artistic process is self-soothing and self-therapy and that you integrate the plants into that practice. Plants can be very calming and they kind of force you to slow down. Has that been your experience as well?

Lara: Yes. It's a lot like having pets. A symptom of being anxious or depressed is having trouble taking care of yourself. I've been lucky and I never struggled with that aspect too badly, and I think it's because I have a history of keeping so many plants and having pets. You can't slip up in taking care of them! And when you're watering your plants or feeding your cat, you remember that maybe you should water yourself and feed yourself too. It makes you more aware of making sure you have light and air and to move around. I always get very excited to see people with anxiety or depression getting pets and plants; they're such great little companions for self care! 

Do you have a favorite kind of plant? And what about an old grudge, like a plant that you just do not agree with it and it's not going to work?

Lara: I'll tell you about my favorite one first, it's called Hobbit Jade. I love its unusual leaf shape! I grew up with the Lord of the Rings, so I love the name, and it's also just a gorgeous plant. I have totally bought into the trendy cacti and succulent movement, I just love them. Asking me to pick a favorite plant is kind of like asking me to pick a favorite Ghibli film though, I love so many plants! My other top favorites are lavender, wild violets, and oak trees.

I have to laugh about the grudge plant because I actually do have a nemesis plant. I had not realized that gardening would bring out the fury in me! I didn't have my own garden until a couple years ago. Now when I'm weeding my garden I turn into an angry monster, muttering to myself and covered in dirt. There are blackberry vines trying to creep into my garden, and if you leave even the tiniest bit of root behind it's like a hydra, 10 more vines grow for every one you pull! I just hate blackberries. I never thought I'd be that way, I even find dandelions lovable, but not blackberries. I do feel a bit better knowing that my gardener friend in Germany hates them just as much as I do though!

Last year I did an illustration of plants as little fairy creatures, and I have one which I called “that thorny bastard” and it's a little blackberry monster. 

Your previous answer flows perfectly into our next question. If you could give a plant sentience, like in your illustrations, what plant would it would you want to meet? I’m assuming you don't want to meet the thorny bastard.

Lara: Well, I'm always hopeful that if you can sit down and talk with someone you can find common ground. So in a way, I would love to give them sentience, because then I could say, “Guys, there's a whole open section behind my garden, hang out back there and just get out of my flowers!” But honestly, I would love to pick something with a great big root ball so that I could have an Oddish in real life. That would be so awesome. Or mushrooms! Mushrooms would be great as little characters to have running around. I also wouldn't mind getting to have a chat with the oak tree in my backyard. I wonder what things it has seen in its lifetime!

Speaking of Oddish, do you think the Pokemon games have influenced your illustrations? What are your biggest fantasy influences?

Lara: Pokemon was actually a pretty small part of my childhood, I was more into Lord of the Rings growing up and I've become a Pokemon player only as a “grown up”. My dad read the Lord of the Rings books aloud to me and my brother when we were little, and then of course the movies came out when I was in middle school, so that was always my main go to for fantasy inspiration. When I was like, 12 or 13, I started reading a lot more and the Black Cauldron series by Lloyd Alexander was one of the first fantasy series that I really, really got into. I was a big fan of Tamora Pierce.

My older brother was actually probably my biggest fantasy influence! Anything he did I had to do, too, and he was into all the fantasy stuff. A lot of why I started drawing and writing was because he did them, so I did, too!

In terms of artistic influences, I grew up looking at the Alan Lee illustrated Lord of the Rings book, and those paintings are always in the back of my mind as some of the most beautiful art I've ever seen. Amy Brown is a watercolor artist who does very cute faeries, and she was the reason I started painting with watercolors at about 13 or 14. Her work and her career were what planted the seed and made me convinced I'd be An Artist some day. 

Just this month, July 2020, you self-published the book Be Kind to Me, which gives new perspectives on common pests and how they benefit their environments. What inspired you to write this book?

Lara: I really wanted to educate people, both kids and adults, on how to be respectful to things that we tend to have a dismissive or even fearful reaction towards. My hope is that this book can inspire people to have more perspective on the fact that they're not the only ones here, and just because we can be frightened by some of these creatures, we cannot get by without them! It's a delicate balance, this weird, crazy planet we're living on. We should be willing to be kind and caring to protect the diversity that surrounds us.

It's so important right now to have this dialogue about protecting our planet, and making things cute and relatable is a great way to motivate people to make better decisions. I also made sure to give people some small things that they can do to be good to the planet. At the end of the book I included a list of 10 things that you can do that are eco-friendly, simple, and affordable. Even the littlest of changes makes such a difference.

If I can make even one more person not put insecticide on their lawn, or choose to relocate the spider in their house instead of killing it, I'll be happy!

Thanks so much, Lara! You can find more of her work on her Instagram, or on her website.