[Editor's Note: Horror Yearbook is always looking for ways to help out the little guy, but to be honest the little guy sometimes makes it hard to do so. Upstart filmmakers, comics artist and so on are sometimes not very good at promoting their own stuff, or getting material to the websites that will take the time to feature them. So when David Doub approached me about his graphic nove,l Dusk, I decided to let him write his own story about the up-and-downs of trying to get his vampire comic published, below is that story]

This is about my journey to get my graphic novel Dusk published.Dusk is about a woman named Eve who was brainwashed into service by a powerful vampire for her knowledge of occult magics. Saved by the ever stoic vampire, Ash, Eve now struggles to pry herself away from her former life and cope with a dangerous addiction. The book is 104 pages long in black and white.

When I first started out making comics, I did it more as a hobby and less with a career in mind. So with that in mind I thought the internet would be the perfect tool to produce a comic. Printing is free, distribution is free and you have access to a potentially unlimited audience.

So as I went along putting long form comics (single completed stories) on a webpage a coworker of mine, Brian Kurtz, pointed out a webcomic that his brother did called PVPonline. The basic setup of PVPonline was the more traditional newspaper comic strips where a joke was told with a recurring cast in about 4 panels.

As I looked around the internet, I begin to notice more and more than most webcomics were of the same 4 panel humor format. At first I was annoyed that webcomics had settled more on the comic strip model than the comic book, but then it became clear why. Webcomic strips can be read in quick short bursts when someone has a little free time at say school or work. Also there’s more instant gratification because it’s humor.

That said, the internet is now more open to various formats and styles of webcomics as the field as grown. But since I was trying this back in the late 90s early 2000s I decided I should try to peruse doing comics in print.

At first I tried writing assignments posted by artists and creators at various comic book forums, most of them not going anywhere for a variety of different reasons. I found it to be a good learning experience because I got practice doing scripts for different genres, for different art styles and for different comic formats.

One day, I came across an announcement that a small British publisher, Warpton, was looking for pitches from writers. So I sent a couple of rough ideas to the publisher and we talked them over until he settled on Dusk, my vampire story I had been publishing for awhile. I actually had originally plotted a long story arc for Dusk’s first story, but since Warpton was looking to do self contained one shots, I had to start from scratch.

After several script rewrites, for bare minimalistic stories to ones overflowing with flashbacks, the publisher finally decided on a script. He offered to find an artist team, but I wanted to go out and find my own. So I went to this great website for comic creators, called Digitalwebbing.com, and started posting for an artist. That’s how I found artist Maki Naro. He liked the story enough to help out by lending his penciling skills. From there I gathered up the inker and letterer.

As I waited for Warpton to get the other one shots lined up so they could get it all scheduled properly, I wanted to strike while the iron was hot and got Maki to do another comic story while we were waiting for the first one to get to print.

Unfortunately, Dusk was the only one shot comic that came out from Warpton at that time. Besides working as a publisher, the owner was also opening a comic book shop and having a new baby, so since it was a small operation all the other one shots couldn’t be printed and Dusk had a limited run in a few shops in England.

With no publisher, I took my 60 odd pages of comic and went looking for another publisher. I had plenty of promising conversations with several editors but there was always something that didn’t mesh right, be it from their publishing schedule, to preferred genres, to contract negations (or lack thereof). Finally I came across Ambrosia, a publisher with a very different plan than Warpton.

Ambrosia had found that small, around 100-120 pages, and affordable graphic novels could be fairly successful. What they would do is fully serialize the comic online and then sell it via PDF and stores. The agreement was that since I had 60 pages already, Ambrosia would serialize those 60 pages and during that time I’d get another 60 pages finished for a complete book.

By this time, Maki had gone onto other things, so I went to look for another artist through various comic boards once again. I found one that not only had amazing art but could also ink their own stuff. So that just means I needed to get the letterer back on the team.

Well, the main artist was moving locations from home and college and all the artwork, so I was back to square one. Ambrosia was more than nice enough to push back my schedule while I looked for another artist. So I did find another artist but then Ambrosia had to go on hiatus because of personal issues. Now I had an artist and not a publisher.

Yet again I’m talking to various publishers and having productive conversations but nothing is really coming working. During this, some creators were giving advice and talk of self publishing came up several times. As looked into this I found that print on demand had come along way and it was quite feasible to not only print a book on a budget but also distribute it as well.

After many years of various starts and stops, I find myself talking online about my book that is available at most online and offline retailers.