SELECT * FROM Shane

2011 was a huge year for me. I started studying towards a PhD, and dropped out eight weeks later. Annie became interactive and therefore awesome and demanding. My writing reached new heights of prolificism. I got a publishing contract for The Lesser Evil, and have begun negotiations for its sequel, The Road to Hell. I created a Twitter account and two Facebook fan pages (here and here), and revived this languishing blog. I revamped my website completely from the ground up. And through it all, full-time work and the commuting thereof continued to dominate upwards of 50 hours per week.

But busy as I’ve been, I knew there was more planning to do. It’s never too early to think about the future. And it’s starting to look like 2012 will be at least as busy as this year.

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My dad took a great deal of pride in his career in the public service, and I attempted to do the same for a while, but sometimes all I can feel is this nameless drive, this unquenchable desire pulling me to get out and do what I want to do, regardless of the consequences.

A great deal of this anxiety can be found in Ross Tillman, the main character of The Lesser Evil. In the final weeks of scholarship, he finds himself dreaming of a life he knows he can never have. Because he can’t stand up to his parents; because he can’t even get through to them; because he worries about disappointing them; because he hasn’t got the personal strength to find this life on his own, he is about to follow his father into a local administrative role that he dreads.

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As far back as I can remember, the only career I have ever wanted to pursue was one in the creative industries. (For most of my life, this ambition has been limited to becoming a novelist; however, while studying Creative Writing at university, I took great pleasure in all the creative endeavours I was encouraged to experiment with.)

Even when I was young, I always knew that if I hadn’t made it by the time I entered full-time employment, I probably never would. What that meant is that I would be trapped in the rat race, locked in a fluorescent tomb (I think I’ve used that phrase before, but it sticks with me) that I could never escape while my dreams flittered away outside. The frightening inevitability of it all kept me writing, working as hard as I could in my free time to produce something saleable.

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A recent article regarding spoilers in comic books has reawakened my interest in the role of plot in a story. This article cited research which produced the surprising finding that people enjoyed suspenseful stories more if the crucial plot twists were spoiled for them in advance.

This counterintuitive relevation has made me consider the way I produce my stories, and has helped me to articulate my long-held beliefs into a coherent form. I have come to realise that the true mission statement of The Lesser Evil and its sequels is fundamentally tied to the idea that plot events are secondary, even incidental, to the enjoyment of a story.

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I’m not much of an artist. I used to draw quite regularly, but was a much stronger copier than anything; whenever I tried to draw purely from imagination, I could never get it even close to right.

The decision to become a comic book artist was therefore a natural one… uh, what?

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