Jasper Bark: Draw You In 1: Collector’s Item
In the world of horror fiction, Jasper Bark stands out as a uniquely talented voice. He seamlessly blends the realms of reality and fiction in his work. Jasper has released his latest trilogy, Draw You In. He also launched a new line of books titled Bark Bites Horror. He continues to push the boundaries of storytelling. His innovative marketing strategies demonstrate his commitment to crafting an immersive experience for his readers. One example is the audacious hoax that captivated fans and added layers to his narrative.
In this exclusive interview with Ginger Nuts of Horror, Jasper shares insights about his creative process. He discusses the inspiration behind Draw You In. Jasper also expresses his keen interest in the tumultuous history of comics. Join us as we explore the mind of this award-winning author. Discover the themes that resonate throughout his work. Learn about his thoughts on the evolving landscape of the comic book industry.
Gingernuts Of Horror: Firstly, Jasper, welcome back! It’s been an age. How have you been keeping, and what have you been up to?
Jasper Bark: It has been an age. I guess I’ve been ageing. I want to say like fine wine, but probably more like ripe cheese!
I’ve been keeping rather busy. I’ve launched a new website – www.jasperbark.com. And I’ve launched a new line of books, called Bark Bites Horror, with my publisher Crystal Lake Entertainment, which is pitched as a ‘Goosebumps for grown-ups and a sexed-up Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’. I launched a podcast with you, called The Ultimate Horror Anthologywhich is drawing a growing audience. And I’ve written a trilogy of novels called Draw You In,which were all released earlier this year.
I perpetrated a huge hoax to boost the trilogy, creating counterfeit comics pages, purportedly from decades ago, that were ‘allegedly’ drawn by R. L. Carver, one of the main characters of Draw You In. Gingernutscovered the hoax in this article. I also released a short novel, written by another character from Draw You In, Linda Corrigan, which is available exclusively through my mailing list. Just to continue the bleed between fiction and reality that takes place in all three novels.
GNoH: Can you talk about the process of generating the hoax? How much time did it take to organise, and did you have help?
Jasper Bark: The hoax took a lot of time to organise and like any really good hoax there were a lot of people in on the scheme. So I had a lot of help.
Hoax marketing should arise out of work you’re trying to promote. As I mentioned above, one of the themes of the trilogy is the way fiction and reality often bleed into one another especially, for some reason, in the world of comics. In homage to this I invited many real-life comic creators to appear as characters in Draw You In. Two legendary creators, Walt and Louise Simonson made cameos as themselves and even wrote their own dialogue and actions.
I also wanted the fictional characters to escape from the novel, which was the inspiration behind the hoax. So, I decided I would create a series of comics stories, in the style of the four-colour horror comics of the 50s and the black and white comic magazines of the 70s, and attribute them to one of the main characters R. L. Carver. A mysterious comic creator who is at the centre of the investigation my protagonists undertake.
First I had to write the scripts for the stories, then I had to find an art team who could replicate the look and visual feel of comics from those periods.
I approached Mick Trimble with whom I’d worked on the graphic novel Bloodfellas. He did an excellent job on the pencils and inks. Next I asked the incredibly talented colourer Aljoša Tomić to give the stories a retro, period feel, replicating the colour processes of the 50s, and the ink-wash style of the 70s, which he did brilliantly. Finally Mindy Lopkin lent her talents and did a fabulous job of reproducing the lettering styles of 50s and 70s comics.
Once I’d created a reasonable facsimile of three comics from the last century I approached a series of comics news sites to run the strips for me. They were in on the hoax, but the story I went with on Down the Tubes, Tripwire, Diversions of the Groovy Kind and even the German blog, Fifties Horror, was that I had found a series of printers proofs, among the collection of a recently deceased collector. Most of the proofs contained reprints from other publications, but there were three stories that had never appeared anywhere else and they were all attributed to the same artist – R. L. Carver.
I claimed I could find very little information about Carver and I asked the comics community to help me with my investigations into this mysterious artist. Effectively, I asked them to do exactly what my fictional characters were doing in the trilogy.
All this took around six months of careful planning and organisation. But the payoff was worth it to see one of my fictional characters come to life, if only for a few months, before I came clean on the day of publication.
GNoH: Draw You In: Collectors Item is a story absolutely steeped in the world of comic books industry, both modern-day and historical. What was your research regime like for these novels, and how much did your own experiences in the field feed into the books?
Jasper Bark My research regime was all consuming. I’m fascinated by comics history and have shelves of books about every era of the medium from its inception in the late 19th century to the present day. When I began the first draft, I compiled a reading list that might have been more fitting for a PHD, but I wanted the historical backdrop to be as accurate as possible. I’ve also had the good fortune, as a comics professional, to sit down with many greats from the silver and bronze age of comics.
