I have learned a lot about myself over the last two and a half years. On the day my daughter was born, I stood there holding her i my arms and I realized I had to find my way artistically. It’s hard to put it into words, but the purpose of my life was shifting and it added a lot of weight to decisions that I made. No longer was I just trying to find MYSELF as an artist, I was trying to find direction for my family. I then went into a mode where I was working towards getting my first book published.
I took some cues from what others had done and put together a 13 page preview for a book called The Unknowns. If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ve probably heard about it. Honestly, I fell in love with this book. It was everything I wanted to see in a story and I went to pitch it to publishers, confident in the work I had made. Much to my surprise, I landed an agent, pitched the book to publishers like Image, Scholastic and Random House. Scholastic and Random house liked the story, but felt my art needed some growth. Looking back on those pages, I agree, lol. But a strange thing happened after that…
I found that I was a bit insecure in what I wanted. I wanted a book deal and was willing to move on from one idea to the next to help the books get completed and get out there. It was a sound plan, until my agent left the firm he was with and left me agentless. Ever since then… I’ve felt lost as a comics artist. Lost because my expectations on what was supposed to happen or how I thought a system should work had been deeply flawed.
I always knew in my heart that the story I wanted to tell no matter what was The Unknowns and while I knew this, I continued to operate under a false values system. A system that allowed others (beit companies, friends, whatever) to have a bigger say in what they thought was best for me. In the best of intentions or not. Well, after making one other online comic, writinga first draft for a completely new book, and pitching another series that went nowhere, I made the decision to finally, FINALLY move forward with my latest book… THE UNKNOWNS.
I am so elated to finally cast off all of the things that kept me from making this decision. For so long I put this book off, thinking it could come later, or whatever the case may be, but I have learned something really valuable. As an artist you have two choices… Making art based on purely business related decisions, or making art that both fills a business need and a personal need. I stopped asking people what they wanted and what they thought I should do and I started doing what I WANTED to do. Because in the end, people don’t really know what they want, and you don’t either. What people want is GOOD product and the only way for a product to be truly good is for you to be fully onboard. So with this new mantra in mind, I started making all art decision based on this and the success I have had recently has been more than any other time in my arts career, I’m growing in leaps and bounds, having mroe fun than i know what to do with and seeing real progress in my art. So I will leave you with an OLD version of THE UNKNOWNS cover I did for that original pitch and say, that this book won’t be premiering online until the book is done. Because in the spirit of my whole post, I WANT to finish it first, and take all of you on a ride I know I can deliver on. So stay tuned for new updated, process and fun a coming. Thank you all for your understanding and I can’t wait to share this idea with you all. It’s been five years in the making and it is TIME.
Here are some other UNKNOWNS related links for your enjoyment:
-Old blog posts from when I was pitching the book.
-A small preview of those pitch pages
