Some facts about my latest story 1). it's called 'Daddy' and
was printed in the horror anthology Don't Be Afraid 2). The art was done by the
talented Cecilia Latella, with a crazy deadline 3). My wife hates it.
After 'Glimmer' and the Tales From The Comics Experience
came out, we went to work on the next anthology. I had a story ready to go and
I set out to find an artist, after the third artist fell through, it looked
like the production deadline was going to be out of reach for me. This was also
at the time when my wife and I were expecting our first child, money was
starting to be directed to places it had never needed to go before, suddenly
making comics had to take a back seat. All of this led me to pull away from
writing and focus on other things (keeping a baby alive), comics in general
faded away a bit.
When the time finally came where I was confident in what I
was doing as a parent and ready to start writing again I had already missed
four other anthologies that Elevator Pitch Press had done, including their most
successful series Great Zombies In History.
I contacted the group and found out the next book was going to be a book
based around fear, fortunately for me, I was a new dad, I drove from the
hospital 10 under the speed limit never taking my hands off the wheel, fear was
one of my main emotions.
The story of the possibly possessed baby came as I was
rocking my daughter to sleep. If you're not careful you can lose a few hours of
your day just watching your kid sleep, I'm pretty sure I have, but this time
was different. This was one of those times where you let your imagination run
away on you, and you creep yourself out, like being home alone and putting the
idea that someone is watching you outside, in to your own head. I sat and stared
at her beautiful face and for no reason, imagined her opening her eyes and
speaking with an adult voice to me. It creeped me out. I had a story.
My wife read the script and was also creeped out, not so
much because the writing was so good, more because we had just had a baby and
the story was about a father who hears his baby tell him to kill it. I assured
her I was not following a popular piece of writing advice and "writing what you know", she seemed
reasonably convinced.
I approached DeviantART looking for an artist armed only
with a killer deadline and a laughable page rate. To my surprise, a lot of
people were interested, I looked through a number of galleries looking for the
right look until I found Cecilia's page, her classic style was perfect.
Within only a few weeks I had a finished comic in my inbox.
Once again I was officially a comic book writer.
Special thanks to my daughter Anna.
