Southern-California based author and journalist Steve Baltin has lived a life most writers dream of. With bylines in Rolling Stone, Billboard, Playboy and more, he has had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interview many music legends.

His latest book, Anthems We Love: 29 Iconic Artists On The Hit Songs That Shaped Our Lives, examines anthems from The Temptations to My Chemical Romance and answers the question: what transforms a song into an anthem?

Interviews with these artists reveal their creative processes, making the reader feel as though they were sitting in the room during a writing session or backstage at a show. While it offers a behind-the-scenes look at the songs, it mostly shares how the song grew in popularity and how fans made them personal. Songs are meant to transport someone back to a certain time - a wedding, a high school graduation, a first love - and reading about how these artists watched their songs grow into something beyond their imaginations is fascinating.

“If you’ve ever bounced along to TLC’s ‘Scrubs’ in your car on a girls’ night out, acted out a three-act play in your head to My Chemical Romance’s ‘The Black Parade,’ or swooned to Barry Manilow’s ‘Could It Be Magic,’ and wondered, How did these anthemic songs come to be? - join the club!” singer-songwriter Deborah Gibson wrote as praise for Anthems We Love. “Steve Baltin so brilliantly takes you deep into an insightful journey of these songs from inception to recording and beyond… So many fascinating artists and songs that are woven into the soundtrack of our lives in a new and unique way that will leave you hungry for a next edition. This book resonates with me as a songwriter, but more importantly, it hits home for the music fan that lives in all of us!”

In the foreword written by fellow journalist Cameron Crowe, he shares his belief that most great anthems start as a want to please everyone, and when that backfires, a song emerges that was meant for one person but instead resonates with the world. Having a song that means so much to someone is widely discussed, whether they are sharing the song with their friends or seeing the song performed live while standing next to a group of strangers, but hardly ever have the artists delved deep into what it was like for them to watch fans make those songs their own.

“I have done thousands of interviews over the years and one of the most common refrains, no matter how big the artist, is songs are like children,” Baltin said in a press release. “Anthems is what happens when those songs have grown up. All 29 of these songs have gone into the world and been a huge part of people’s lives, whether they’ve been played at weddings, funerals, births. And my favorite part of writing this book was hearing from the artists how they’ve been moved - and even shocked - by the way these songs have become part of the fabrics of listeners’ worlds in ways the artist could never have imagined. Anthems proves that when a song leaves the nest, it becomes the world’s.”

In the superhero universe of A LA BRAVA, Latinas of different upbringings fight against female injustices.

The creator and founder of the series, Kayden Phoenix, comes from the film industry and has a background in screenwriting and directing. One of the first things she noticed in her field was the character generalizations that didn’t reflect her own background, and gave her the idea of wanting to bring a Latina superhero to the big screen.

As a third generation Chicana based in Los Angeles, her first real superhero was her mother. She was the inspiration behind the first in the series, Jalisco, named after the place her grandmother was born. This Mexican Latina superhero is a blade-wielding folklorico dancer that uses her culture as her weapon.

The second in the series, Santa, is also heavily influenced by her family. Inspired by her family members with military backgrounds, this SJW Latina superhero is a brawler that takes down the ICE detention centers.

Loquita, a Boriqua/Cubana Latina superhero, is a teen detective in the supernatural world. Loquita is an ode to Phoenix’s childhood memories of ghost stories told at family gatherings.

Ruca is a Chicana Latina vigilante dispensing justice. Her story pays homage to Phoenix’s hometown and the overplayed stereotypes of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.

Bandita is the last in the series, who is a Dominican Latina, gun-slinging cowgirl based in modern-day New York.

For each story, a very real social justice issue is depicted. From femicide and government detention centers to suicide, human trafficking and domestic violence, Phoenix makes sure that Latinas are not only represented but heard.

“I hope that [readers] get a good story, because you are reading a book and learning about a new superhero,” she said. “And then also maybe to create change themselves; whether it’s the social justice issue that they’re learning about or just something in the community that they care about themselves.”

Although her main reasoning for creating this series was representation, she was informed during the middle of the series that A LA BRAVA is the first Latina superhero team in comic book history.

She wanted to make sure representation was found in all forms of the comics, including the designers. Several artists were a part of the story’s creations, from penciling and inking to coloring and lettering.

“I have so many amazing artists,” Phoenix said. “They’re all Latina artists. I’m so lucky I found them, all on Instagram and Twitter.”

After putting a call out online for Latinas artists to help a Latina writer create Latina superheroes, Phoenix received nearly 100 portfolios. Since then, she has been able to create a team of artists that specialize in all forms of illustration.

The importance of the A LA BRAVA series is much more than a typical superhero story. They tackle real-world problems with real-world solutions, and do so with a still-underrepresented community. This series is meant to spark conversation and bring forward a new kind of hero.

After an admirable career as a civil service firefighter and veteran of the U.S. Air Force, Alan E. Losure was enjoying the retirement life. However, on a fall day in 2017, his daily three-mile walk went a bit differently.

In his mind, Losure saw a vision. A man was sitting at a table, inside of a log cabin, writing. An oil lamp stood on the table next to the man, and using that light Losure was able to see what the man was writing.

“I just felt like I was an invisible part of his story, and it haunted me,” he said.

