Confessions of a Pop Fan

I LOVE YOU, YOU PAY MY RENT

It's time to shill!

Amazon has updated their pages for the CLAMP School Paranormal Investigators novels. The covers for the first two are now up. I am posting those covers here, and if you click on them, it will take you to the ordering pages. I hope that anybody in the US reading this who is actually considering buying these crazy things, please do so by following my link. Any time you follow an Amazon link of mine on this blog, and then do some shopping on the site during that session, I get a small kickback. In the past, some of you have helped keep this poor boy buying his DVDs with a little extra aid (and I thank you; I know most of the items have been bought by this lovely lady, this one, and this one, but some have been anonymous); in this case, though, consider that whatever Amazon gives me will be the only royalties I will ever receive for the project! Or consider it putting less money in Amazon's pocket without costing you anything extra! :)

VOL. 1

For those interested, here is an excerpt from book one:

"Check it out. She's actually going to dive!"

Yuki's mouth was watering in anticipation of the imminent arrival of his tasty cream parfait. But while this thought tingled on his taste buds, a buzz of another kind was murmuring through the poolside crowd.

Koji came running through the gathering mass. Sweat was rolling off his face in thick trickles. "What's going on?" he asked.

He spun around, looking at all the students on the beach. One by one, they were stopping what they were doing, standing up, and looking to the far end of the pool.
"Is something happening?" he said.

Rion and Mifuyu had been reclining, enjoying the contented feeling the sweet desserts had left in their stomachs. But they, too, began to sense the buzz of activity. They perked up their ears to try to hear what was going down.
Koji finally saw it. "Look!" he exclaimed, pointing towards the far wall, at the diving boards.

The Emerald Ocean was a fully functional indoor pool facility, designed to facilitate a multitude of events. These ranged from your average school gym class to large--scale competitions.

That included diving competitions, and several different heights of diving boards had been built on the deep end of the Ocean. The most impressive of these was a Clamp School exclusive--a 15-meter platform, the only one of its kind in Japan. Most diving matches only feature 5, 7, and 10-meter dives. A 15-meter dive isn't a fixture of any public competition. It's in a whole other athletic stratosphere.

Which is why that diving board never got any use. Sure, it's seen its share of wet footprints, but usually they go out to the edge of the platform, only to turn right back around and go down the ladder again. Still, shortly after the board was built, whispers started to travel through the school hallways. Kids talked in hushed tones about a legendary swimmer who had braved the height, accomplishing a spectacular dive, appearing to drop from the heavens themselves.

The urban legend suggested that this high dive wasn't ever intended to be used. One particular version of this story claimed the board hadn't actually been built before that fateful plunge; rather, it had been erected afterwards, to honor this mythic figure, to commemorate the death--defying leap he had taken. (Though, no one ever passing this tall tale along could ever explain what the diver had leapt from instead of the diving board.) And even though no one had ever seen any student who had climbed up there exhibit the bravery to take the plunge, whenever anyone tried, there was always a rush of excitement. Maybe this time, this time it will happen!

As Koji and the others looked on, a thin girl stood at the edge of the diving board, staring straight ahead, her body poised as if she were going to jump. She wore a competition-style swimsuit. It showed her sculpted features, the muscles of a real swimmer. And it didn't matter where you were inside the dome of the Emerald Ocean, her sharply intense expression was clear to everyone watching.

"There's no way! That board is six stories high!" As a descendent of the Sengoku ninjas, Koji knew a thing or two about the boundaries of the human body. His declaration was a sobering dose of reality. "Even if you're diving into water, the force of the impact could shatter your bones!"

But then...

"Oh!"

"She's diving!"

With one fluid motion, the girl's feet left the platform, and she soared into the air.

She spread her arms out wide, like a bird or an airplane. Her body moved through the sky, the sun glinting off her swimsuit, as if she were flying in slow motion.
The girl straightened herself. In one relaxed motion, her entire body became a straight line, spearing the surface of the pool, disappearing into the water, sucking the air she passed through down with her.

As if of one mind, the entire audience erupted into a gigantic cheer.
Even Koji, Mifuyu, and Rion found themselves applauding—and they'd seen plenty of amazing things as part of the Association. This...this was just inspiring.

"Incredible...!"

"It's just like Mishima-san, and that story where he was diving for fish!"

Only one person seemed unmoved by the display. Yuki sat back, silently eating his parfait.

"Chairman...?" Koji whispered.

One student near them broke from the revelry. "Something's not right," he said. He turned to the guy next to him. "How long has she been down there?"

"About a minute," the guy answered, glancing down at the waterproof watch on his wrist.

"That seems like a long time. Shouldn't she have surfaced by now?"

"Hmmm...now that you mention it..."

Another minute passed.

Then another. Three minutes.

"H--hey...should someone--?"

Four minutes.

Five.

Koji felt a surge of panic shoot up his spine. "Oh, no! Could she have drowned? Maybe she hit the bottom, and then--"

VOL. 2

I turn in book 3 next week, so will be getting back to it shortly. This is the first volume where I have had enough time to let the material cool before diving in for a (in this case) third draft. I have no idea what the final products will be like (I am not even sure if they will give me a decet credit or bury me in the indicia like usual), but I'm just looking at it as a crazy experiment.

This week's reading: Scott Pilgrim, vol. 1 by Bryan Lee O'Malley & Peach Girl, vol. 6 by Miwa Ueda

Current Soundtrack: They Might Be Giants, The Spine; Elbow, Cast of Thousands