A Magical Roommate: The First Semester: A Magical Roommate, #1

By Emily Martha Sorensen

Aylia's remarkably oblivious parents decide to send her to college in our world.  And then she meets her new roommate, a chemistry major who loves to blow things up.  Things look bad.

This book contains all 266 strips of the first semester, plus an extra 40 strips that are only available in the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emily Martha Sorensen
• Release date: Oct 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781502273697

Book preview

Original Storylines

The Beginning

Meeting the Roommates

Annoying Cousin Albert

First Day of Class

The Promised Date

Alassa Comes to Visit

Roommate Interactions

Cleaning Checks

The Mermaid and the Werewolf

Planning for the Future

The Hideous Haircut

Cutest Guy on Earth

Halloween

Midterms and Magic

An Unpleasant Reunion

The Disastrous Date

Research Papers

Another Date Disaster

Thanksgiving Break

Aylia's Rules for Chess

Finals Preparation

Goodbye, Nicole . . .

Home for Christmas

An Unwanted Fiancé

Extra Storylines

Before the Beginning

When Albert Met Felincia

How Letitia and Joralan Met

Aylia's First Magic

When I first started this comic strip, I had just started college, and just discovered webcomics.  I realized, to my shock, that I could actually draw a comic strip without having to be a professional.  Needless to say, it took me no time to decide I wanted to do this.

Aylia’s mother was a departure from other mothers in books I’d written.  Usually, they were either absent (like your standard young adult cliché), or strongly based on me (much like my main characters).  With Aylia’s mother, I tried doing something very different.

The third panel was actually supposed to be an attempt to show what their writing system looks like.  I knew from the start it didn’t look like English.  I believe it’s the only time I ever did that.

Alassa’s hair changed color in the second panel because I originally thought I was going to make them twins.  I very quickly decided to change that, for two reasons: First, I didn’t want to do that to Aylia.  (Bad enough to have a sister like Alassa.)  Second, it took exactly one panel for me to realize that making them look alike would be a very bad character design idea.

In the very first panel of Strip #1, I was thinking that the man who comes in to announce her mother’s wishes would be the court wizard, because Aylia was a princess.  But I realized that he came across more as her father.  I struggled to make it fit, but finally decided that it would make much more sense (and be much less confusing) to just make him her father.

Aylia’s mother’s character design changed somewhat in this strip.  She had no hair visible (it was presumably covered by the veil she wore) in Strip #2.  This looked odd, since I knew she wore her hair down, and long.  So I fixed it.  But I also forgot to draw the wrinkles in her poofed sleeves in this strip, a detail that would later become standard in her character design.

When a friend of mine first read this strip, she gasped in horror, because she thought Jenny was Aylia (No!  Her hair!).  The third panel rather dashed that.

I was still experimenting this early in the comic strip, and this strip is a prime example of that.  I would later make a rule to not do any wordless strips, because I didn’t think my art was good enough to carry the humor without any writing.  Mind