I’ve listened to their stories of working in the industry. Along with the stories they heard from the golden age creators who are no longer with us. Many of these anecdotes are unprintable, but some of them did creep into the book. 95% of the history in these books is true. Although it’s kind of set in an alternate universe where golden-age publisher, Fox Comics, didn’t go out of business and continued to the present day. I did this so I could discuss working for a mainstream US publisher without libelling some heavy duty corporations.
Aside from comics history, I did masses of research into the geography and history of the US.
The lead characters travel across much of the USA and every single location they visit actually exists. If I haven’t visited these places personally, I’ve explored them in depth on Google Maps, Tripadvisor and every other place they appear on line. One of the joys of writing in the 21st Century.
As for my own experience, I have worked for US mainstream publishers, but I was mainly employed by UK and European comic publishers, and they work a little differently from their North American counterparts. So, I was drawing more on the emotional truth of what it’s like to be a creative professional in a commercial industry. How it feels to produce work on a freelance basis, to incredibly tight deadlines, on work for hire contracts.
What it’s like when you’re routinely exploited, censored and then dropped by people with whom you’ve had a professional (and sometimes personal) relationship for decades. How much time and effort it takes to get paid work and how quickly it can all dry up, leaving you with no means of paying your bills. There is an upside to this, which is that you get to do something you love and get paid to do it (albeit poorly). It’s a dream job but you work under nightmare conditions.
GNoH: One of the areas Volume One explores is learning about the trailblazers who first started breaking down race and gender barriers in the industry in the 50s and 60s. What made you want to include that part of comics history in the novel?
Jasper Bark: I think it’s a hugely important part of comics history. One that isn’t given enough attention. Comics were a haven for a lot of misfits with a passion for a much maligned artform in the 40s and 50s. Like any passion, it cut across cultural and gender barriers, making the comics industry very inclusive. At that time, comics routinely sold in the tens of millions. This meant publishers had enough money to take chances on artists and writers, including women, and those from minority backgrounds, who wouldn’t get a break in more traditional areas of publishing.
Of course, it might be argued one reason for this was female creators, and those from minority backgrounds, were potentially cheaper than their W.A.S.P. counterparts. And there were certainly a lot of tightwads and shysters among the early comics publishers. But there were also a lot of progressive publishers, like Leverett Gleason whose company – Lev Gleason Publications published the original Daredevil and the all time best seller Crime Does Not Pay.
Only about a quarter of my research was first-hand, so I read a lot of other people’s writing and research on the history of comics. Few people really mentioned this element of the early US comic industry in anything other than passing, so I wanted to highlight it. It’s a rich vein of mid 20th century publishing history that’s still ripe for exploration, and I’ve no doubt, in years to come, many comics and arts historians will cover it in more detail.
GNoH: I found Linda to be an instantly likeable and relatable lead character; talented, clearly somewhat insecure (emotionally and financially), a real working artist. In terms of coming up with the idea, how quickly did you realise Linda was the natural fit for the primary POV character?
Jasper Bark: I’m so glad you liked her and could relate to her life and situation. I’ve been really heartened by most readers’ reactions to her. Many have let me know that they’ve gotten really invested in her story and struggles.
I think when I first conceived of the book, which had a long gestation period, I thought the main protagonist would be a man. However, it only started to gel as a story when I decided she would be a female Gen Xer, whose career is in decline when we first meet her.
Things have gotten much better over the last twenty years for female creators in comics. It’s still a bit of a boy’s club, but there’s no longer a sign over the door saying – “NO GURLZ ALLOWED!” When I first entered the industry, twenty years ago, I heard many horror stories from my female colleagues. Especially those who were about a decade older.
I think Linda works as a POV character, because her story is very relatable to anyone who’s ever seen someone else profit from their time and labour. Which, let’s face it, is anyone who’s ever been employed. But it’s especially relatable if you’ve ever worked in the creative industries. You have to negotiate a lot of injustices and inequalities if you want to work as a professional creative in a corporate industry.
GNoH: For me, one of the threads of the narrative of Volume One felt almost like an extended X-Files type investigation, with layers of mystery slowly peeling away. How hard was this aspect of the story to map, in terms of the moving parts and chain of events?
Jasper Bark I can totally understand the X-Files comparison. The series didn’t consciously influence me while I was writing the story. But it could have had a subconscious influence. Back in the 90s, I wrote an ongoing episode guide to the first five seasons of the X-Files for the monthly magazine Cult Times.
The mystery aspect of the plot was constructed over a long period of time. I started on the one hand with the big, bad evil that sat at the heart of the story and thought about how it might operate and also what would have led to it coming into being. On the other hand, I thought about the characters that would get pulled into the story and why they might have a vested interest in finding the truth about this mystery.
