The long road to getting published...
BLOOD MOON chapter one, Thought Bubble & how to get started as a writer.
Contemporary British folk-horror set in Cornwall on the eve of the Brexit referendum! Click here to read the full first chapter of BLOOD MOON, created by me, John Pearson, Aditya Bidikar and Hannah Means-Shannon – http://bloodmooncomic.com.
BLOOD MOON page four
The first chapter of BLOOD MOON is finally out in the world and we’ve returned from Thought Bubble, probably the UK’s biggest international comic festival. I volunteered at the first Thought Bubble in 2007, when it was set up by Tula Lotay, who I worked with for three years back when UK comic-book store chain Travelling Man first opened up in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the north-east of England. I applied for a job there after finishing an English Literature degree, but got turned down because in the interview I mentioned hating the idea of Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men, which I’d never read but was confident was misrepresenting the characters I’d grown up obsessed with. After failing that interview and having no idea how I was going to pay the bills after university, I spent the last of my savings to travel down alone to a comic convention in Bristol, where the only way I could brave speaking to strangers at the launch party was to drink my own body weight in Guinness and red wine.
All I remember of the night is that Andy Diggle and Jock won an award for their comic The Losers (Vertigo/DC), I met Matt Smith who had literally just taken over as editor of 2000 AD, and later during some kind of live draw Jock’s award was sticking out of his back pocket so I borrowed it for 20 minutes before seeing sense and returning it. The next morning I woke in my hotel room and thought the staff had forgotten to make my bed, because I was sleeping on a bare mattress. Then I opened my eyes and saw the bedding all tied in a knot in the corner of the room, with black tar oozing through the fabric.
Horrified by my indiscretion and with a headache that burned with the power of a thousand suns, I staggered to the bathroom and discovered what looked like a slaughterhouse, with Guinness and red wine splashed up every wall and tile, all over the shower curtains, sink and bathtub. Ready to die I hobbled out of the hotel thinking only of finding ibruprofen, and promptly bumped into the owner of Travelling Man. I thought it was the end for me, but instead said that another opening had come up in the shop and they were so impressed at my dedication in travelling to Bristol for the comic convention that they wanted to offer me a job. Which led to three manic years of selling comics and reading everything in print during my lunch breaks. And regularly attending Thought Bubble ever since, which of all UK conventions is the one that historically has given most priority to comic-book creators, rather than film memorabilia and Doctor Who actors.
P M Buchan looking like a shifty child and John Pearson at Thought Bubble 2019
As always, Thought Bubble was a blast. I got to spend the weekend with BLOOD MOON co-creator John Pearson, we sold and gave away some limited edition BLOOD MOON prints, badges, stickers and plectrums (thanks Awesome Merch!), and for only the second time I was able to hang out in person with BLOOD MOON letterer Aditya Bidikar, who has also worked on strips including ISOLA, PUNKS NOT DEAD, COFFIN BOUND, MOTOR CRUSH and lots more.
Aditya lettered our strip for the Megadeth Heavy Metal anthology earlier in the year and is now one of the most sought-after letterers in the industry. The fact that he travels to Thought Bubble from India probably gives an indication of how important an international convention it is, and how much Aditya loves the medium. I love working with Aditya and he brings so much to the table professionally. Comics are a collaborative medium and the end result is always more than the sum of its parts, so the whole team has to be working in sync for the magic to happen.
Aditya Bidikar and P M Buchan
One of the things I’ve observed from years of creating and writing about comics is that bad lettering can bury a good comic, while good lettering can elevate it. My baseline for comics lettering is that as a minimum if you’re not going to pay a pro to do it, then at least it shouldn’t be ostentatious and shouldn’t distract from the artwork or the story with tricks that are difficult to pull off, like giving different characters different fonts for their dialogue. But a professional can do wonders and bring the story to life, treating each finished page as a work of art in itself. That’s one of the reasons BLOOD MOON is going to come out at its own pace, while we pay for professional lettering and editing, rather than rushing it more cheaply. In the end, when BLOOD MOON has reached the standard we know it can reach, the work will speak for itself. The alternative would be to rush it out and add just another compromise to the world.
Speaking of our schedule, there’ll be a small delay on chapter two of BLOOD MOON because John has gone trekking across Australia, drinking beer, making live art and presumably getting a spider-bite on his John Thomas before he comes home. I’d resent his absence, but the truth is that creating a comic like BLOOD MOON is more or less a full-time job when it comes to the artwork. I can write the scripts on the bus to and from work, and I can write in my lunch breaks and after the kids go to sleep, but John has to turn down paid work to carve out the hours to sit at his desk and draw it.
