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A page from On The Hunting of Witches & Killing of Gods, a companion piece to The Devoured.
Recently I’ve been finding myself fiending for a new tattoo. While scrolling through countless images of Nordic imagery, Sith symbolism, and medieval woodcuts for inspiration, I began wondering about the ink that other writers may have inscribed upon their flesh. Amazingly, a google search for author’s tattoos brought up little, so I’ve compiled a little collection myself. Big thanks to the folks who were kind enough to share with me!
Doug Rinaldi
Doug is an author of dark fiction, having published numerous stories in various anthologies. He also has this incredibly cool landscape piece that I’m totally jealous of. You can check out Doug’s Amazon author page here.
David Lund
David is the author of the popular Winchester Undead series of zombie apocalypse novels. I think that’s a mechanical drawing, or an electrical diagram, maybe? Check out his books!
Christa Faust
Christa Faust is one of the best pulp writers in the world, and she is also heavily inked. Her forearm tattoo depicting a key hole made up of the famous quote, “when in doubt have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand” is of course a shout out to Raymond Chandler.
Here’s what Christa told me about her in-progress Bradbury sleeve-
…it’s typewriter keys transforming into a wing and the banner says “building my wings on the way down.” Which paraphrases the famous Bradbury quote on how to write a novel, live life and face the future. “Jump off a cliff and build your wings on the way down.”
If you haven’t read any of her stuff, go to christafaust.com now! I recommend Money Shot!
C.L. Hernandez
The author of the Deegie Tibbs series from Winlock Press has some award winning ink with an interesting theme – the many faces of Johnny Depp! I particularly like the Edward Scissor Hands.
Be sure to check out her novel, Jar of Fingers!
Peter N. Dudar
After this Bram Stoker award finalist adopted his daughter, he chose to commemorate the occasion with this Chinese dragon, symbolic of of fatherhood. Check out Peter’s author page, here!
Monique Happy
While not so much an ink slinger so much as an ink re-modeler, I figured that the veteran editor and head honcho of Winlock Press deserved some space in this list.
Here is what Mo has to say about her ink-
Illusions made my life unmanageable. For example: When I believe in fairy tales to the exclusion of reality, and then my dreams fail to come true, I get angry and bitter and it affects my life negatively. (Waiting for someone to come kiss me awake and take me away to a better life – Sleeping Beauty.) However, when I buckle down and work hard towards my dreams, I make my own destiny. I added the roses later. The thorny brambles that hid Sleeping Beauty’s abode? I need to fight through those myself.
J. Rudolph
A nurse by trade, the author of the Reanimates series is as passionate about helping people as she is about the written word, going so far as to mark her back with a caduceus. Check out the first book in here series here!
Rhonda Plumhoff
The Author of Literary Chocolate shared her Zombie cupcake tattoo with me. Proof that cupcakes would eat us, if given half the chance!
And finally my own tattoos..
The Cobra one is pretty straight forward. I’m a big G.I. Joe fan and have always been the type to root for the bad guys. Plus, Cobra always had such a flashier sense of fashion!
The word “Heretic” going across my back is a bit more meaningful. It’s a statement of how my own personal belief system is in many ways at odds with how most others see the world. It also ties in with my atheism and my uncomplimentary feelings toward religion and superstition. I’d like my next piece to somehow tie into my novel, The Devoured.
Have any ink that you’d like to show off? Leave a comment or email me!
One thing that some authors do, which I never really understood, is to list out the music they were listening to when they wrote a specific story. It’s kind of interesting to know what music writers dig, but I never got the correlation. Music was never a writing tool for me. I listened to the same eclectic playlists when I wrote The Wrong House as when I wrote presidential biography comics for Bluewater.
This all changed when I started writing The Devoured. I’m a city boy, through and though, and a right coaster at that. To get myself in the proper mindset for writing about the post-civil war west, I found the need for some inspiration. I needed to mentally remove myself from the subways and skyscrapers of my native Boston, and transport myself into a meaner world. To do this, each writing session was accompanied by audial inspiration.
Below is a list of some of the music that most helped mentally prepare me for my writing session on the devoured, and undoubtedly subtly helped mold the world.
