Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Too Many Saints.


Now that Deadworld: Restoration is finished and just got done with some of the extra pages in the trade compilation coming from IDW (scheduled for June release), I have two other projects that are nearing completion.

The first is one that I mentioned before but I decided to change the name of it.  Originally it was to be called Saint James' Infirmary and dealt with a doctor assisting a police detective with a series of murders.  It takes place in Storyville, the legal red light district in New Orleans in the early 1900s.  I had designed it as a comic series but instead will release it as a complete graphic novel and it will go up on kickstarter in a few weeks.  The artist is Wayne Reid and he's about 80% finished with it and moving along quickly on the last part.

As I was delving into the storyline, I found myself becoming more immersed in Storyville itself and realized that the district was becoming a centralized focus of the story.  Sure, a lot still takes place in the asylum but the crime scenes were in Storyville proper and as what often happens when embarking on a new project, I began to find certain characters were coming alive.  And as I was wrapping up the first storyline to be a self contained story, I was already formulating the next story arc which is planted more so in Storyville itself.  Since I had only mentioned the title in a few advance blurbs, I had to decide to either change it now or live with Saint James' Infirmary.

So, the new name is "Murder in Storyville".  Simple and to the point.  The title alone pretty much says what the storyline is about.  Of course, I have to extend an apology to Paul Storrie who uses Storyville as his website and studio name, but since Storyville is a fairly well known (in some circles) historical district and has quite a legacy about it, I think he'll be forgiving about it.

I plan to start promoting it soon but I want to make sure of the schedule before I put it into play on kickstarter.

Another reason for the change was the continual question about whether Saint James' Infirmary was tied somehow into Saint Germaine, a series I did at Caliber and then later collected at Image and Transfuzion.  Obviously, I didn't see them as similar but I guess the use of "Saint" threw some people off.  I also think that if someone liked Saint Germaine, they would also like Saint, er, Murder in Storyville.

The reason that I want to avoid that conflict is because the next project that I'm doing is a collection of ALL the Saint Germaines into one massive collection.  Something like an Omnibus although I'm not sure what I'm going to call it yet.  Doing a quick count, it will exceed over 530 pages and will include every Saint Germaine story including the Magus story arc and the new story of Quasimodo that appeared in the Magus and Other Tales collection from Transfuzion.

Saint Germaine is probably my favorite work overall.  I have a strong desire to tell new stories in his world but as usual, time is the biggest factor, but somehow I will find the time to do it.

For the summer months, I have a few other collections to put out but most of my writing will be centered around the Deadworld novel.  I really have to get immersed into that and am trying to clear my docket on all of these other projects so I can do just that.

I realize now that I'll never catch up on things but I'll keep trying.

1 comments:

Steven Philip Jones said...

Well ....... this might make it harder to find, but I'm still looking forward to reading it! ;-)

 
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