I had about three quarters of the plot worked out, when I sat down to write, I like to leave room for spontaneity in everything I write. So, some of the mystery was revealed in the writing itself, growing ever more complex with each new draft and rewrite. Given that this involved a lot of time and effort, I would say that it was pretty hard to map, in terms of the moving parts and chain of events.
GNoH: I have a lot more questions. I’d like to continue the conversation once I’ve read the second book, if that’s okay. For now though, I’ll end with two questions. How early in the writing process did you realise this story needed a trilogy? When did you see it could not be fully told in one novel? What impact did that knowledge have on the writing process as a whole?
Jasper Bark Good question. When I originally pitched the novel to Crystal Lake Entertainment, I told them it was going to be 100,000 words long. I thought it would take 6 months to write and polish the novel for publication. How wrong I was.
The first draft was 150,000 words long and when I’d finished I realised the next draft was going to be twice the size. For me the first draft is a learning experience, when I’m done I know what shape the final story is eventually going to take, which may be very different from the first draft. There are many areas I’m going to have to go back and fix, and often expand on.
In the case of Draw You In, I knew so much work was needed it would take more than one novel to contain it all.
As I was nearing the end of the first draft, I was asked by Claire Matthews, a friend of my wife’s, what I was working on and how it was going. Usually, when I’m asked that question, I’ll demure. I’ve found that people aren’t anywhere near as interested in the intricacies of an author’s profession as they think they are. So I don’t go into details. But in this case, I complained that the book I was working on was growing too large and I couldn’t stop it from becoming a monster.
Claire suggested that I turn the story into a trilogy. At the time I overlooked her advice but, as I typed the last sentences of the first draft, I knew she was right. As I worked on subsequent drafts of this story, I split it into three volumes each of which was between 85k words to 120k words in length.
Credit should also go to Joe Mynhardt, head honcho at Crystal Lake. When I told him the 100k word novel I’d promised him was going to be three novels, he didn’t bat an eyelid. Each novel was closer to 300k. He simply rearranged Crystal Lake Entertainment’s entire release schedule to accommodate the new length of my project.
Draw You In Vol.1: Collector’s Item (Draw You In Trilogy) by Jasper Bark
Draw You In Vol.1 – Collector’s Item is the first book in the scariest horror trilogy ever written.
Can you disappear so completely that only one person remembers you existed?
That’s what comics creator Linda Corrigan asks when her editor disappears without a trace. Agent McPherson draws Linda and comics historian Richard Ford into an FBI investigation. They unearth a chilling link to the forgotten comic artist R. L. Carver. Carver’s work might just hold the key to a series of mysterious disappearances.
As they explore Carver’s life, they uncover the secret history of horror comics. They discover the misfits, madcaps, and macabre masters who forged an industry. These creators frightened a generation and felt the heat of the Federal Government. They also stumble on the shadow history of the United States. They take a road trip into the nation’s dark underbelly. There, forbidden knowledge and forgotten lore await them.
Described as “Kavalier and Clay meets Clive Barker,” it offers stories within stories. These stories explore horror in all its subgenres. They range from quiet to psychological horror and from hardcore to cosmic horror.
Experience the epic conspiracy thriller that redefines the genre for a new generation.
Draw You In Vol.1 – Collector’s Item is part of the Bark Bites Horror books.
Bark Bites Horror is a spine-tingling series that takes the horror genre to a whole new level. Get ready for a Goosebumps for grown-ups and a sexed-up Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark! This is your favorite new obsession. These are the terror tales you’ve been waiting your whole life to read.
This is Horror 2.0, re-gened, re-tooled and recreated for a fearless new audience! Think you’ve seen everything in horror? Think again. Bark Bites takes you places you’ve never been and shows you sights few mortal eyes would dare behold.
Don’t be the only weird kid on your block to miss out!
Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.
About Jasper Bark
Award winning author, Jasper Bark is infectious – and there’s no known cure. If you’re reading this you’re already contaminated. The symptoms will manifest any time soon. There’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no itching or unfortunate rashes, but you’ll become obsessed with his mind-bending books.
Then you’ll want to tell everyone else about his visionary horror fiction. About its originality, its wild imagination and how it takes you to the edge of your sanity. We’re afraid there’s no way to avoid this. These words contain a power you’re hopeless to resist. You’re already in their thrall, you know you are. You’re itching to read all of Jasper’s bloodstained books. Don’t fight this urge, embrace it. You’ve been bitten by the Bark bug and you love it!
Check Out Jasper’s Website Here
SOCIAL MEDIA Profiles
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