He went home and told his wife, but decided to try and ignore the vision. When it simply could not be ignored, he typed it out. He was encouraged to publish it, which had never even crossed his mind. Five years later, he has published 14 books and counting.

His stories tend to be set in the 1890s, in his hometown of Gas City, Indiana. The inspiration came from a building in town that sported its founding year - 1892 - and he found himself at the local library researching as much as possible.

“This is a unique time when automobiles began to slowly become a part of our daily lives, before airplanes; when the streets were made of dirt rather than asphalt and people rode horses instead of riding in Hondas,” he said.

Although he doesn’t use the names of real people that he comes across in newspaper clippings on the library’s microfilm readers, he does use real photographs that he feels match the characters perfectly. He typically searches for cabinet cards on eBay and purchases them so he is in possession of the original copy.

Losure said that his stories play like a movie in his mind, and when he doesn’t see anything else, he feels the story is complete. Despite not being an active viewer or reader of murder mysteries, that is typically the genre he writes. The historical aspect of his stories come from his love of history, which was his favorite subject in school and became a lifelong passion.

Typically the titles of the book come to him before he even begins writing, while the covers of his books also come to him as a vision, which he draws out and sends in for illustration.

His wife, Susan, plays a major role in publishing his works. Not only is she his biggest supporter, but she is a wonderful proofreader. This genre also isn’t her first choice as a reader, yet she happily shares his latest work with her fellow churchgoers.

“It's something I never in my life expected to do, and that makes it wonderful because it is a surprise,” he said.

His latest book, The Curse of the Hanging Tree, tells the story of Stanley, an intellectually disabled teenager who is savagely lynched for a crime he did not commit. Word of a terrible curse spread through the town as those involved with Stanley’s death met with a terrible death of their own.

Is the curse responsible for the strange occurrences that continue? Is there another force that may be involved? It is now up to Marshal Justin Blake and his deputies to solve this lingering murder mystery and put an end to the death and destruction that continues to torment the good people in present-day Gas City.

While Jamie Gehring was writing her memoir, Madman in the Woods: Life Next Door to the Unabomber, she never once identified the book as part of the true crime genre.

Gehring grew up in Lincoln, Mont. next to a self-sustaining hermit that she only knew as Ted. Despite his odd behavior, Ted was the man that gave her painted rocks, stayed over for dinner and even held her as a baby. Imagine her surprise when, 17 years later, her neighbor was identified as Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

“It's such an interesting, outside perspective to have experienced something like that,” Gehring said. “For me, personally, it just really motivated and pushed me to not only really understand our interactions and our lives and how they intersected but also knowing him and wanting to really understand what created him.”

Although her book was originally laid out as a set of short stories, Gehring knew she wanted to make it much more personal. More than five years later, she had researched every aspect of Kaczynski’s life, including illness as a baby, advancements in school and isolation he chose throughout his childhood and teenage years. Much like an actor immersing themselves in a role, Gehring immersed herself in the life of Ted and his family to get a better understanding of how the man behind the monster came to be.

There were a few instances where she would take a 24-hour period of time to lock herself in a hotel room and fully immerse herself, allowing her to feel not only Kaczynski’s pain but the pain his family had to endure. Her empathy is present in the book, because as a mother and as a sibling, she can understand what it felt like to be related to someone who was lacking that same kind of empathy.

“It was a rollercoaster of emotion because I would write something particularly in that scene with [Kaczynski’s mother] Wanda and her baby and having to leave him in the hospital, and then a couple of months later I would write a scene about the additional research I had done finding out that he poisoned my dog,” Gehring said. “I'm feeling empathy and then I'm feeling this intense anger as well.”

Gehring was able to develop a strong relationship with Ted’s brother, David Kaczynski, who she first met during the production of the Netflix documentary, “Unabomber - In His Own Words”. She was transparent with him from their first email interaction, saying that she was writing about how her childhood was affected by Ted and how she’s learning to cope with that as an adult. He was transparent with her in return, offering her reference material and stories of his own as well as reading the first draft of her memoir.

“He really thanked me for trying to connect with Wanda because her voice can no longer be heard; she's passed away and for me to spend the time really trying to tell her story as well was really important and was very appreciated by David,” she said. “He was so incredibly supportive and complimentary, not only of my writing style, but also of the story I was telling. Getting his approval, somebody who's this close to the story, was a huge moment for me as a new author.”

Despite getting the approval of those closest to the story, there were still a thousand moments of thinking ‘never mind’ while writing Madman in the Woods. Not only did it take a lot of emotional energy to write about several disturbing topics, but having to learn just how close it was to the safety of her own family was hard to fully grasp. There was also the thought in the back of her mind that there would probably come a time when Ted would read the book and have something to say about it.

The most important aspect of the book is the conversation it starts. For true crime fans, this is much more than some previously unknown facts about the man that went from mathematics professor to domestic terrorist. This is about those that knew him and were also affected by his actions.

“It makes you realize the ripple effect of somebody's violence,” Gehring said. “Because of the duration of his violence, so many lives were affected. The nation was terrorized for 17 years.”

Gehring feels like the finished product of Madman in the Woods is everything she wanted it to be. It is much more than a true crime story; it has nature writing, complex themes of grief and connection, and personal essays of life outside of being Kaczynski’s neighbor.

There is one takeaway she hopes readers get, especially those who have similar stories.

