The Drama Queen panel starts with a little musical number. It sounds like something from Rocky combined with a Madonna song or something, very dramatic. Oh, it's Pet Shop Boys! Well, that explains everything. Tranh is trying to distract us by dancing to that Numa Numa song, with covers and some cute little subtitles on their titles for upcoming releases. Which they swear are still upcoming!

First up, the Q&A!

• The delay for Mandayuu and Me is because of post-Biblos bankruptcy, plus difficulty getting quality copies of the materials to work from.
• Tyrant is DONE, and they really wanted to get it done for Yaoi Con (and Takanaga-sensei), but the dust jacket is still being worked on.
• ...Wow, that's pretty much it. The questioners were very gentle! I did ask Tranh after the panel about the rest of the books and they all have problems similar to Mandayuu and Me's, but they seem determined to get them out.

After the Q&A started contests, including a contest to make wet sex noises, and now an orgasm contest. Poor Ed from MangaCast got volunteered by Tranh (...we may or may not have started chanting his name...) to participate. He tried to get a con opper to take his place, but it didn't work. I can't wait to see how MangaCast's recording turns out-- he did it in Japanese!

And the winner is...Not Ed, but I think he probably has the big prize (a set of all four Challengers books) anyway.

Yamila opened the Yaoi Press panel by announcing that it was actually the Be Beautiful panel, which would have made our day. We've decided to count this as Be Beautiful actually showing, even though we didn't. Aren't we nice? So mark your bingo cards!

But on to actual news stuff: Yaoi Press titles are now previewable at TOKYOPOP's website, as well as their online version at Netcomics.

Some news on Yaoi Jamboree: there will be live stage shows, a "bishounen" wheel for spinning, a "Catch the Bishie for a Prize" contest (win a Wii by tackling a cosplaying dude? Sounds good to me!), "Sketch Jams with Sexy Male Models," a Yaoi Press artbook, "Uke/Seme Random Butt Sex Badges," and the usual suspects: dealers, artists, costumes, panels, anime, and games. They're also trying to get Sony Music to let them use "It's Raining Men" as their official song. They also promise it WON'T be a Yaoi Press Fest, and poked fun at us specifically for speculating on it. Hey, who can blame us for wondering? ;)

They also have a supposedly amazing guest: they're Japanese, you've definitely heard of them, they're probably in your top 5, and they're the most prolific mangaka licensed in the US today. Fumi Yoshinaga?

Now, on to more manga-related announcements:

• The Yaoi Hentai series IS ending, and you can blame shrinking shelf space. They are going to do another hardcore anthology series, though, and they'll happily accept help naming the new series.
• Two new artbooks are in the works: the previously-announced non-con themed hardcore book called "Your Lips Say No..." is the first, due out May 2008. A second artbook titled "Shounen-Ai" 16+ romance-themed art book is August 2008 and they're seeking submissions for BOTH books.
• For submission guidelines you really need to read all the fine print on their site, but they note that novices are discouraged from submitting graphic novel proposals and that there is currently a very long response time.

From the Q&A session...

• Yamila noted that they always publish their books on time-- period. Some books have come really down to the wire, like Treasure volume 1, but the company is determined to hit all the deadlines.
• ...That's pretty much it, but there were some really nice shots from their books, which Yamila did some readings from-- actually, I kinda like the idea of yaoi readings. I think she should host one as an actual event next year, or at the Jamboree.

The end! From now on Jordan and I are split for a bit. I'll be sitting in on Drama Queen while Jordan hangs out with Deux.