Two days ago, I decided to leave The Beat. I had written 26 articles for them, consisting of press releases and manga and anime reviews.

I absolutely loved my time with them, so the decision to walk away was hard. Basically I wanted to focus more on writing my trilogy for Oliver Heber Books, but also to further develop the writing for this website.

I already review anime here…I decided I wanted to review manga here as well (here’s my first manga review on the site). I am maintaining a professional relationship with a PR rep from TOKYOPOP, who also works with Manga Mavericks Books, Red String, and other publishers. I plan on reviewing their work. Additionally, I also want to review manga that I’ve randomly discovered or read for fun on my own.

I learned a lot from writing for The Beat. Reviewing is harder than I thought. I sometimes forget that art tells just as much of the story as the text, and I also learned that I’m not always concise (I am a bit of a rambler). Over the course of my time working with editors, I’ve learned that my writing can always use improvement.

However, for this website, I plan on reviewing without the help of an editor–I’m going to be on my own. This means my reviews will be more my style (although The Beat did allow my voice to shine through), and I can follow whatever posting timeline I wish. I owe TOKYOPOP a ton of reviews from their busy summer release schedule, and I hope to just knock through them when I can.

Lastly, The Beat is a top-notch and well respected authority on the comics and pop culture world. There is a bit of clout that comes with writing for them. They have a lot of opportunities to connect with creators and to dive further into the business, and I’m walking away from that. That’s pretty risky as I seek to be known as a professional writer. However, the more books I write, the more professional I’ll be.

Anyway, this is sad news with a bit of hope tacked on at the end–I hope that writing reviews for my own site will grow my audience and show people the diversity and creativity that manga brings to storytelling. Please look forward to it!