“That is one thing that I really do find empowering and appreciate about the process, that I've been able to give more voice to my experience,” she said. “There's plenty of other people out there that have experienced some type of violence and it's affected their lives, and maybe that will inspire them to tell their own story, whatever that looks like.”

Many residents of Oklahoma believed that the Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995 was the deadliest act in their history. When the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was demolished, as well as dozens of cars and more than 300 nearby buildings, 168 people perished and several hundred were injured. The FBI’s official website states, “No stone was left unturned to make sure every clue was found and all the culprits identified.”

The same cannot be said for the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

According to author Susan E. Atkins, Oklahoma State Representative Don Ross had to correct reports that the 1995 bombing was the worst disaster in Oklahoma history. Atkins, a Tulsa resident for 30 years, a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and professor at the University of Tulsa, had never heard of the 1921 race massacre. For almost 100 years, this tragedy was swept under the rug, and that infuriated her.

Atkins dove into as many scholarly sources as she could find about the massacre. Historically accurate, well-annotated books were right at her disposal, yet history books were notably absent of any trace of this piece of history. This inspired her to write a historical fiction account of the massacre called Never Again!

With six pages of bibliography, Never Again! brings a fictionalized account of what occurred between Black man Dick Roland and white woman Sarah Page, beginning inside an elevator of the Drexel Building on May 30, 1921. On May 31 and June 1, 1921, thousands of drunk, armed and newly deputized white citizens invaded Tulsa's thriving Greenwood District, murdered an estimated 300 Blacks, tortured thousands more and incinerated 35 city blocks of homes, businesses, churches and other institutions.

“The Greenwood community was known as ‘Black Wall Street’, but the Tulsa Tribune, which was a big player in this whole thing, were just fanning the flames of what a cesspool of drugs and [sex workers] Greenwood was,” Atkins said. “They just totally ignored the fact that there were brilliant doctors, lawyers, fine jewelry shops, churches, and all of it was burned to the ground over the course of two days.”

Atkins created two fictional characters to help move the story forward to present day, including Hattie Johnson Rogers, daughter of Roland and Page, and her best friend, Lucy Ann Barnes. They meet when entering Booker T. Washington High School, and become lifelong friends who eventually become part of the conversation of fighting for reparations. The book speaks of the real 2005 case appeal that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear, and how real people Representative Don Ross and Senator Maxine Horner helped commission a report to get real answers.

As of May 2022, the plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking reparations for the massacre are finally moving forward. An extensive curriculum was introduced to Oklahoma school districts. President Joe Biden became the first sitting president to visit the area. A free, public exhibit is offered by the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum. Progress has been made, but is not finished.

“I truly want people to be able to learn about this story and history,” Atkins said. “What people forget about something like this is that the wealth that could have been passed on to subsequent generations, and wealth could have accumulated through generations. [Those who survived] fled, never to return. It was a tragic loss for the city of Tulsa and the community of Greenwood.”

For best-selling novelist Ibi Zoboi, her writing journey began during her adolescence.

She kept her stories to herself, jotting them down on the blank pages of notebooks left over from the school year. She didn’t read many books herself - the culture of borrowing and returning books in a classroom or library either did not exist yet or did not exist in her struggling community - but instead immersed herself in magazines, which were more accessible and cheaper to buy.

It was easy for Zoboi to fall in love with writing. Poetry first, then journalism. Her poetry became short stories. Those short stories became novels. Whatever she was writing, she knew she wanted the audience to fall into the young adult category.

“I decided to write for young people simply because I love speculative fiction,” she said. “I thought I could try my hand at fantasy and sci-fi, and those were the first stories that I started to write.”

Her latest novel, Okoye to the People, finds the Dora Milaje General going on her first trip to America with King T’Chaka. She has been tasked with joining other African leaders as a special envoy to the World Humanitarian Aid Council, but is thrown into conflict when she finds herself in a New York neighborhood that is struggling with gentrification.

As she gets to know the young people of Brownsville, Okoye uncovers the truth about the plans of a manipulative real-estate mogul pulling all the strings - and how far-reaching those secret plans really are. Caught between fulfilling her duty to her country and listening to her own heart urging her to stand up for Brownsville, Okoye must determine the type of Dora Milaje - and woman - she wants to be.

Zoboi found herself really connecting to the story of the Dora Milaje, who were based on the Dahomey, an all-female military regiment of the Kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa. As an immigrant of Haiti, she loved reading about and seeing photos of these women who learned how to protect their children and their villages.

She also immersed herself in the Black Panther comics, learning as much as she could about the Dora Milaje and Okoye.

“There’s a lot of gaps in the story and history of the Dora Milaje, so I had to rely on what’s already there,” Zoboi said. “Every time somebody writes about the Dora Milaje, they create a little something new. I had to rely on who she is as a character; as a character she’s fiercely loyal, so this book is about her loyalty versus her heart and her needing to help the kids that need it most.”

Okoye may or may not be the one who saves the day at the end of the novel, giving the reader the chance to question who they are as heroes and how they can create and affect change. Sure, there are superheroes, but what about everyday heroes?

Creating the story for Okoye to the People reminded Zoboi of a Rudine Sims Bishop quote that she tries to live by in her storytelling:

“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of a larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.”

The young adults who read her novels may not feel seen or may not see themselves, so Zoboi hopes her books help them find that window, mirror or sliding glass door.