Nick 13/ Tiger Army
Tiger Army is one of my favorite bands of all time. They come at psychobilly from a more mature angle than most other bands, casting aside the much of the derivative horror shtick which many other groups in the genre cling to. Additionally their composition has a much wider range than most psychobilly, borrowing from old school country-western as well as punk and classic rockabilly.
It was their energy, the western influence on their composition, and the dark, woeful lyricism that helped set me up for writing about my protagonist, The Old Man.
Tiger Army front man, Nick 13, also has a solo album, and that was probably even more inspiring to me while writing the Devoured. The self-titled release is real old school country/western. No poppy, lowest common denominator songs about blue jeans and beer. No flash over substance guitar solos. Just good, honest country and solid song writing. The music invokes images of sepia landscapes, weathered road signs, and road wary travelers. In its notes, one can find an atmosphere of hope and melancholy. Nick 13 made it incredibly easy for me to melt away from the coastal metropolis I call home, and traverse the old west of my mind like some astral time traveler.
Dick Dynamite & The Doppelgangers
The Doppelgangers are another psychobilly band, but far more crass in their lyricism than Tiger Army. What they lack in subtlety, they make up for in attitude and aggression. While a lot of bands claim to be bad dudes, psychos, and killers instead of simple barflys, Dick Dynamite almost makes you believe it. There is something in his low growl that just sounds genuine.
With songs like Partner in Crime, Sociopath Rock, and They Demand a Sacrifice, these guys supplied a perfect soundtrack for writing about the downward spiral of Emmett Wongraven. I think some of the anger and desperation in the work of the Doppelgangers leaked into the Old Man as well.
Like Tiger Army, The Doppelgangers have a pretty strong western influence in a lot of their songs, which helped get my mind into the right state to envision the world of The Devoured.
Johnny Cash
How can anyone write a supernatural adventure in the old west, and not listen to the Man in Black while they do so? Johnny had it all- the attitude, the talent, the look. And Cash’s persona- that hard, bad man with a big heart and big faith, is like a less exaggerated version of Emmett in one way, and of the Old Man in another. Johnny could always express the plight of the criminal and the soldier with expert ease, and I think those terms describe my main characters pretty well. A lot of Cash’s songs are about mistakes and consequences. The Devoured, at its most basic, is about exactly the same thing.
Danzig
When I was a teenager I absolutely wanted to be Glen Danzig. The man headed three legendary bands (Misfits, Samhain, and Danzig), pioneered horror punk, ran his own comic company, looked more than a little like a Sam Keith drawing of Wolverine, and could sing like Roy Orbison jacked up on hellfire.
Danzig’s music has changed a lot over the years. After Danzig 4, things became kind of hit or miss for me, but their second album, Lucifuge, has remained one of my favorite LPs of all time. While the album is a bit anachronistic in regards to the subject matter in The Devoured, it was none the less inspiring. The powerful, southern blues riffs in songs like I’m The One, the supremely confident howling vocals of Killer Wolf, and the fitting lyrics of Long Way Back From Hell all helped me to set the right tone for my world and the unfortunate plights of my main characters.
To learn more about The Devoured, or to Purchase, click here!
The Elder Gods have come to the Old West!
The old man had lost nearly everything- his family, his home, his war. Now, after years of bloody conflict, he must confront a malevolent cosmic entity to save his only son.
Armed with little more than steel and hatred, the old man embarks on a hopeless war against the devouring gods from beyond the stars and their agents on earth. His only ally is a young orphan, recently freed from slavery. Together they leave a trail of bullets and bodies from Oakland to Omaha, battling witches, evangelical cannibals, Native shamans, and possessed lawmen. Their final stop: an accursed railroad town where the old man will make a final stand for his son’s life against the first amongst the Devourers – the dark titan Thurs.
Radio of Horror is airing an interview with yours truly at midnight tonight. I talk about my books and nerd out about comics! Check it out here!
I write dark stuff. I’m not saying that to sound edgy or pretentious. In fact, I don’t like to nail myself down as strictly a horror guy. I write steampunk and superhero stuff. I’ve done scripts for presidential biography comics. I’m currently working on a crime novel in the vein of a grindhouse film.
