Shizuki Yamashita, the director of operations for Broccoli Books, is also the managing editor for Boysenberry, the company's young boys love line, and she's running the Boysenberry panel.

Apparently they were never able to work out a deal with Borders to get them in normally because of one of the cover characters looking a bit too young, but a few renegade Borders have them, as well as plenty of other shops and the sales have been doing well.

Pet on Duty is due out in November, and those of us here at the con get to pick up a copy here! ♥ And it should be in Borders, no problem. There IS some mature content in it, too, so score! Sex Friend will hit shelves in December.

And now, the new licenses!

• Cigarette Kisses ("Kuchibiru no Yukue") by Nase Yamato, which is a salaryman love triangle (not a threesome-- we checked)
• This is NOT a Boysenberry title, turns out, but it's called Koi Cupid by Mia Ikumi, the author of Tokyo Mew Mew. Broccoli doesn't go high-volume, so I guess that's why this very, very non-BL title is being mentioned. But hey, I like cute stuff, so maybe some of you do too? It IS obscenely cute, however!
• One more Broccoli title called Pandora Hearts, a Square Enix title by Jun Mochizuki-- a shoujo series. Again, not BL, but it's got a cute boy on the cover (he's pretty young, for those of you who are into that, but Shizuki showed more covers with older boys, all of whom look quite yummy). Probably a little on the slashable side, I'm guessing.

Also, Boysenberry Books' official website BoysenberryBooks.com WILL be up soon, hopefully within the next two weeks. (Currently it's just a splash page.)

Q&A time:

• The website will NOT feature an online store to buy Boysenberry's books, at least from the get-go. But Shizuki clearly feels strongly about direct sales, so that may happen in the future.
• One person has asked if they're going to do more *tame* stuff, which is kind of interesting. Originally the plan was to do tamer boys love, but it's a bit harder to find in Japan.
• Koi Cupid was originally run in ComiDeji Magazine, published by Broccoli Japan (natch). Pandora Hearts was published in G-Fantasy, by Square Enix.