Suffering daily humiliation at the hands of three bullies, four high school friends take it upon themselves to accidentally open a portal to another dimension. What started out as an evening activity of live action role playing turned into a deadly creature terrorizing their small Arkansas town.

American literature professor, award-winning screenwriter and accomplished science fiction and horror novelist Brett Riley debuts his action-packed YA series with Freaks. Friends Micah Sterne, Jamie Entmann, Gabriella Davison and Christian Allen have been consistently picked on by school bullies Kenneth Del Ray, Brayden Sears and Gavin Cloverleaf for years. Their hatred for these bullies grows into an unhealthy obsession with seeking revenge, especially once the open portal not only releases other-worldly creatures but gives the four of them super powers.

The bad news? Kenneth also stumbled into the side effects from the portal while he was lurking outside in an attempt to bully them in their own backyards.

Even more bad news? One of the creatures released from the portal, a Go’kan named Na’ul, has its eyes set on the teenagers and destroying everything they love.

The novel is chalk full of beloved science fiction tributes, from Stranger Things and Supernatural to X-Men and The Goonies. What it lacks, however, is the same amount of depth. Opportunities to expand upon the creature’s background, the origin of the book of spells and the friendship of the characters were missed in the first book of this series.

This fast-paced, easy read does leave unresolved conflicts among this friend group as well as with one of their bullies. Although they all share this new life and the repercussions of what they have done, they can not seem to put the past aside to deal with the bigger conflict of what else was let into their world.

The ending also asks the question of how well they will continue to work with one another, with careful concern over Micah. He was already exhibiting major behavioral concerns, and the trauma he experienced over the course of this novel is not doing him any favors.

The second novel in the Freaks series, Travelers, will be available August 2, 2022.

Photo courtesy of Shervin Lainez

Music historian, critically acclaimed author and regular Wall Street Journal contributor Marc Myers takes on the task of sharing the stories of those who made rock music what it is today in his latest book, Rock Concert: An Oral History as Told by the Artists, Backstage Insiders, and Fans Who Were There.

Decades after the rise of rock music in the 1950s, the rock concert retains its allure and power as a unifying generational experience - and as an influential multi-billion dollar industry. Rock Concert presents a 360-degree account of live rock’s emergence by weaving together groundbreaking stories from those who were on stage, in the wings, behind the scenes and in the audience.

Rock Concert begins with the blossoming of R&B concert circuits in the 1950s. From Los Angeles auditoriums to Memphis fairs, industry veterans share where they played their music and the importance of radio.

The hippie gatherings of the 1960s brought less rock ‘n’ roll and more folk and pop. The emergence of FM radio majorly impacted how musicians found their audience while musicians also used their voices for political activism. Concert promoters, sound system engineers and music festivals were born, with a lot of trial and error to follow.

Growing arena tours in the 1970s was exactly the kind of overhaul that the rock concert needed. After the violent events of The Altamont Free Concert on December 6, 1969, it took a while for arenas to ease resistance on letting rock artists perform at their venues. Image, media and branding became essential to promoting music, inspiring the cover of The Beatles’ Let It Be, Chicago’s first nine studio albums and the iconic Hot Lips logo for The Rolling Stones.

The 1980s is where visual branding reached its peak. MTV began broadcasting on cable TV on August 1, 1981. For the first time, audiences could see artists on their television playing their music live or in the form of a music video. It encouraged album and concert ticket purchases, the latter becoming computerized for the first time.

Throughout the book, readers get to hear first-hand accounts of Elvis Presley’s superstardom, Beatlemania, the Grateful Dead’s free-flowing psychedelic jams and Pink Floyd’s operatic, live production of The Wall. Drawn from his original, in-depth interviews with 94 wide-ranging sources, Myers combines tales from iconic performers like Joan Baez, Bob Weir, Alice Cooper, Steve Miller and Angus Young; stories about disc jockeys who first began playing rock on the radio such as Alan Freed; audio innovators who developed new technologies to accommodate ever-growing rock audiences and venues; music journalists such as Cameron Crowe, who went on to create Rolling Stone magazine; and the roadies, tour managers, regional promoters and festival organizers who orchestrated concerts to create a rounded and vivid account of live rock’s stratospheric rise from 1950 to 1985.

Over the last decade, Brett Newski has travelled the world as a touring musician. He’s been featured on NPR and Rolling Stone, supported acts such as Pixies and Violent Femmes, and his music has seen rotation on radio stations across the Midwest. His latest endeavor, however, involves a bit more than a few new songs.

It’s Hard To Be A Person: Defeating Anxiety, Surviving the World and Having More Fun was inspired by drawings Newski posted to social media several years ago as a humorous way to tackle his own anxiety and depression. He didn’t expect his audience to respond in a positive way, but the more they requested new drawings, the more he realized he was on to something bigger.

Seeing that positive feedback was the push he needed to try something new creatively, as he had been feeling the effects of long-term touring and pressure to be constantly releasing new music.

“Burnout had set in and I needed to do something other than music for a bit,” he said. “Touring and songwriting can be incredibly exciting missions, but after doing it awhile, I needed a new creative project that would challenge me and kick my ass in a new way.”

Despite the initial excitement of finding a new way to be creative, Newski found the process of creating a book to be incredibly taxing.