Still, almost anything I write has some measure of shadow over it. Curse of The Black Terror, despite being a superhero comic, was darker than a lot of what is considered horror on the shelves today. Mastema takes place in a fantasy world of demons and wicked sorcerers rather than elves and kindly wizards. Even bedtime stories which I tell only to my son and niece are filled with mad science and reanimated kings of rock n’ roll.
There was a local comic creator – now this was years ago after I had just published my first comic – who was talking shit about my stuff to a friend who hung out at the LCS. He evidently thought I was trying to be edgy and hip with my drug addict protagonist and violent conflicts. I did a lot of thinking when I heard that, searching myself to see if there was any credence to the accusation from the more successful writer.
After an honest assessment, I found that I was being true to my literary voice. How one writes is shaped by myriad factors – philosophy, religious and political views, personal experience, education, storytelling influences. Those factors are going to be different for me than they are for the guy who dismissed my work as pretentious and that’s totally cool. I don’t even hold any ill will for this guy bad mouthing my comic. It wasn’t his thing. The important part of this anecdote is that I didn’t let the negativity of a slightly more experienced writer steer me away from being true to myself.
On the flip side of this, my first ever short story read like Douglas Adams writing Fight Club fan fic. Like many inexperienced authors, I was trying to imitate writers who I admired. There is more than one unfinished horror story told in first person by a tragic intellectual amongst my notebooks as well. The reason I mention this is because I was also able to be honest with myself when I was poorly imitating the greats. I saw what I was doing, and I corrected it. Not because I was being derivative, but because I was being dishonest. Writing is about self-expression. If you aren’t willing to actually put yourself out there, then what’s the point?
My advice to writers, new and experienced, is to periodically get introspective and take an honest assessment of the factors that serve as your muse and make sure your work matches up to it. Why periodically? Our world views change and evolve. Our tastes expand. Our knowledge base grows. All these things should affect how we write. If they aren’t, perhaps we are stuck in comfortable stagnation.
Recently I gave some deep thought regarding the ideas and stimulae that most influence my own writing. Below is a list of the three factors that seem to have the largest impact on my literary voice.
Cosmicism, science, and atheism
Cosmicism is a literary philosophy, born from atheism, that suggests we live in a vast, indifferent universe, devoid of any cosmic father figure. If you take it a bit further, it is the view that the universe, and any higher intelligence within it, is actually malevolent.
Lovecraft, who pioneered this movement, was an atheist like me. There were no saviors in his work. Just man pitting his wit against a vastly superior enemy, and often coming up short. Some of the writers who came after him, August Derleth in particular, bastardized this concept and introduced benevolent gods to counter balance things. While this is a more commercially palatable version of Cosmicism, I find it watered down and compromised by fear.
In the days before NASA, printable prosthetics, and clean energy, the idea of a universe with no god must have been terrifying. I can only imagine, in the shadow of the Great War, that Lovecraft and other atheists of the time must have had an incredibly pessimistic view of the future.
I feel that in modern times there is a new breed of optimistic Cosmicism, though. Not the diluted, cosmic yin yang of Derleth, nor the utter despair of Lovecraft. Neil deGrasse Tyson, a contemporary astrophysicist and rock star of the science community, has said on more than on occasion that the universe is out to kill us. Tyson understands that God is not going to step in and redirect an asteroid from hitting us. He knows that Jesus won’t come and reverse climate change. He understands that one new strain of bacteria could end humanity. But he is optimistic, and so am I.
Why?
Because I believe in humanity. We don’t need elder gods to swat away asteroids or meteors, because we can do it ourselves.
Where gods have failed to heal the sick and maimed, we can eradicate diseases and print prosthetic limbs. In short, we are the counterweight against the uncaring and sometimes adversarial universe around us. This idea of new Cosmicism is an important part of my world view, and it presents itself strongly in my novel, The Devoured.