Close-up from BLOOD MOON page six
One of my intentions for starting this newsletter was to share tips about how I finally got started as a professional writer, much later in life than I ever thought I would. I spent years writing my first novel in isolation, struggling over the fact that I kept developing my skills but was shackled to story ideas that I’d written years earlier. It felt like an impossible task, condemned by outlines written by my naive younger self. As I came to the end of that process, around the time that my son was born, I realised that prose was not coming as naturally to me as I always thought it would and that I needed to put the work in to improve as a writer. And setting myself deadlines. So I started a blog and began reviewing things that I’d been reading and watching, focusing on what I knew best: horror and comic-books.
I’d forgotten that any of this happened, but to begin with I used Twitter and blogging on Blogspot (I think), setting myself weekly or monthly deadlines, sharing the content online and tagging in creators whose work I’d reviewed. And I found then something that still applies now – people will always be grateful if you take the time to review their work, regardless of your experience levels or even skill. Because creating art is never easy and having people help to amplify your voice and get more eyes on what you’ve created is invaluable. I made a few early missteps in self-publishing, including hiding behind an old screen name so that when Clive Barker followed me on Twitter for a while I completely squandered it (he never even knew my real name before he unfollowed me!), but that period taught me a lot about the discipline of publishing regularly. It taught me how to hit deadlines and how sticking to a schedule will help you to pick up readers. And that prepared me to look for opportunities to be published by other people. Which led to my first credit in a national UK print magazine.
This week I’ve interviewed comics writer and author Leah Moore, who has written for Black Crown, Heavy Metal, 2000 AD and about a million other places. Not only does Leah write fierce fiction that invariably veers towards the dark side, she also frequently collaborates with her husband John Reppion, most recently on the critically-acclaimed Dark Horse graphic novel with Sally Jane Thompson, Conspiracy of Ravens.
1/ Your life writing around kids often reminds me of my own – do you have any shortcuts that you use to get the most out of limited time?
Oh god, no I really wish I did! Our mums try and have them for a bit after school sometimes or at the weekend, but for the most part, we just type like crazy until 3pm and then everything is noisy and complicated until 8.45 the following morning! Rinse and repeat... I have found that since the kids came along, most of the time I just say "Sorry, but I can't get on with this until Monday" and just leave my desk as it is all weekend. I will push on a specific project if we can get the childcare and stuff, but most of the time, weekends are for messing about with the kids.
We are hopeless with doing homework or projects or whatever, we just try and keep everyone fed and watered and happy, break up the fights, make sure they get a run. Normally that feels enough, until I see someone on Facebook who has clearly spent the whole weekend gluing and sticking, done a 5k for charity pushing the buggy the whole way, and managed to bake a few trays of buns for the school fair as well. Then I feel like my kids have been basically left to starve in a garret somewhere, and I’m about to be reported to child services.
2/ Who are your role models when it comes to creativity and have they changed over the course of your career?
That’s actually a tough one to answer. Before I wrote comics I wanted to be an artist. I did A-level, and art foundation and then stopped. Partly it was the shock of going from an A-level class where I felt like I was a really great artist, to a foundation course where there were some astonishing artists, and I suddenly had to figure out what I wanted to push towards, and get really good at. I think with comic writing, my main driving force isn’t to make stories like X or be as good as Y, it’s more just not to make a holy show of myself…
Like if I can keep up, and tell fun stories, and keep getting paid, then I'm happy. It’s weird. I know for a fact if that if I was drawing I’d be "OMG I need to get as good as X at watercolours, or Y at linocuts," or whatever. I’d feel huge pressure to compete and skill up, and really push myself. With writing, I'm kind of happy to just take challenges as they come along, try my hardest and see what happens. I don’t know what that says about me. Obviously I would like to make big money and write books that make the bookcharts, but I’ve been writing for 15 years, and these days, just getting it written and getting paid is enough!
My projects are usually founded on "What have we got an idea for already that we could sell to someone?", which has been what fills the gaps between the "Aargh, what is this? Can I write it? Lets hope so!" projects that arrive in the Inbox. The idea is to try and get some Creator Owned stuff sold, so then there might be royalties, and they might pay for more series to be written, and the whole thing might suddenly be a bit more choice-driven. Right now, we have a little bit of control but mostly it’s just what people need writing.
