A few days ago I did an interview with Amber unmasked. Here is the interview.
Alright I'll ask the questions now if that's alright. What do u do for a living?
Amber: The first thing you should know is I don't give out personal information. So other than my publicly known jobs of modeling and volunteering at the comic shop, that's all I'll say. I don't tell what town I live in or anything either.
That's alright. So what got you into modeling and volunteering at the comic shop?
Amber: Comic Fusion was the first shop where I wasn't treated badly or ignored. I drove passed it a bunch of times before I mustered the courage to go in and try one more shop. When I did, Stacy Korn talked to me for maybe an hour to get to know me, what kind of entertainment I enjoyed and to explain all about the pull lists. I basically never left. When I lost my full-time job I started spending more time there and it evolved into a job to help them file the comics and merchandise. Then I moved pretty far away so now I do what I can with their social media and event planning.
Modeling is something I always wanted to do since I was underage. I had some misfortune that prohibited me from considering it when I would have seemed more age-appropriate. I was in my late 30s during the rise of cosplay and alt-modeling, but I finally found something that made me comfortable. From there I began figure modeling for artists, guilds, museums and schools. It's my favorite job.
So modeling is like something that your passionate about? And do you read a lot of comics?
Amber: I've yet to feel a burning passion for any job but modeling is definitely the one I have had the most pleasure and serenity from.
I used to read a ton of comics but I've scaled back considerably. A lot of that is because I don't review for bigger sites anymore. I'm less interested in the Big Two and really focused on smaller press and indies. Instead of constantly trying to make reviews fresh, I evolved my podcasting from reviews to interviews which is where my foundation as a broadcasting and journalism student has influence now. I was never satisfied with the small monthly installments of stories either. I'm a trade reader or I'll save up a couple of issues to read at once. I like to get a taste of new series so I often read an issue or two then don't get back to a story until a collection is out. Those new titles could use all the PR possible so I like to discover them. It's too exhausting needing to know such vast universes and histories. I like things to be a smaller scale and contained. A crossover now and again is fun but what the big companies do is entirely unmanageable for the level of reading I do.
Have u met any famous or interesting people while modeling or volunteering at the comic shop?
Amber: I have met a lot of famous people or rather people that in my network would be considered famous. As far as I'm concerned my best friends are "famous" because people seek them out for autographs and photos but you won't necessarily see them on the morning talk show circuit like a popular Hollywood star. My contact with people who are "comic book famous" is due to the networking I do for the annual Comic Fusion charity event and from podcasting because I'm always looking for people to interview. Sure I can regale you with the story of that time seven years ago when a tipsy Jim Lee bought me a beer in Baltimore and gave us our first two sketches for Comic Fusion auction; but we're not buds, we don't hang out or have each other on speed dial. I'm sure he'd never remember me. My best friends are writers, artists and of course cosplayers because that's who I spend time with at shows and online. We've had really great guests come to Comic Fusion like Joe Sinnott and Pete Marston. They're fun to listen to. Pete has been a very good friend to me even though I don't get to hear from him much one-on-one. Nowadays I talk to his daughter who has really been driving the helm of Wonder Woman fandom that their family is responsible for giving us. But when I had moved far away and felt very alone, I would exchange snail mail letters with Pete and his kindness always brings me to tears. And I have to mention how gracious George Perez is. Everyone in the costuming community is his friend and that's how he treats us. He knows everyone's names. He hugs everyone. He is truly the greatest ambassador of the comics industry. In fact, my Sue Storm Fantastic Four costume was signed by Joe and George. There's video of it on my YouTube channel.
I just attended my first Bouchercon party (the annual mystery & crime writers convention) and had the pleasure of finally meeting writer Josh Stallings in person. Like 99.9% of my relationships, we've been connected online for a while but hadn't met. There we were, in a couple of comfortable seats at the hotel bar when people kept coming up to him to introduce themselves or reconnect with a handshake. Josh is very much like The Dude from Lebowski but people treated him like the Godfather. I was there dressed in all black and looked like his bodyguard. Eventually I said to him, "Are you famous or something?" because it was so funny.
I love to tease my friends though because I see them rise up through the ranks and break into the industry. My tweets are often, "Will you still remember me now that you're editing/writing/drawing (Random Title Here) comic?"
I'm not a celeb junkie though. I've had to watch my popular press friends go to VIP areas of parties where I'm not invited. That sucks. They're parties. The point is to mingle. But god forbid, there's an actor over in a corner, they need to be separated from the foul masses. I don't get invited to any premieres at the Paley Center despite being a blogger for nearly a decade. When it comes to celeb contact, I enjoy talking to them about things other than whatever popular show/movie they're in. I interviewed Tim Kang and never asked him about The Mentalist. He runs a screenwriting contest to bring awareness to the issues of missing and exploited children and Greg Pak was one of the judges. I think it's important when people focus on community service so that's what I talked to him about.
What got you into blogging? And what are some your favorite comics? Do you consider yourself famous? And what are your social networks or sites where people can find you?
Amber: I don't really know what got me started blogging. I was using things like LiveJournal and Yahoo Groups for writing. Then I started reviewing comics for bigger sites after meeting people in the comics world. I always ran my own websites and as someone who's not a programmer, I hated that part. I'll sound like a hipster douche saying this but before it was "blogging" a "web-log" was meant for webmasters to list the updates or changes they made to a site's structure. Then content management became mainstream and everyone's lives got easier. You could write without knowing too much code. I was always really interested in being on television and the radio so YouTube and podcasting were magnets for me.
Some of my favorite comics & GNs are "I Kill Giants," "The Lone Ranger," "Street Angel," "The Alcoholic" (so upset it was in a box that went missing when I moved), "Athena Voltaire," "Cemetery Blues," "Madame Xanadu," "The Umbrella Academy," "Vic Boone," "Deadhorse," "Super Spy," "Vamplets," "Clockwork" and I just read a fantastic series that is resurging due to Kickstarter called "Doc Unknown." My TBR pile is outrageous. It's several shelves, boxes and piles of books plus the digital files.
Am I famous? Not by a long shot. I used to get a lot more recognition than I do now. I'm always the one next to the person people come up to to meet.
My official site is AmberUnmasked.com but some of it is NSFW and it sets off network filters.https://www.facebook.com/amberunmaskedhttps://twitter.com/elizabethamberhttp://www.pinterest.com/theamberlove/boards/
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