Myth, Folklore, and psychology
Since I don’t believe in the supernatural it might seem odd that I list myth and occultism as influences on my writing. Something doesn’t need to be real to hold value, though. And reality can be a subjective matter to a writer. If something exists in the mind of even a single child, doesn’t that make it real on some level? Are gods less powerful because they exist only in ink and neurons, or are they more powerful because they capture the minds and souls of the most advanced creatures in known creation?
Myth and folklore have been a lifelong interest of mine. As far back as I can remember, I’ve been enthralled by stories of Camelot, Asgard, and Olympus. As I grew older, this expanded into a fascination with folklore and urban legend. Stories of gods, monsters, and consequence all offer psychological insight into the collective consciousness of mankind.
Additionally, they are the most thoroughly workshopped tales ever told. Over decades, century, and millennia, mythologies have evolved with mankind, changing to suit our psychological needs yet remaining pure enough to glean eternal truths about human nature. Odin has worn the mask of a warlord, a grifter, a Nazi, and a metal head, but beneath the superficial differences and rebrandings, he represents the same aspects of the human condition – growth, cunning, and sacrifice. These are ideas as old as man.
When you tap into myth as a writer, you are tapping into symbolic shorthand that speaks to the blood and soul of the reader. Some may not consciously realize it, but the archetypes of our gods and monsters, at least those who have survived to the modern age, hold permanent real estate in our shared psychology. The names may change, and details may shift, but Mithras is Baldur is Christ – and each of them is a part of mankind’s shared yearnings and fears.
Whereas myth is fairly universal, folklore offers insight into the minds of a smaller subset of people. This might be regional, based on the shared experience of a certain community (water monsters in a coastal area) or tied to a particular time period (cursed video tapes). Folklore has a more distinct flavor than myth, and can be used as a tool of tribalism to connect people of a certain region or a certain age. I’ve found borrowing from folklore particularly helpful in creating a richer, more specific setting. It can also be useful in crafting an atmosphere of “us versus them”.
Sympathy for the devil
I’ve always had a soft spot for the bad guy in fiction. I have a Cobra tattoo on my shoulder. As a kid, I liked Jason better than the campers. As an adult, Milton’s Satan became my favorite literary character of all time.
To make a good guy interesting – I mean a real altruistic Peter Parker or Steve Rogers kind of motherfucker – you have to fuck the poor bastard six ways to Sunday. And since most people are writing stories about good guys, you have to get real creative in ways to torture your protagonist in order to avoid regurgitating the same old crap. But a bad guy…a bad guy is always interesting.
The second half of Paradise Lost, once Satan takes a back seat to Christ, is considered by many (myself included) to be utterly unreadable. When people quote Milton, they quote his devil. His depiction of Christ is almost never talked about. Why? Because when Jesus isn’t raising the dead or hanging from a cross, he’s boring. For real, how many Jesus movies are there? The Passion of the Christ comes to mind right? And that movie was only so big because it was like a biblical version of Saw. Show Jesus feeding the poor and philosophizing about the evils of wealth and count those box office returns!
For a more modern example, let’s take Gregory House, a brilliant, misanthropic, drug addicted doctor, and insert him into any episode of Grey’s Anatomy. He may not be as dreamy, but didn’t the show just get way cooler? I think so.
My own stories are filled with morally ambiguous main characters that would classically be considered villains. The old man from The Devoured is a confederate soldier, with no qualms about shooting down anyone in his way. My Black Terror was a vengeance driven lunatic, more akin to Michael Myers than the original character. In my comic the Wrong House everyone is a bad guy and the roles of protagonist and antagonist shift with the reader’s widening perspective.
What are the most important influences on your own work? Feel free to comment below.
A big thanks to Angel Aviles and the fine folks at Winlock Press for the cover to my debut novel, The Devoured! Angel worked with me as the colorist on Mastema and it was great to be able to have him do the artwork for this project.
In the past eight years, I’ve had nine single issue comics, five anthology shorts, a graphic novel, and three webcomics published. I currently have two one shots, a few anthology pieces, a mini-series, and two short stories in the queue at various publishers. All of these stories share one fatal flaw- minimal outside input. They came from my mind, were edited by my hand, and the only beta-reader I had on any of them was my wife, who is not the target audience for a lot of my stuff.
