THE JOURNEY TO BEZEK
It was late 2008. I was inspired. Before I knew it, I'd spent the evening drafting the plot for what would eventually be my first book, The Visions of Bezek. It wasn't the first story I'd dreamed up, though.

Since I was a child, I loved developing stories. Before college, I'd drawn a few comics. They weren't professional or exceptional, but I enjoyed created them. They were just for friends and family. Eventually, I posted some of them on My Space. You remember that My Space, right? Ha. Let's not talk about how old I am. Either way, the comics were the doodles of a kid, but the stories had potential.
Anyway, I had a brief concept drafted in Word that 2008 night at my college apartment. On that night, it held a different name, Transient Sovereign. Before 2008 wrapped up, I incorporated Tarot cards into the design of the characters and I began a list of days, events, and characters. When I imaged the story unfolding, it was a TV series. I knew that would never happen, so I went back to my childhood roots, imaging it as a comic book.

Over the next few years, I struggled to work on the project. When I say I struggled, I mean I was too busy playing videogames and watching popular media. I was also in college, so you can't blame me for being lazy. Around 2012, I drafted some character designs for the comic. The first chapter of Transient Sovereign was going to be called La Mat, which is the name of The Fool card in one of the earliest Tarot set.

Then life happened. Things changed. The project went to the back burner again, and I didn't touch it again until 2019. That's when I hit the project hard. I took my lists and turned them into an outline for each chapter. The story changed a lot and the worst part was that names of people and locations also changed. Talk about making my job harder. Some places and characters have had up to four different names during the process. I still call them by the wrong names sometimes. Go me! After pinning down the story, I started drawing the comic. It was taking forever. I would not finish it for years at this rate.
Well, I wasn't ready to take on such a large and serious art project. It took me about a month to get through a couple of pages, and I was struggling. My previous art endeavors were much smaller and didn't require a great deal of consistent art. As a result, I turned the project into a book, which I thought would be much easier. Goodness, was I wrong.
Writing a book has proven to be equally challenging, just in different ways. I've come a long way with the book and hope to have it published in 2023. I'm glad I made it a book rather than a comic. The serious nature of the story works better in words than in art. It makes the horrors of Bezek seem more real. That's how I accidentally started writing The Visions of Bezek. I hope you'll get a copy when it releases.
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