Here’s the official word on the project:

“BLUE
by Elizabeth Genco w/art by Sami Makkonen, coming July 2008 from Desperado Publishing. Available for pre-order in MAY 08 PREVIEWS (MAY083778). Preview pages HERE.

A fresh, fantastic take on the bloodiest of classic fairy tales. When Blue’s ex-boyfriend appears on her doorstep, he says he wants to make things right. His true intentions are far more sinister. Blue’s shape-shifting powers can help her outrun him, but to survive, she must face him as herself.”

And, rather than trying to summarize her diverse bio, I merely direct you to go here. Finally, I am fairly certain this is the first time I have interviewed a busker–I could be wrong.

Tim O’Shea: How did you end up collaborating with Finnish artist Sami Makkonen?

Elizabeth Genco: Oh, gosh, I’m not even sure anymore! I think I first found his work on The Engine, maybe? I can’t remember exactly, but I do remember thinking, “This guy is the bomb… he’s probably got starving writers crawling all over him… he’ll never have time for l’il old me!” But I tend to be pretty ballsy when it comes to approaching artists, so I just gave it a shot.

O’Shea: For many folks, this may be the first time they are hearing about your work with Blue, but could you give folks a run-down of some of your past projects–your name has popped up in projects as far back as 2002 as far as I could tell?

Genco: I’ve been tooling around the indy comics scene for a while now and have done quite a few different things. PLATFORM was a zine I used to make about playing Irish fiddle in the subways of New York. It wasn’t a comic, but it was my first writing project and it did pretty well – I had appearances in JANE and The Village Voice. WEIRD SISTER was my first self-published comics project, and I also worked on projects like STYX TAXI (Steven Goldman) and SMUT PEDDLER (Carla Speed McNeil and others). I’ve had work in NEGATIVE BURN (Desperado’s anthology book) and I’m a contributing editor to WEIRD TALES. I wrote a column on writing for Scryptic Studios for a while, and have contributed to the Endicott Studio, a loose collective of mythic artists under the direction of fantasy luminaries Terri Windling and Midori Snyder.

O’Shea: In what ways do you think your’s and Makkonen’s styles and storytelling approaches compliment each other?

Genco: I’m a lot more visual than most writers. I struggle with inarticulation; I love words and collect them like love letters but that doesn’t mean they come easy. My training in Tarot has taught me how to think symbolically and communicate with pictures, even when I can’t create them myself. On top of that, I’m married to a guy who primarily thinks in pictures, and that sneaks out in some very subtle ways. Let’s just say that NOT being an artist is very frustrating for me sometimes!

Sami is very, very good at translating my pictures to words back into pictures again without losing much of anything in the process. His style is also perfect for a lot of the inner landscape stuff that’s going on with a lot of my characters. As for me complimenting HIM, well, I just try to give him good material to work with and plenty of room to do what he does best.

O’Shea: What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned from the retailers whose counsel you sought in terms of how to market Blue?

Genco: Get the book done well in advance of solicitation. Hands down, no question.

Now, I thought we were doing pretty well on that score. We handed it in on time and didn’t even pitch it ’til it was 85% done – something that’s not too common, at least not in the circles I run in. I’ve had friends ask me, “What the hell are you doing full graphic novels for? Pitches, girl, pitches!!” But I have never been a pitch machine, I do not play the “X meets Y” game very well, and I’m not interested in a story just because I can sell it.

Ah, but I digress. The point is, we would have had many more promo opportunities if the book had been 100% done in February rather than May. And I know that putting a “stand-in” cover in PREVIEWS as we did is pretty standard practice, but all the same, getting it done is always best. Duly noted for next time!

O’Shea: How much has the idea of Blue evolved while you were developing it. How does the original idea compare to the completed project you have now–did a great deal of revision occur along the way–or is the story still the core essence of the idea you first had for it?

Genco: The core is definitely the same and didn’t change much at all. The book did get radically edited at the very end of the game – ie, AFTER it had been accepted. It started out as a shorter story, and I’d pitched it to Joe (Pruett at Desperado) as a shorter story – kind of like a European comics album. He wanted to give us more pages, maybe make the book be an anthology. So I said to Sami, cool, let’s do another short story. And Sami said, no, we need to make the story we have BETTER… even though he knew it would mean redrawing and upping the page count considerably.

I know it sounds incredibly self-serving, but the truth is, I try very hard to put the stories above my ego and serve THEM. So you can see, perhaps, why I like working with Sami so much! *laugh*

O’Shea: Do you and husband/fellow storyteller Leland Purvis ever brainstorm about ideas you’re trying to work through, or do you avoid that intentionally?

Genco: Oh, absolutely. It’s funny (and I can admit this publically because Leland is well aware of it), when he and I were first starting to fall, the voice in the back of my head kept saying, “Yeah this is great and everything, but does he know stories? Because you’re not going to be able to handle it if he doesn’t know from stories.” That makes me laugh now, because it’s ridiculously clear from his work (which, of course, I was pawing over madly at the time) just how talented a storyteller he is.

Leland is deeply interested in creativity and creative people, as am I. So we’ve intentionally created an environment in which conversations about stories and storytelling and art occur as a matter of course. That said, Ursula LeGuin once compared stories to feral kittens – i.e., hard to tame, easy to scare off. Nothing chases the kittens away quite like talking too much. So I speak softly or not at all until they’re firmly in my clutches. *cackle*

O’Shea: When writing, do you have to work in absolute silence, or do you like having music or CNN or something on in the background while you work?

Genco: I have to have absolute silence. It’s kind of maddening. Leland and I work in the same space and he is just the opposite. He is extremely patient with me on this, something for which I am eternally grateful.

O’Shea: What can you tell folks about your contribution to the upcoming Tori Amos project for Image?

Genco: The promo juggernaut has started, so I can talk about it a little bit more! I’m not sure what to say except that I was positively thrilled to get asked and then over the moon when Carla Speed’s name came up. I could sit here and try to be all blase and cool and “oh, this old thing?” about it, but the truth is, I’m a Tori NERD and proud of it. Her music has had a huge influence on me – her lines are always inspiring this thing or that thing. (There’s a story of mine on the Endicott Studio website that Leland illustrated; it’s called Cooling. Same deal.)

That’s usually how I work with songs and stories – I look for a line to set it all off. In this case, I was looking for a way in, and even though the song has a real meaning and mood for me, I was struggling. We were specifically asked to avoid “illustrated lyrics.” Makes perfect sense, and I’m not interested in that anyway. But that still left me looking for a way in!

The line is “You’re counting my feathers as the bells toll.” It was like, “Oh yeah. Right.”