A hard truth of writing is the fact that we are often blind to the flaws and imperfections of our works. There are things we fail to communicate properly. There are things we over communicate. We throw in weird stylization that just doesn’t work. Our American characters turn British phrases and our historical characters use weapons that weren’t created yet.
For some of us, particularly those who are less mature or less talented, these are hard things to face. There are too many writers who respond to criticism with statements such as “They just don’t get it.” Well, it’s your job to make them get it! It’s fine if people don’t like your work. But if people don’t understand it, well that’s on you. You have three jobs, writers.
The bad news is that, if your story is shit, your story is shit. Go back to the drawing board. Study structure and conflict. Hit the mental gym and come back when you’re ready, little Mac (note the obscure reference that leaves readers who never owned an NES out of the loop).
More bad news? If you are doing number two or three poorly and can’t own up to it, you will never get anywhere
The good news? If you can take some criticism, look at things objectively, and forget the ludicrous idea that you’re a misunderstood genius, then there are folks who can help you.
Writing groups-
So your first line of defense against shopping or self-publishing a piece of clunky writing is the writer’s group. There are plenty of groups around the world that meet up at bookstores and cafés to read and critique each other’s work, participate in workshop challenges, and escape their solitary confinement a few times a month. The big advantage of this is that you are getting feedback from your peers. Mostly you’ll end up in a group of people who are roughly as successful at slinging ink as you are. This can be a gentle way to start accepting criticism. When Joe the mechanic (who writes historical romance at night) says that you’re under-describing the the shit-monster from chapter three of your manuscript, it’s a lot easier to take than a critic on some podcast talking about how your narrative lacks voice and life.
Writing groups are also great because they afford you the opportunity to read the work of others. If they are brilliant, you can hone in on what makes their work so good. You can ask them about those things that worked well, and how they did that. On the flip side of that is the chance to read some god fucking awful writing. This is just as important. It gives you insight into what definitely does not work. If you aren’t a pompous ass, you can then ask yourself if your own writing suffers from those same defects. If you are a pompous ass, it allows you to unleash your inner-asshole and callously blast the heartfelt work of another human being with reckless abandon. So that’s like a win either way.
So maybe there are no writing groups in your area, or maybe you write scripts and they only do prose, or maybe you’re just a neurotic shut in (it worked for Lovecraft). Well if you’re reading this, you have a computer, or at least a smart phone. There are thousands of writing groups, forums, and internet communities for this express purpose. For my script work, I use Comics Experience, which is a paid forum run by Andy Schmidt. The advantage of this is that since only paid members can access the material, your unpolished junk isn’t hanging out for the world to see. Also, paid services like this offer additional perks. For instance, Comics Experience has professional creators who will critique scripts and artwork.
Pitfalls!
As great as writing groups are, beware the big mouth who has to put in his two cents, just to get in his two cents. Especially on the internet, there are a lot of folks who just want to find something wrong, and will use almost any excuse to put down your work. Don’t confuse this with genuine criticism.
Beta-readers-
Once you’ve got a few drafts completed and you think that story is so shiny you could shave by it. Guess what. You are wrong! But since you are so blind to your story’s inadequacy, you need to wrangle a posse that can actually see. This is where beta-readers come on.
The beta readers are going to be kind of like members of your writing group, but hopefully a more refined sampling. Ideally, you want people who like reading books in your genre, who will look at your manuscript with a reader’s eye, instead of a writer’s.
For The Devoured I got lucky. My friend Josh is pretty much the ideal target reader for my Western/cosmic horror story, so I had someone close that I could rely on to give me some honest feedback. I also put out a call on some horror groups on Facebook and found another excellent beta-reader who gave me detailed critiques about what he liked, what was confusing, what left him wanting more, etc…
Pitfalls!
Try and avoid friends as beta readers unless they can be objective and provide honest criticism. Keep in mind, it’s not just unwarranted ego-petting to be wary of. Plenty of people have toxic relationships, and some “friends” may tear apart your manuscript just because they want everyone around them to fail.
