So! Wowee, my second published book, Fangs and All, is slated to come out this October! When my last book, Lost Time, came out, I made a blog post talking about my progress for it. It’s only right I do the same for this one, I think! This book’s development was quite a bit different than Lost Time‘s, but I suppose there really is no singular process for anything–just similar pathways. According to all my old files, and the original post on this website, I came up with the first “draft” of Fangs and All (then titled The Curse of Blackwood Manor), all the way back in 2021.
For simplicity’s sake, although I called it “Blackwood” for a long time, I’m going to mostly refer to this title as Fangs in this post, since that’s the final title. Yeah, it wasn’t until I was working on the actual comic that it got a title change. “Blackwood” was maybe a good original title, but as it went on it became more of a working one, and my editor and I both agreed it needed a change. But! I’m getting ahead of myself, here.
This story also had a much different process than Lost Time, since it wasn’t officially pitched on submissions, it was instead just chosen by my editor. So sadly, I don’t have anything like original test pages. I do still have some old concept art to share, though, and much to say on the story itself!
Where it began
Fangs started as a prose novel. You’d be surprised how much of my comics start this way–I feel like this is the opposite of what’s supposed to happen? But, personally, I’m more confident in my comic-making abilities than my prose writing, so if I like a story enough, and especially if there’s a visual element, I can’t resist the sweet siren call of comics. I apparently got about 12k words into it before I hopped off of it… which really goes to show how quickly I lose confidence in my prose. I always liked the premise, though, and the core idea was always about a young queer couple meeting a family of monsters.
Originally, “The Curse of Blackwood Manor” was a fitting title because the curse was very prominent. Sam (yes, there was always Sam and Boots, right from the beginning) was indeed cursed by the family, where she would have to win the whole family’s favour by the end of the weekend, or die. The idea was like a family gauntlet that Sam would have to run through, with Boots helping intermittently–mostly stuck in her bat form.
The Blackwood family was also originally much larger. That way I had a lot to play with for this gauntlet game. It was a fun premise, but as you can see by how little I got through in writing it, something about it wasn’t clicking for me. There were a lot of moving pieces that weren’t connecting, and although I loved the idea, I left the story on the back burner as I began to focus my efforts on Lost Time, and other projects.
From prose to comics
Once Lost Time was done, it was time for me to pick another book. Lost Time was part of a two-book deal, which meant I had a whole other story I’d have to present to my editor. So I pitched him two of my stories I had waiting in the wings–Witchweed, and Fangs. I decided the prose version of Fangs had stagnated long enough that maybe it just needed new life as a comic. That, and I was already enjoying drawing the characters, which is usually what tips the scales for me. My editor chose Fangs, so I started reworking the story into a script.
This ended up being difficult…for a lot of reasons. Progress was slowed by a lot of things that were outside of my control. But I also struggled with putting the script together. I quickly found the gauntlet idea of the original story was not going to work in a graphic novel. See, we call them “graphic novels”, but I wouldn’t really call them novels. To cover a real novel-length story, these books would have to be twice as big as they are. I’d say they’re more equivalent to novellas, maybe? Anyway, what I’m saying here is that a whole family gauntlet of a bunch of different family members, that each need lots of time for Sam to get to know and earn the respect of, was not something I felt I could tackle without bumping the page count to like, 500. And I was not gonna make a 500 page comic. So…that meant restructuring things.
The story was cut down. Family members were axed, some restructured and aged down, and the entire gauntlet idea was abandoned. And yet, it was still a challenge trying to fit what this story was trying to be into a graphic novel. I went through several drafts of script trying to hone it, trying out different takes and ideas to bring it all together.
I won’t lie–this was the hardest part of it all. I often felt discouraged, as each new pass of script didn’t really cut it. I started to doubt if I even could tell this story, or even make it work. Maybe the scope was too much. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for it. It’s a feeling every artist has to unfortunately grapple with, and it hit me very, very hard for a lot of the script writing process. But I knew I couldn’t just abandon the project. Not when I still loved the characters and what I was doing. I had to somehow, make it work.
finding the love
After a long time of grappling with the script, I sat down and asked myself: what did I want the real theme of this comic to be? If I had one to start with, after all these revisions, maybe I had lost it. Or maybe it was just never clear–perhaps that was what stumped me in the original prose concept, and why I didn’t get far. Sure, it had a fun concept, and gave me an excuse to throw Sam at a bunch of characters–but in the end, why? And I guess the answer I settled on was… love.
Love was always the crux of this story, to be fair. But as I developed the story as a comic, it evolved from just a single relationship, to love as a whole. Romantic love, familial love–possessive love, wrongful love–monstrous love. We do a lot of things in the name of love that can be very hurtful, and here we have the Blackwoods as literal monsters, struggling with the same concept in more dangerous ways.