“Making the book was a long battle within my own brain,” he said. “It wasn't actually that much fun to make because it was so challenging. Unlike a music album, I made the book for others, not for me. Now I'm entering the fun part of the process where the book is done and I get to show it to people and tour it around the country.”

The Milwaukee native says that the city he calls home is a tremendous basecamp for a working artist. Between its affordability and proximity to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Milwaukee has been the perfect place to stay creative and stay relevant.

“If I would've moved to NYC or LA for the arts, I likely would've derailed my career by going broke and falling into the traps of comparison,” he said. “There are too many people and too much talent in those places, so it's easy to feel disposable and irrelevant.”

It’s Hard To Be A Person is Newski’s way of exploring how humor has been a form of therapy for him and hopefully can be to others. He shares this book with the world as a way to encourage readers to keep the conversation going.

His advice? Just stay in the game. Keep creating. Make good decisions and move on. Don't get hung up on any one thing for very long.

What if Rapunzel’s mother drank a potion from the wrong flower?

In the latest from the Twisted Tales series, author Liz Braswell returns to share a new version of the Tangled storyline in What Once Was Mine. This is her sixth novel of the series, having previously shared twisted versions of Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and Peter Pan.

Desperate to save the life of their queen and her unborn child, the good citizens of the kingdom comb the land for the all-healing Sundrop flower to cure her... but someone mistakenly picks the blossom of the Moondrop instead. This shimmering flower heals the queen and she delivers a healthy baby girl - with hair as silver and gray as the moon. But with her mysterious hair comes dangerous magical powers: the power to hurt, not heal. For the safety of the kingdom, Rapunzel is locked away in a tower and put under the care of the powerful goodwife, Mother Gothel.

“I was really intrigued by Rapunzel's inner life,” Braswell said. “What kind of person lives mostly alone and imprisoned for almost 20 years… and comes out not only sane, but optimistic about the world? Exploring her psyche, going more deeply into the way her mind worked was a fascinating journey.”

Trying to figure out how a believable character could go through what Rapunzel did and conveying that realistically to the reader was both rewarding and challenging. Braswell also had difficulty in describing the movement of Rapunzel’s hair. What works in an animated movie doesn’t always work in a YA novel, she said. One of her favorite aspects, however, was twisting the story of Maximus, Flynn Rider’s horse.

Readers are also introduced to a new character: a would-be outlaw named Gina.

“While fans (myself included) would probably be happy with 500 pages of Flynn and Raps, the story really needed a third character for them to shine off of, to share secrets with, to grow along with,” Braswell said. “Flynn and Rapunzel are Heroes with capital H; Gina is one of the heroes who is quietly instrumental in the happily ever afters arriving safe and sound.”

Before she can reach her happy ending, Rapunzel learns that there is far more to her story, and her magical hair, and her future than she ever knew. Her mental discipline is one of Braswell’s favorite characteristics of Rapunzel, and is something she wishes she had in her own life.

Her other favorite characteristic? Her feet!

“Think about it: she's a person who has spent her whole life without actually touching the ground - yet she is more grounded in who she is and what she wants than Flynn. It's a nice metaphor for being enthusiastically head-in-the-clouds while staying in touch with who you are.”

Lynn Zubernis has had an unusual career progression, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.

She is a trained clinical psychologist, who has worked for many years in school and treatment center environments. In her spare time, she and a group of girlfriends get together and share something they have enjoyed watching recently. One day in 2005, one of them shared the first season of a new show called Supernatural. She wasn’t immediately hooked, as her friend had been, but binged the whole first season with that group and would have it on as background noise as season two aired live on then-network The WB.

Cut to episode two of season two, titled “Everybody Loves a Clown”. Main characters Sam and Dean Winchester stand beside each other as they give their father’s remains a “hunter’s burial”. Sam wants to know if their father said anything before he died, and the internal battle Dean faces is apparent as he openly lies to his brother. Zubernis was supposed to be grading papers, which by then had fallen out of her lap while the red pen dangled from her fingers. Suddenly, the show she felt obligated to watch for her friend’s sake was much more than that.

Up until that point, Zubernis had never been part of a fandom. Sure, she had been a fan of shows such as The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but suddenly she found herself in a community of creative people that she never knew existed. At the same time, she was learning that her own field of psychology had little to no research on fandom studies. Between her and her friend Katherine Larsen, they found nearly every piece of research published on fandoms and conducted their own research to create what is now their first book, Fandom at the Crossroads: Celebration, Shame and Fan/Producer Relationships.

It took a few years for the book to get published, for several reasons. First, they had two very different disciplines: Zubernis in Psychology and Larsen in English Literature. That meant that their research styles were completely dissimilar, and they had to find a medium that worked best for them.

“We had to struggle through all the ethical issues and how were we going to do this research and how much were we going to anonymize and how that is going to be possible, because the fandom community is a marginalized community that's often stigmatized,” Zubernis said.

Once they had all of that in place, they had to find a publisher. They found it difficult to pitch the book because not only was fandom studies still a new topic, but they wanted their book to appeal to both academics and fans. Academic publishers found the book ‘too readable and pop culture based’ while popular publishers told them that the topic was not something the average person would read. It didn’t help that Supernatural was still a relatively new show, with more of a cult following than a mainstream one.

In the end, both were wrong.