Also, don’t act like your beta-readers owe you anything. Sometimes people just don’t get around to reading your book. Don’t harass them or get all pissy. They are doing you a favor. If they get to it, then it’s gravy. If not, thank them for trying.
Editors-
The term “editor” is kind of nebulous and can mean different things in different arms of the publishing industry. Some are gatekeepers who decide what gets published. In comics they are traffic cops, herding the creative team and managing the project. What we want to talk about for this purpose are editors who actually edit. These are the folks who look for grammar issues, language redundancies, bad dialog, anachronisms, problems with pacing and a million other things
In the world of indie comics, finding real editorial input is like stumbling upon a vein of vibranium in your backyard. Most are way more concerned with getting the artists to meet a deadline than with the quality of your script. They figure if you made it in the door, then you can be left to your own devices.
There are exceptions of course. Mike Schneider, who was the editor on Steampunk Originals, was incredibly invested in every aspect of the comics going into those anthologies. He tirelessly worked with each creator, offering input and advice on how to strengthen the art and narrative of every submission. But some other “editors” I’ve worked with are just not nearly as interested.
What difference does it make? The comics I did for Steampunk Originals, a property called B.R.A.S.S. Lions, are of a much higher quality than they would be if I had submitted them to an anthology with a less motivated and invested editor. Mike pointed out storytelling flaws, tonality issues in the coloring, and made suggestions on ways to strengthen the brand and make the property more viable in the long term.
A good editor for prose is even more important. If you are comfortable enough with your work to ask for help, they can offer invaluable insight. In my upcoming novel, The Devoured, my editor pointed out several things which, when fixed, leveled up my manuscript. In addition to bringing my attention to things like unneccesary POV (point of view) shifts, she also picked up on clunky sentences and a few lines that could have been construed as inadvertently offensive.
Working with a good editor won’t just make your current project better. It will make you a better writer. Editors understand story, drama, dialog, and pacing. They read a ton of writing. Learn from them!
Even if you are self-publishing, please hire an editor. Do your homework and find someone who works in the appropriate genre and comes with good references. I know a lot of writers are on a tight budget, but this is not an additional cost, it’s an investment. If you don’t have a properly edited manuscript and publish anyway, you will be seen as a joke.
Lastly, don’t underestimate the networking benefits of getting to know editors. When I hired Monique Happy to edit The Devoured, I had no idea that she was about to start a new imprint of Permuted Press. While editing my book she ended up liking it enough to offer me a publishing deal!
Pitfalls!
First off, check your ego at the door. Only a fool asks for help then ignores suggestions. Don’t blindly accept editorial changes, but give them serious consideration. In most cases, your editor is picking up on these things for a reason.
Secondly, make sure your editor is a proper fit. If you have a loose, stylized sense of language, then a grammar nazi might not be your best choice. If you are writing romance, then an editor who works almost exclusively on action and horror is unlikely to really get what you are going for.
Last words-
Seek out help. Get a second, third, and fourth set of eyes. Make changes that better your story, but be wary of changes aimed at pleasing specific demographics. If the work is good enough, you shouldn’t need to cheapen it by pandering to different sects of readers. At the end of the day, remember that your writing is a reflection of you. The most important thing is crafting something that you are happy with and proud of.
If you’re fan of my work, chances are you have only read my comics. There’s a good reason for that. Aside from a short story I posted on MySpace back in the ancient days of social media, none of my prose has seen the light of day.
That same story which I posted on MySpace, Culture Revolution in Wheaton Illinois, was the first piece of writing I completed when I decided to quit music and become a writer. It was a poorly crafted non- story, with a charismatic MC and a solid voice.
I received the first and most in depth rejection letter of my career from that story. The editor pointed out that I had a gift for narrative and atmosphere, but that the manuscript was essentially a slice of life soapbox for my perceptions of modern society.
To put it plainly, Culture Revolution wasn’t a story. There was a beginning, but no middle or end. A struggle is set up but never resolved. It was socio-political rant spoken through a proxy of how I wanted to be seen at the time.
I wrote two more short stories right after Culture Revolution. One was an undercooked horror yarn with some interesting imagery. Once again, I was more concerned with presenting a message (in this case the liberating nature of the Satanic archetype) than I was in telling a good story.