So with that in mind, I took to another draft of the script–and just like that, it all came out so easy. Sometimes you can really feel it when you’re writing–everything just flows, and you just know: you got it. I handed the script in and got the green light from my editor to start on the artwork. I was giddy, and proud! Finally I could move on to my favourite part–the artwork.
wrangling the monsters
Before we talk about art, I wanna jump in quick to talk about making all the characters! Because this story originally for prose, I didn’t have solid designs for a lot of them (the sketches up above were from that time). So I had to make all the characters distinct in some way, now that they were going to be in a visual medium like comics. Some characters were more solid than others, but even they changed a lot as I remade the story.
Cetus and Pavo probably had the biggest changes, as I decided to make Boots the oldest kid in the family. A lot of the other characters came to me easily–you can see a lot of their concepts on Fangs and All’s main page. The one character that really gave me grief, though, was Vela. I went through a ton of variations of her to get her right, and in the end, I think I only finalized her design when I started drawing her in the comic. Sometimes that’s just how it goes!
going full throttle
So this part–this is where I’m going to step lightly, and be more real. Because I love comics, and I love that I can make comics like this for publishing. This is well and truly a dream. But even dreams come with their own problems, especially in an art field. If you follow any other graphic novel authors, or comic creators, the unfortunate truth you’ll see is that comics are really never given their due worth. Whether through money or time, more often both, comics are never given the return you put into them.
I drew and finished all of Fangs within roughly 8 months. This of course wouldn’t have even been possible without my partner, Winter, doing the inking–therefore allowing me to jump straight from sketches to colours. But 8 months to draw and finish a 250+ page graphic novel is not ideal. If any publisher, or someone looking to hire an artist, is reading this–never, ever make your artists do this.
So then why did I do it? I wanted the book out by 2026, because I was still under the same contract I signed for Lost Time all the way back in 2019, and after seven years I wanted to finish it. The script process took up a lot of time, which was partly me, but also mostly out of my control, so I really just wanted the book done so I could be back to pitching again. I will say my editor and the team were very patient and understanding with me, constantly asking me if this timeline was okay and feasible. And I’m lucky that I can do art as a main job, so I was able to dedicate those 8 months almost solely to the project, which allowed me to take breaks when needed. But I know a lot of publishers, and other circumstances, are not as kind as this. This should not be a normal thing, and I don’t want anyone–artist or publisher–to think that. Don’t do this. Take care of yourself, advocate for yourself.
Comics are hard work, and they need time. I am looking directly at publishing and saying give your artists that time. Otherwise you get hurt, burnt out artists.
I just felt I had to say this, in case anyone tries to use me as some example. “Well, Tas made Fangs and All in 8 months, so we can ask anyone to make a graphic novel in 8 months!”. No no no. If anyone uses that as an excuse for a ridiculous timeline like this, I will have nothing but contempt for them.
it liiiiiives
Alright, now with all these disclaimers out of the way–let’s actually talk about the artwork!
I went into Fangs with a goal in mind for the art. In contrast to Lost Time’s lush, outdoors-y vibes with beautiful background shots, Fangs was dark, mostly interior, and with a stark focus on characters rather than the world around them (I should honestly make another post just talking about how much Lost Time and Fangs are basically opposites, in so many ways). I wanted it to be mostly black inks, with lots of dark shadowy flat-blacks for emphasis. Again, major props to my partner, Winter, for doing the inking on this project and really bringing out what I wanted. He is truly the best.
When it came to colours, I knew I also wanted a more flat colouring style. The colours needed to be bold but also constrained–I wanted to avoid anything too bright, since this was a YA, not a middle grade, but also punchy enough to get the tone across. Honestly, I think colouring this book broke my brain. Colours are usually my favourite part, but this one made me bend out of my comfort zone a lot. Which, to be fair, is good. But phew, is it tiring to stretch your brain that much! My way of keeping myself sane was anchoring all the colour schemes in dark blue and red. Those were, I suppose, the load-bearing colours of the comic.
I had a lot of fun drawing this comic. Between the handful of fun characters I could bounce between, the different locations (of which I used The Sims to help with a lot of interior backgrounds), and the art direction I had clearly in mind, it made drawing the whole thing a blast.
From Blackwood to Fangs
Although Fangs had less development time than Lost Time, I still feel like it changed and evolved a lot from its inception to production. It even stopped being The Curse of Blackwood Manor, and became instead, Fangs and All. Every time I create a new story, even though I know it will happen, I’m still surprised by how much it changes. Time, skill, and even I will change through the years it takes me to make it and bring it all together. Fangs kept a lot of Blackwood through the whole way, the core of it always remained firm, but so much around it evolved into what it is now.
Of course, Fangs was always personal to me, too. A large part of the original Blackwood came from me and my partner being the first queer couple in both of our families. This is still embedded in the final comic too. Queerness was always central to the comic–queerness and family, queerness and love, it’s all a very tenuous relationship. I hope this comic lets that come across.
Blackwood is now Fangs and All. Maybe Blackwood is not quite the same as Fangs, but it’s still in there, a story I circled around with a whole five years ago, then breathed to life finally in comic form. It’s one of my more indulgent works in a long time, and I couldn’t be more excited–and nervous–for it to make its debut!
You can sink your teeth into Fangs and All October 6th! It’s now available for preorder wherever books are sold!
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