A small publisher in the United Kingdom took a chance on them, and soon enough it was in the hands of Henry Jenkins, a scholar who focuses on transmedia storytelling and convergence culture. With his stamp of approval, Zubernis and Larsen continued to research and develop more fandom study books.

Photos by Chris Schmelke

The second book, Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls chronicles their journey in the fandom and how making that transition from fans who sat in the audience to fans who sat backstage was a challenge.

No Stuffy has ever gone into the Darkness and returned...

In the second installment of the Stuffed series, Clark arrives at camp ready to learn more about the Monster world and how Stuffies protect kids from them. Once him and his friends, Catherine-Lucille and D.A., set foot on the campgrounds, they discover that something strange is happening.

The bunk beds are covered in something gooey. The adults are exhibiting bizarre behavior. Stuffies and dolls are disappearing right when they are needed most. Soon enough, Clark’s Stuffy, Foon, discovers that the Monsters are after Clark and him.

In the long tradition of Stuffies vs. Monsters, this one’s a battle for the ages - one that will certainly go down in Stuffy history.

Author Liz Braswell originally developed the idea of Stuffed more than 20 years ago as a video game. It evolved through many stages as a video game and even a graphic novel before becoming what it is today.

“This is where it belongs and I have a zillion rewrites to prove it,” she said.

Stuffed: Into Darkness had been forming in the back of Braswell’s mind for a while, but took only a year or so to write. The editing process was a bit different than usual, thanks to the global pandemic. The days felt endless but also incredibly short. Her children were around 24/7, which certainly wasn’t a bad thing, but made that balance of work life and personal life a bit difficult.

There were rewarding moments in creating the book that stick out in her mind, especially when writing about Clark’s evolving relationships with his friends or the travel scenes with Foon and his captive Monster, the Phlebbish. There were also challenging moments that in the long run became wonderful additions to the storyline.

“Creating Kris, who is a bully, but human - but ultimately a bully - was hard,” she said. “I didn’t want a made-for-TV-movie style redemption for him in the end or have him be irredeemable.”

When author Jen Calonita began the discussion for her latest Twisted Tales novel, Go The Distance, she immediately knew which moment of the Hercules tale that she wanted to twist.

“Zeus, as you know, is the guy in charge when it comes to Mount Olympus,” she said. “I always imagined if Hercules asked him whether he could stay on Earth with Megara, he would say no. Hercules spends the whole movie trying to prove he's a God and then when he does, he stays on Earth for love. Immediately I thought, what if Zeus said no to that request? What if Hercules had to stay on Mount Olympus and Meg, if she wanted to be with Wonder Boy, had to prove herself and become a God in order to stay with him.”

When creating the storyline, Calonita had a few questions she wanted to address throughout the plot. Can Meg put her past behind her and use her quick wit to defeat monsters and gods alike, including the nefarious Hades? Will she finally figure out her place and contribution to the world? Or will her fear of commitment have her running away from an eternity of godhood with Hercules?

She also wanted to include as many nods to Greek mythology as she could as well as expand upon some of the stories already known.

“I tried to pull from some of the classic The Twelves Labors of Hercules and have Meg tackle them,” she said. “It was so much fun to plot, but also difficult to figure out exactly how it would all work.”

Calonita’s characterization is a mix of the characters Disney fans have fallen in love with and her honest portrayal of how she believes they would behave should this have been how the story went. It gives the reader the chance to dive more into Meg’s past, understand her frustrations and see an imperfect side to her that isn’t shown in the original film.

From being raised on Winnie the Pooh to the first family trip to Walt Disney World, Leslie Kay knew her adoration for Disney would easily transfer over into her adulthood. What she didn’t know was that one day she would be sharing that adoration with an entire community of fans.

She created a Tumblr account in 2011 to share her upcoming trip to Walt Disney World, her first visit since childhood. She was able to connect with other Disney fans and interact with them online as they shared their memories of the parks. One weekend, she decided to design outfits that resembled her favorite characters. She shared them on her blog, and suddenly her follower count skyrocketed. 300 followers turned into 30,000. Her direct messages were filled with requests to create more outfits. It started with Rapunzel, made its way to the other princesses, Mickey Mouse and more. The name she gave her blog promptly became a verb: Disney-bounding.

As DisneyBound grew in popularity, especially once Instagram became the trending social media platform, Disney itself was behind the scenes researching content for an upcoming fashion book. They came across Kay’s blog and reached out to her to see if she would be interested in being the author.

“It was crazy, the pressure was really on,” she said. “You want it to represent the blog, you want it to represent the community, but the community is so big and you can’t have a book that is a million pages long. I put a lot of pressure on myself but it was still really fun to work on and figure out the highlight reel of characters.”

DisneyBound: Dress Disney and Make It Fashion shares every step of the Disney-bounding process, from choosing items that complete an outfit to just how massive this community has become. As shared in the foreword by Disney Legacy Authority Jeff Kurtti, “Disney-bounding is a similar craft to costuming, but it’s a translation to another storytelling medium. It relies not on the making of a literal replica of a well-known wardrobe, but in the creation of nuanced visual cues in color, shape, texture, and materials; and the relationships of these to one another, in order to evoke a visual reminder or stimulate an emotional memory - even before any literal character connection is seen.”