The other was a sci-fi, post-apocalyptic tale about a neo-nazi and an average Joe who are the sole survivors of an alien invasion. With this piece, I finally told an actual story. It wasn’t great. Probably not even good. It was important though, for two reasons. It proved to me that I could craft a coherent story with a beginning, middle, and end. Conflict was established and conflict was resolved.
The second reason that story was important was that it demonstrated that I could create flawed characters, characters imbued with extreme cultural taboos, and make them sympathetic.
None of those stories found publication, and rightfully so. They weren’t good enough. They lacked real passion. Also, prose wasn’t my primary interest. Short stories were something I did while I studied and navigated the world of my true passion, comic writing.
With no fan base or experience I wrote and self-published my first work, Kincaid#1. It sold well on commission at comic shops and at local conventions. Like my early prose work, it wasn’t great, but it was real! I could hold it in my hands! People bought and enjoyed it!
Shortly after Kincaid #1, I started writing comics for anthologies and other publishers. I wasn’t putting out tons of material. I wasn’t getting paid. But damn it, I was making comics!
And comics were good to me, emotionally and mentally, if not financially. My comic, The Wrong house met with great reviews and was optioned for film. I’ve done work for hire with small publishers. Opportunities have come allowing me to expand my horizons and do non-fiction comics. I won an award for Curse of The Black Terror. A project I dreamed up forever ago, Mastema, has come to life. It’s been a good eight years.
There’s a tough side to comics too though. The economics of the industry aren’t great, to put it lightly. The writer almost always funds the project. Sometimes that isn’t so. There are several artists I have collaborated with as co-creators and we roll the dice as partners. Most of the time though, the artist wants a guarantee of payment, and I can’t blame them.
“Hey, draw what I tell you and make my dream a reality. If it get’s picked up you can have some money.” Kind of a shitty deal, right? That’s why the writer generally foots the bill. This is tough though, as most projects don’t get picked up. So if you, as the writer, can only bankroll five pages for a pitch, you’re out a several hundred if no one wants it. This is how writers end up with hard drives filled with thousands of dollars in artwork that the world will never see. For real, you should see all the failed pitch packages on my computer.
If it does get picked up, you might end up in a worse situation. Some publishers only pay backend, or after completion of the project. That means someone has to pay the artist up front still, unless he can afford to work on a deferred payment schedule (most can’t).
As a point of reference, without going into contractually protected numbers, the payment from Mastema only covers about a quarter of the costs I had to pay to create it. Add in to that the time and energy investment of writing and overseeing the project.
That brings up my next point. There is pretty much no such thing as a “comic writer” unless you are slinging scripts for the big time. As a writer of anything indie, you wear many hats. On many projects I’ve had to do lettering, flatting, rendered colors, pre-press, marketing, etc… There is nothing wrong with learning these skills and applying them from time to time, but there is one major drawback of all this. It takes away from writing time. When I was doing Curse Of The Black Terror, I was spending more time each week coloring than I was writing. Eventually, I decided that I was spreading myself too thin. It was time to get back to focusing on story.
Not wanting to take away time from my writing, nor wanting to compromise another project with my inadequate coloring skills, I found myself facing a very expensive next project.
I was trying to buy a home at that time, and couldn’t keep taking money away from my family to add to my hard drive gallery. I decided to stay strong and just be a writer though, which meant changing the way I did things. I sought out work scripting comics for others, and took two jobs writing biography comics. I developed a few properties with artist friends, based on things we mutually wanted to do. But the biggest change I made, was to revisit prose for the first time in years.
In the interest of honesty, I can’t say that my return to prose was motivated purely out of love for the medium. Not at first anyway. Initially, it was a matter of practicality and curiosity.
I had this story I wanted to tell about a former Confederate soldier who was trying to save his son from a malevolent entity. Originally, I thought of it for a comic. The story demanded a long form though, and to bring on board the kind of artist I wanted, for the size of story I wanted to tell, it would have cost a small fortune. Of course, I could have done a pitch package with a half dozen finished pages, but I figured that even if a publisher wanted it, I would still have to pay up front costs.
