Here I stand (sit, actually) at the beginning of launching the first book of the first series of my new ‘second-act’ career as a storyteller.
Up till recently, I have only told stories through imagery, as an illustrator. It’s not too surprising, I assume, to hear that it has been those very images that have inspired the written-word stories I now prepare for perusal by the world at large.
I had never really given it much thought, all through my 50-year career as an artist and designer, that my habit of imagining the backstory of my illustrations, after their creation, might have actual value. Beyond my own personal time-wasting amusement, that is.
But, here I am, with 20-something raw, first-draft novels (and counting) preparing my favorite story arc for mainstream publication.
The heroine of the Killshot Diaries Collection began as a scribble on a 2-inch Post-it note, at three in the morning. I had been looking through old volumes of award-winning illustration annuals at the time.
I was lost in the three pages of work dedicated to one of my favorite illustrators, when the image of an innocent-looking punk-rocker girl, pointing a nasty-looking semi-automatic pistol straight at the viewer, popped into my mind. I saw her standing there, with an enigmatic look on her sweet face, with thick, black smoke rising at her back. It was so vivid, that I grabbed the first bit of paper I could find, scratching the layout in pencil.
Immediately after, noticing how late it actually was, I shut that illustration annual and went to bed. My Post-it sketch was still on that page, and I promptly forgot all about it–and her.
This had been a few years before I had even seriously attempted to write a novel. I say ‘seriously’ because I had been “writing a novel” at that time, for decades. I’m using ‘air-quotes’ there because I had a massive collection of ‘midnight epiphany’ notes in a 4-inch thick binder, but had only penned 60 or so pages of bits of dialogue and action–to show for an idea I had had four decades earlier.
So, one day, halfway through my first real attempt to write that first story, I was once again thumbing through old books for inspiration–at three in the morning. When I got to the pages of that same illustrator’s work, I saw my Post-it sketch. It was so pressed to the page, that I took it, at first, as part of the book.
‘Cool,’ I thought, glancing at the sketchy idea, ‘they put in one of his early sketches.’ I’ve always appreciated seeing how top-flight artists began their process.
Then, like an old friend slapping me on the back of my thick head, alerting me to something they saw that I didn’t, I realized it was actually my own sketch. I still hadn’t really been sure, until I picked at it with my fingernail; finally lifting a free edge up from the page it had been pressed to for years.
After slapping myself on my thick skull–metaphorically, of course–I pulled the scrap off, spun to my scanner, and grabbed a high-resolution digital sample of the tiny pencil sketch.
The next day, in a remarkably short, frantic Photoshop session, I had a nearly fully rendered image of my fresh-faced, post-apocalyptic killer. I named the file ‘Kill Shot Punk’, hit save, and, once again, forgot all about it.
I was struggling to get my first-ever novel idea fully fleshed out just then. I was committed to writing every single day; avoiding anything that would distract me. Still, that image pulled at me, day and night. The most annoying part was my perplexing conundrum of who this innocent murderer was. It kept ripping my focus from ‘Last of the MoonRydrs’, a full-length novel; at that point halfway through and six months along its path.
I just couldn’t balance that innocence with the idea of her killing other people–hellscape world or not. Then, finally, one evening–staring again at that haunting face–the idea slapped me hard in the back of my head; again. It’s very annoying.
If this was some kind of zombie apocalypse storyline, this innocent child would not be murdering fellow human beings! Suddenly, the whole thing snapped into focus. So much so, that the last four months of creating ‘Last of the MoonRydrs’ ended up being a frustrating battle to stay on task. I was constantly jumping up to scribble notes on a pad, before I forgot them, for what would ultimately be named the ‘Killshot Diaries.’
At least 20 times I almost kicked ‘Last of the MoonRydrs’ to the curb, to dive into this story–that was washing over my poor brain like waves in a tsunami.
Finally, penning the cliffhanger finale I had envisioned decades before, for the first book in the MoonRydr saga, I set it aside without so much as a single read-through.
First thing the next morning, I was hip-deep in the life of a tiny girl–surviving all alone in her uncle’s survival shelter–after a meteor shower had begun the end of the world as she knew it.