It takes real time and effort to create each Disney-bound experience, and that time and effort is reflected throughout each page. Although Kay admits the hardest part of creating the book was the dread of someone feeling left out, she realized this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was actually happening, and her dream was now a reality. Holding a physical copy of a book, a book with her name on the cover, was an indescribable feeling.

For the last decade, Disney fans from around the world have used Leslie Kay’s blog to explore the parks, resemble a beloved character and turn their love for Disney into fashion. Creating a book based on her blog was a bucket list item she didn’t know she had, but thanks to this ever-growing community, she has been able to share this dream with a whole new audience.

Towards the beginning of the 1950 film Cinderella, her animal friends, including Jaq and Gus, help her sew together a beautiful gown for the prince’s ball. To the tune of “The Work Song”, the seamstress mice turn leftover fabric into an array of bows and frills perfect for Cinderella’s night out. While the film continues on with storylines for Jaq and Gus, what happens to the other mice? Find out in Disney’s latest novel, Delphine and the Silver Needle.

Author Alyssa Moon has always been fascinated by the animal side characters in fairy tales and deeply wanted to give a name to one of her favorites - the seamstress mice.

“The whole world of Cinderella is suffused with magic, so how might this little mouse’s life be impacted by magic?” Moon said. “What if she discovered that her true identity linked her to magic that had flourished long ago? As soon as I had given a name to that seamstress mouse, Delphine was born, and her story flowed out as if it had always been there.”

There were several stages to the creation process, including a year just spent on creating the overall world of Delphine, the system of magic and the overarching storyline for the series. Once all the details were fleshed out, Moon spent a year writing Delphine and the Silver Needle and a year working alongside Disney Publishing to create the book’s look and feel.

“The beautiful art, the layout, the design, the map, all of that - it’s absolutely gorgeous, and it perfectly captures how I had imagined the book…as if the reader had found it on the shelf of an old castle library, just waiting to be discovered,” she said.

Delphine’s story goes like this: She is a young, orphaned dressmaker living in the walls of Cinderella’s chateau when she stumbles upon an enormous secret. She takes it upon herself to uncover the truth about the past and save the kingdom before the evil King Midnight succeeds in harnessing the power of the tailor mice.

Not only is this Moon’s first novel for Disney, it is her debut as an author. The process was extremely rewarding for her as someone who thrives on receiving feedback and notes in order to improve.

“It’s like a puzzle,” she said. “Often, it’s an incredibly complicated puzzle where you only have a few pieces, and no box lid to show you the picture! But the process of sifting through and figuring out the changes that need to be made is like putting the puzzle pieces into place one by one. It’s incredibly satisfying each time you get another puzzle piece to fit just right. So although the process can make me want to tear my hair out, it’s the most rewarding feeling in the world when all of the notes have been addressed and the new draft is sparkling and perfect.”

Delphine and the Silver Needle is action-packed with magic, heart and something that ties the book together: adventure.

“Adventures can exist anywhere,” Moon said. “Sometimes the greatest magic isn’t about spells or wands - it’s about having the courage to chase your destiny against all odds. Each of us is capable of much more than we know.”

In many of the tales brought to life by Walt Disney Animation Studios, specifically the tales of heroines, their stories begin well into their teenage years. Cinderella was 19 years old when she attended the prince’s ball in a gown made by her fairy godmother. Pocahontas was 18 years old when English colonists invaded her people’s land. Mulan was 16 years old when she joined the Chinese military in her father’s place. Their tales of triumph made them infamous, but what did their earlier upbringings look like?

In Disney’s latest chapter book series, Before the Story shows characters as children, catering to the 6- to 8-year-old demographic. The series has already featured Mulan, Elsa and Anna, and recently took on the tales of Pocahontas and Cinderella.

Before Pocahontas brought peace, she was a girl ready to help. Pocahontas Leads The Way shows a younger but equally brave chief’s daughter who wants what’s best for her people. When a member of their village falls ill, Pocahontas takes it upon herself to get the help they need.

In addition to embarking on a journey that taught her courage, strength and friendship, the adventure that surrounds the plotline of searching for medicinal flowers gives the reader a sense of nostalgia for what they know comes next in Pocahontas’ life.

Before Cinderella lost her slipper, she was a girl ready to create. Cinderella Takes The Stage shares the story of a younger Ella, affectionately called Cinderella by her mother and father, who is determined to win the Midsummer Festival Puppet Contest. When she shares the puppet creation process with a new friend, she struggles to decide which of their dreams deserves the prize of a gold coin.

Friendship and love share a magical quality that outshines the need to be first place, but it’s hope and belief in magic that makes Cinderella and Valentine winners, no matter who the prize was awarded to.

In each of these stories, the reader gets the opportunity to dive deeper into each heroine’s backstory and witness their resilience begin to form. Whether it was Pocahontas’ determination to take care of everyone in her village or Cinderella’s belief in finding the good in everyone, the outcome of each tale leaves the reader with a greater understanding of how these young women came to be strong individuals.

The Before the Story series takes young readers into the world of their favorite characters, yet gives them the ability to connect on a deeper level with them as they appear to be similar ages. It is an entertaining take on the lives of these beloved heroines while continuing to develop their virtues.

In the decade since animator Rachel Larsen created The Tiny Chef with writer Adam Reid and cinematographer Ozi Akturk, they’ve managed to turn their clay friend into a viral phenomenon.

