Get some life experiences.

I'm often asked how I come up with the ideas for my stories. Some are quite apparent, as they are either semi-autobiographical or are based on things that hugely interest me. For example I'm currently working on a comic that basically talks about my dating experiences and I have an original graphic novel in the works that focuses on Muhammad Ali. However I'm also working on some pretty fantastical projects such as Reality and a dystopian tale. Now, to some it would appear that I've just come up with something crazy and I can't possibly have something personal to say in these projects, but how wrong you are. Reality is all about my views on Reality TV, as well as fame and youth culture. I'm blown away by some of the things that are placed as important in todays society, particularly by teenagers. Every week when X-Factor is on I see my Twitter and Facebook feed explode with opinions on the episode and I wonder how anyone can care so much about something that to me seems so unimportant. As I work with kids in my full-time job I got to wondering 'what if one of these kids gained superpowers?' And the results of these thoughts didn't inspire me with hope. So as you can see Reality becomes a way of talking about and expressing these thoughts. So in some ways Reality is as autobiographical as anything else I have ever written. The same can be said of my dystopian story that will delve into my political views and talk about by my fears of Britain's political path.

So I've established that everything is semi-autobiographical, what is my advice to other writers? Go out and live a bit! A lot of the time the instinct is to spend all your time in doors writing, but if you don't have experiences, what are you going to write about? For a while I'd been staying indoors as much as I can and getting on with writing, but I wasn't really coming up with new ideas. Well this weekend just gone I went wild camping in Dartmoor and things turned ugly. Before I knew it I was lost up a hill, in a storm, gail force winds beating down on me, unable to see 20 metres ahead of me. I got out safe and sound of course, but being in that situation made me feel things I wouldn't normally feel and thus gave me new experiences and sure enough a new idea came to me.

Now I'm not saying you should all run out there and put yourself in perilous situations, but go out live a little, every so often try something new. Without experience there is no motivation.

Black and white?

As some of you will no doubt have noticed page seven went up on the website yesterday and it was black and white. Marco and I will be going down this route as we want to keep you guys interested and deliver a page a week. As we don't have a colourist at the moment (these things cost money), we will be publishing the pages in black and white, with the hope that we can eventually get them coloured.

To get the pages coloured I'm looking to you guys, as Marco and I are poor boys, from poor families we are looking for donations. Any donations given would not line Marco's and my pockets but would pay for said colourist. So if you are a fan of what you see and would like to help get the pages coloured cough up.

Finally just to remind you, we will be trying our upmost to put out a page every week, so please check back for updates.