The History of ShutterBox
2008 to Present
Tokyopop, as part of their massive restructuring, has cancelled ShutterBox and they will not be printing Book 5, though it is finished. I know that this is an impossible thing to ask of the Internet's denizens, but please don't lash out at Tokyopop over this. That doesn't help us or them. This is just the way publishing goes sometimes. We own our copyright and we have a termination clause and our manager is going over it with them. Tokyopop is responding very kindly and we have a sense that everything will work itself out in the end. We apologize to our readers. I know you're waiting for this volume, and we ceratinly want to give it to you. We are in the process of finding a new publisher and as soon as we finish figuring everything out I'll post an update here. It may take a while, but we'll get around to it.
-Rikki & Tavi
Posted August 3, 2008
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2002 to 2008
ShutterBox’s story is still unfolding, but we can tell you that it is a humanist fairy tale that mixes ideas of evolutionary psychology with an afterlife fantasy.
In ShutterBox, Santa Monica photography student, Megan Amano begins to dream of a young man who walked into the sea and drowned, never to be seen again. In her dreams she finds this young man, Adrien in a place called Merridiah, and she soon follows him there in reality. Merrdiah is an afterlife between lives, where muses learn their trade at Merridiah University of Spiritual Education before they are reincarnated back on earth. Megan is enrolled as the only living muse and here she begins to understand how her past lives still have precedence today.
We pitched ShutterBox to Tokyopop CEO Stu Levy in November of 2002, and by February of 2003 we signed a six book publishing deal. As of now, October 2007, four books are finished and are available at book shops everywhere. We are currently working on book number five.
ShutterBox genuflects between an an emotional journey and a rational consciousness. On one hand, it’s designed as a traditional shoujo manga with provocative emotion and exaggerated energy, and on the other it represents a step-by-step process where other-worldly beings reveal how they are powerless without the mortal world to guide them and shape them — the mortal world they in turn guide in exchange for their existence.
We’ll post more information on ShutterBox as we go. For now, it’s time to get back to work on Book Five. Please enjoy the previews we have posted to this site.
-Rikki & Tavi