At the moment I'm writing an incredibly exciting book on one of my all-time favourite bands, and which I cannot say more than that about (or I'll end up with concrete boots), I'm writing samples for a phone game of exactly the type I am addicted to, and waste my life playing when I should be working, which is kind of Karmic retribution on a grand scale, and I'm writing a wonderful book for Liminal11 called The Tarot Circle, with Ivy Berces and Jem Milton on the art, which is set in a group that meet to read each other’s tarot cards, and talks about the origins of Tarot itself, the development of Cartomancy, modern multitudes of Tarot decks, 1960's occultism... the whole lot. I’m probably not even supposed to announce it yet, but what the heck. I can’t say anything at all about the other two so it’ll have to do!
3/ What advice would you give to someone hoping to write comics professionally in the future?
I would say do as many small strips as you can for whoever wants or needs them. Do tiny anthology stories for free, do charity zines, or whatever people are asking for. Basically, the one thing a writer hasn’t got is a portfolio of headshots, sequential art, colours, whatever. There’s no proof you can write at all, until you have a few pages in your hand to show people. Even if your artist isn’t 100%, your writing will still speak for itself, and an editor will be able to see where your strengths are. Get some pages done, however you can, in as wide a range of subjects as you can, and then you have samples to send editors, and some credits to stick in your Twitter bio or whatever. Comics is a group effort, so find a group to work with, and then put in the effort. That’s about all any of us can do!
4/ If you woke tomorrow and were no longer constrained by time, budgets or even skills that you haven’t learned yet, what would you make?
Oh man. There’s a whole line of Feminist masterworks that I reckon I could do as amazing graphic novels. All in a neat row on the shelf, get a load of boss women to draw and colour them, make it really varied... that’s a big one. Otherwise I'd 100% go back to art school and just dive into the stuff I yawned through when I was 18. Life drawing, print-making, textiles, learn to paint properly. I’ve got a half-written novel that needs finishing too, so probably I’d finish that, learn to make my own clothes properly... learn how to throw pots... I've got a long list of things I’d love to be able to do, and a pile of unused craft materials that sit staring at me when I’m typing.
Are you getting the feeling that after 15 years of professional writing, I’m still not 100% sure I’m actually even a writer? For saying that these were only four innocent little questions, they’ve opened a whole can of existential worms... Thanks for that!
Note from PMB: If you’re living in the UK, Leah recently shared a message online about which way her notoriously anarchist dad will be voting in the next General Election: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/21/alan-moore-drops-anarchism-to-champion-labour-against-tory-parasites
My playlist this week is one that I listen to when I’m going through a tough time, GOD WAS NEVER ON YOUR SIDE. Despite the creeping misery that permeates this short but sweet playlist, it’s packed with some of my favourite bands that I’ve discovered in the past couple of years, including Mocklove, who sing and scream their way some of the most intense and emotional female-fronted post-hardcore music that I’ve ever heard. It’s criminal that more people haven’t heard of Mocklove and I recommend them absolutely and unreservedly. Another absolute gem on here is the track Immaculate by Slow Bloom, with lyrics that play out like suicidal At the Drive-In and hooks to die for.
That’s all for me this time. I’ve been crushingly ill this past week, fighting through the worst of it to make sure my son’s birthday and birthday party went okay, in spite of the general chaos and anxiety that comes when a loved one with Pathological Demand Avoidance has to make it through a special day.
John Pearson is away in Australia for a while yet, hopefully storyboarding and beginning pencils on chapter two of BLOOD MOON, plus my new series pitch with Lyndon White will be going out to editors and agents shortly, delayed by the amount of time I’ve spent recently unable to concentrate long enough to type or hold a conversation.
Next newsletter I’ll get into my history as a writer a little more, how I figured out which magazines to pitch to and how that led to landing a couple of regular columns in national magazines, working my way up the food chain. In the meantime, if you want to talk then the best place to find me is on https://twitter.com/PMBuchan. I’ll leave you with one of my favourite images from Thought Bubble this year, a photo of John and I with Jennie Gyllblad, one of our favourite, most perverse comic creators in existence. She describes herself as a comicatrix and you should find out why.
Jennie Gyllblad, one very tired P M Buchan and John Pearson at his most sensible