21: How to get published
Idk, but A Lungful of Brine is coming to a store near you!
I’ve been chasing this comic creator thing for a long while. A long, long while.
And now, it’s finally happened: my first book is being published! A Lungful of Brine: Nautical Horror Stories is getting a new release by Afterlight Comics, an awesome up-and-coming UK publisher dedicated to horror.
It’s really a dream come true.
Check it out! There it is on Midtown Comics’ site, one of NYC’s biggest comic shops. As a kid, I remember heading into the city to do typical tourist things in Times Square and dragging my parents there, in awe of so many great titles in one shop.
And now my book will be on those same shelves. I just can’t believe it!
If you’re interested in supporting the book, please check with your Local Comic Book Shop. If they’re not carrying A Lungful of Brine already, you can ask them to carry it with this super secret Diamond code:
MAY250986
Any support is appreciated. And even just subscribing to this newsletter or sharing on your socials is supporting. I really do appreciate it.
Even if you have the Kickstarter version, this new release will be bigger and better with about 15+ pages of additional content.
How did I get here?
I made silly little comics for school projects growing up, like the totally valid Cerebellum Man for a project about the balance center of the brain. I wrote comic book scripts through college and even enrolled an independent study course to develop an unproduced graphic novel. Since then, I’ve applied to so many anthologies and created little shorts that never amounted to much.
But after taking a virtual comic writing course taught by Jason McNamara (go buy his books!), I became friends with the four other writers in the class. And with such a great community behind me, I felt empowered to actually see a project all the way through for the first time.
The project? A Lungful of Brine: Nautical Horror Stories.
I wanted to create a full-length comic book FAST because I felt the only way to see it through was by creating enough momentum. With an anthology, I could work on five stories simultaneously with five different artists.
So I rapidly wrote scripts—with my former classmates providing excellent feedback to make them even better—and found artists through Reddit, Instagram, and Deviant Art. For some, it was their first paid comic work, and for others, they were already established indie creators.
It was a huge logistical challenge to manage schedules, provide feedback, and pay for all this work at the same time. Because as an indie writer, you don’t just write. You’re also the creative director, producer, project manager, and bank. It’s a lot. But I loved doing it so much, and now it’s all I want to do.
Once it was all completed, I ran my first Kickstarter. Part of which involved pulling on a wet suit and jumping into the grody Willamette River to make a compelling, on-theme video for the campaign.
Most of my professional life has been marketing, but I found marketing myself to be the absolute hardest part of the process. I still do.
But still, the campaign did great. Friends, families, and strangers rallied behind me. And I’m so thankful for them.
I was proud of the work, but I knew I was limited by my own marketing reach. So I started cold-pitching publishers—all the ones I could think of, INCLUDING Afterlight Comics—but had no luck.
So post-campaign, I decided I had absolutely nothing to lose if I was to post the whole book for free. It’s not like I was selling many copies anyway. So I put it up on Global Comix and much to my surprise…
It started racking up the views! The book was featured in several Global Comix social media posts and email blasts. Things continued that way for awhile and I was happy people were taking the time to read it.
And a few months later, Afterlight Comics reached out with interest in publishing it! I could hardly believe it, and said “yes” almost immediately.
The book is slated for an in-store release on October 29th—perfectly timed for Halloween! Now when I search “A Lungful of Brine” on Google, I get a ton of hits for different comic book shops that will be carrying the book. I still can’t believe it.
So that’s it, that’s the story. My first (but hopefully not last) published book did not happen in a way I could have remotely predicted, but that’s how it happened.
Thanks for reading and if you have any questions about my journey to publishing my first comic, just ask in the comments!
Inspiring! 🌊
Congratulations, Dan! 🎉