Border Run: The Story That Wouldn’t Let Me Sleep
Border Run kept me awake long before I decided to adapt it as a graphic novel. Night after night, the story crowded my thoughts until one idea became impossible to ignore: if it would not let me sleep, I had to get it onto the page.
I try, and I try, experimenting with one technique after another. I stay up later. I go to bed earlier. In the end, none of it seems to matter, because my mind never stops. I wish it would, but it has a mind of its own—literally and figuratively.
Lately, that restless mind has kept circling back to Border Run, a novella I wrote. Night after night, the same thought kept coming to me: Boy, that would make a great graphic novel. You should do it.
After hearing it often enough, I finally decided that maybe I should listen.
I began organizing my thoughts and figuring out the best way to approach the adaptation. Traditional comic-book scripting has never been the easiest format for me, so I decided to use the tried-and-true Marvel Method: begin with the plot, create the artwork, and then return to add the dialogue, captions, and other text afterward. As both an artist and a writer, that felt like the most natural way for me to tell this story.
About two weeks ago, I began.
Before putting pencil to paper, I had an important decision to make. Was I going to approach the book with a loose, open style, or bury myself in a hyper-detailed one? I ultimately chose something much more graphic, drawing inspiration from the bold visual storytelling of Mike Mignola and Eduardo Risso.
Then I embarked on the graphic-novel version of Border Run.
Believe it or not, as of this writing, I have already completed ten fully drawn and inked pages. That tells me this is more than a passing idea. It is something I need to get out of my system—and onto the page.
Unfortunately for me, I do not want to release this story in pieces. I want to put it out as one complete work so it can truly be experienced as a graphic novel. That means I may have bitten off more than I can chew, because Border Run is going to be 128 pages long.
That is a serious undertaking, but I hope I can see it through. I hope I do not lose too much sleep over it, although that ship may have already sailed. What I do know is that I have to get this story out. When you finally read it, I hope you will see all the effort that went into every page.
I believe Border Run is going to be a compelling and exciting story—one that you will enjoy reading as much as I am enjoying bringing it to life.
So much for sleep.
The story is already awake. It is waiting in the dark, page by page, demanding to be drawn, written, and finished. And if making Border Run means losing a little more sleep, then so be it.
Some stories let you put them down. This one never did.