So what to do if I wanted my western, cosmic horror story to become reality? Why not give it a shot as a novel? This thought was appealing to me for a number of reasons.
First off, with prose, you know where you stand. If a rejection letter landed in my inbox, it was because of my writing. No possibility of it being the artist’s fault. If I succeeded or failed, it would be completely on me.
Secondly, if I did meet with failure, at least I wasn’t out any money. I can deal with investing time in writing, even if it turns out bad. Worst case scenario, I got some practice and learned what doesn’t work.
I wrote a few practice stories, just to flex those old muscles. Visual storytelling is really more about direction than language. Scripts are blueprints for an art team. Prose requires a different skill set. While crafting a story is similar, you need to be able to convey that story clearly, in a manner that is enjoyable to read. You need to worry about meter, rhythm, and redundancy. When trying to “show, not tell”, you have to show your audience with words, where in comics you can tell a whole story with only pictures (my King and Cub comic, for example).
My first new short story was a re-write of a comic script I had never done anything with it. The prose version came out weak without the visual storytelling techniques that the story had been built around. The second was a horror retelling of Pinocchio, which could have just as effectively been told in a comic format. It works well as prose, but did not demand it (Pinocchio & The Black Pantheon will soon be free to my email subscribers…hint, hint).
My third attempt was The Book Of Echo. This story relied on a long winded narrative from a self-absorbed narrator. It was the kind of introspective story that wouldn’t have room to breathe on a comic page. The freedom of movement offered by this short story was incredibly enjoyable for me, and I had found a rekindled love for telling stories in this medium. The Book of Echo got picked up by Beware The Dark magazine, and I suddenly became a multi-medium author.
Still wrapping up loose ends on Mastema, I got asked to co-write a project with another writer for an artist friend of mine. I jumped at the chance and re-focused on comics. A few months of writing and flatting (I got roped into being apprentice colorist) went by, and we got an offer on the book. It was great! I hadn’t spent a dime, and here we had a publishing deal in front of us. But it was backend pay (kiss of death). The artist who had initiated the project couldn’t afford to spend the next month or two on work that meant only speculation of pay. I was asked to bankroll it, but I just couldn’t afford it. The project died then and there.
After that, I moped for several days and considered quitting writing altogether. I threw a temper tantrum and told my fiancé that I was going to find a more productive way to spend my time. Perhaps binge drinking would produce better results.
Instead, I got my mind together and focused my attention on a novel I had been toying with. I threw myself into it completely. It was mine, and mine alone. No partner’s interests to consider. No creative differences. No god damn flatting or lettering or pre-press.
A few months went by and I had a complete manuscript, entitled The Devoured. And it was good! I did a re-write, and edited, and polished. I had beta readers give me input, and I re-wrote again, making it shine. The ability to polish something up until it’s gold is unique to prose. You can work a comic script over and over, but once the art goes down, it’s out of your hands. You, as writer, don’t have total control over the finished product. The same goes for film, or any visual medium. But in the microcosm of the written word, you have the ability to buff that shit up until you can see your reflection, and then deliver it to the reader just as you intend.
Within months of finishing my first draft, The Devoured was picked up by Winlock Press. It is, in my opinion, my finest work to date. And while I will always make comics, and the medium remains dear to me, nothing in my near-decade of comic creation compares to what I have accomplished with my first novel.
Mind you, I’m in no way saying that sequential art is inferior to prose. What I’m saying is that there is something uniquely special about crafting a story on your own, without the bonds of budget or creative conflicts.
So an experiment born from financial necessity has evolved into a whole new aspect of my career. I’m telling stories in new ways and to a new audience. I’m meeting wonderful new people and expanding my network. I’m experiencing things I never have and I’m gaining a broader view of the publishing landscape.
As I said, I’ll always make comics. They are my first love and were my first great obsession. As things are going though, I would not be surprised if my work as a novelist outpaces my work in comics. I’m already drafting my second novel, and I’ve chatted with Winlock Press about the possibility of a sequel to The Devoured.
Of course I’m always open to opportunities in any medium. My phone’s always on. For now though, I have a book to write.