According to the New York Times, The Tiny Chef “stands only six inches tall, like an enchanted ball of moss sprung to life. Made of wood, foam latex and metal, he preps vegetables, simmers sauces and bakes pies the size of bottle caps, all while chattering in a lispy singsong that is mostly incomprehensible.”

The character became recognizable through stop-motion videos posted online, and has just released a book, The Tiny Chef and da mishing weshipee blook.

“The Tiny Chef often cooks his famous vegetable stew for his friends, and whenever they’d ask where he got the recipe from he’d tell them about this legendary day he lost his recipe book,” The Tiny Team said. “He told that story so many times that when [Penguin Random House] approached us about a book we KNEW we had to re-create that day with The Chef, and of course share his famous recipe too!”

Reid and Chef spent hours making sure the wording was perfectly crafted on each page while Akturk and Chef focused on the lighting of each image. Larsen and Chef would take long walks and think through how to tell his story, and Chef’s “interior designer” Jason Kolowski made sure everything in Chef’s tree stump was what he needed to recreate that fateful day.

The Tiny Chef and his Tiny Team wanted everything just perfect; to make sure they were capturing the essence of the day and that every detail of every page truly expressed his feelings in that moment. It involved long, grueling hours, but those hours paid off with a blurb from friend Kristen Bell on the back cover jacket and RuPaul as the narrator of the audiobook.

“We love how committed Chef was to the project and how all of us came together to help him make it," The Tiny Team said. “It was a true team effort and we’re SO happy people get to actually cook and try his famous stew.”

From The Tiny Chef himself: “cook wif lub, cook fo your fwens, an blawaysh twy shomefing new."

When Disney decided to reimagine some of their classic stories in an urban noir environment, author Estelle Laure knew she wanted to make that series, City of Villains, hers.

Laure comes from a long line of writers, storytellers and curious people, so it wasn't a surprise that her love for it was genetic.

“I think if you have an appetite for all the facets of the human experience, there’s no better place to find information and to try on different lives than in books,” she said. “The magic of writing and being the storyteller is that you get to project your imagination outward. Maybe it’s because I grew up on Reading Rainbow, but I always think of it like a magical rainbow where my imagination and a reader’s intersect in an explosion of color and fairy dust. I love that more than anything else about being alive, and frankly I think my love of reading and storytelling have saved my life many times over.”

City of Villains shares the story of Mary Elizabeth Heart, a high school senior who spends her evenings interning at the Monarch City Police Department. She longs to follow the detectives who are out solving cases, and when the daughter of one of the city’s most powerful businessmen goes missing, the chief finally lets her.

“...As soon as I saw it I felt this kind of sticky urgency to be the one to author the proposed series,” Laure said. “I mean, an urban procedural detective story starring Disney villains as teens? It was one of the strangest, coolest things I’d ever seen and the way it began to unfurl and develop organically for me from there told me I would be able to do it in a way that could work.”

It’s surreal for Laure to think that she wrote a book for Disney with many of their legendary characters, but there were also challenging moments of keeping these characters’ legacies while giving herself the freedom to step away and evolve their backstories.

“I worked hard to update their looks, fill in their psychologies and make them feel real,” she said.

Laure hopes that readers feel like warriors after reading City of Villains. She wants them to feel like they can face difficulties with courage, just like Mary Elizabeth, and know that they can get back up after being knocked down. Mostly, she hopes readers will feel magical, because life is magic even when it’s hard.

In 2004, author Ned Vizzini published his novel Be More Chill, a story of high school student Jeremy Heere who transforms from stereotypical nerd to the coolest guy in class. It was adapted into a musical in 2015 and made its Broadway debut in 2019. In 2021, it was adapted again - this time into a graphic novel.

Author David Levithan, who is a fan of Vizzini’s, wrote the afterword to the original novel and was the perfect fit when it came time to create the graphic novel edition.

“I immediately said yes,” Levithan said. “Even though I’d never written a graphic novel before, I’d edited a bunch, so I was very familiar with the format, and thought it would be fun to bring [Vizzini’s] story to life that way.”

The story revolves around Jeremy Heere swallowing a pill-sized supercomputer called a squip, which guarantees to bring him everything he most desires in life. The squip instructs him on what to wear, how to walk and talk, and before he knows it, he’s friends with his former enemies and has the attention of every girl in school. What he learns the hard way, however, is that it comes with consequences.

While developing the story, as is typical for writers and illustrators, Levithan and artist Nick Bertozzi worked almost entirely separate.

“Nick sent in some character sketches that totally showed he understood the story and the characters,” Levithan said. “And then he just ran with it, based on my script.”

The graphic novel stayed true to the original in many ways, including the time period. For Levithan, it was exciting to decide which pieces of early-00s history would make it into the storyline (including references to 2000 Grammy Award-winning song “Who Let The Dogs Out”, colorful iMac desktop computers and Motorola razr flip phones) but jokingly admits the most difficult part was admitting that the early 00s made it historical fiction.

Not only was it a joy and honor for Levithan to adapt the novel, but it gave him another reason to stand by its message.

“The reason I love the novel, and the reason I believe the musical adaptation has resonated so much, is because Ned was so on-the-mark about how technology can alter our personhood, and how the most meaningful connections between people are the ones that are made genuinely,” he said. “Ned knew readers need to think about such things as our century began, and it’s certainly still the case.”

Be More Chill: The Graphic Novel is available here.