Ok, so I’ve been working on it here and there, just poking the idea around in my head and watching it squirm.

It first started with an image; just a man walking through a meadow in Summer at sundown.  And then there was some vague notion about temptation; plenty of stories involve an act of temptation, or are stories about the approach to and results of temptation.  Temptation is a frequent plot point.  I wanted to do something more zoomed in.  This would be an exploration of the moment of temptation, the liminal space when temptation is considered and options are weighed, but before a decision has been made.  A chance to expand on the feeling of dangerous possibilities, when things can be thrown away or preserved.

I scribbled down things as I saw them, not sure where it would take me, but interested in the prospect of building a story around the seemingly random set of images that came to me.  Cups of green tea, the meadow in lush summer, the maple trees, setting sun, a woman, Shakespeare volume tattered, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Lucifer walking (at sundown), Anubis, the threshold of temptation, the space where weight is considered.  Let’s see what happens…

Like Story(cycle), I hit the library first.  Any excuse to wander around the shelves, I must be addicted to the smell of books.  I’m writing the first draft now after taking copious notes and following bread-crumb trails and generally staring off into space and not editing instincts.  I have to admit, the post-MFA me is much more interested in seeing where curiosity takes me; there is far, far less self-editing going on at the moment.

Sketches come soon, but for now I’ll just say that this book will have panels.  Like traditional sequential art style, the sort of thing I experimented with in a few pages of Story(cycle), but now I’m committing to it.  Watercolor for sure, and digital text boxes.

At this point, forecast for finish is April, but that depends a lot on stuff going on with regard to where I’m living:  my student visa for the UK expires in January and I’d like to stay, so I’m currently in the tangles of a visa application.  Oh joy.