Bardsworth: The Novel
When I first started writing for Bardsworth, I only had the vaguest notion of where I was going to go with the overall story. As time went on, I built upon that and gave myself more direction. It became incredibly complex, and I’m still trying to figure things out as I go along. In addition, there are many aspects of the world of Bardsworth that I’ve never gone into. What you see in the comic is a small portion of what’s in my head. For these reasons, I’m finally delving into a project that I’ve wanted to do for a long time.
Within the next year, I will be releasing the first Bardsworth novel. I’m thinking about doing the same thing with this book as I’m doing with my fantasy noir series, and that’s to write the novel as three intertwining stories. Each one will be released separately as an ebook, then I’ll combine them all together into one book and do a print version of it.
The story will follow the comic to a degree, but it won’t follow it exactly. I want to try things in the novel that I either didn’t do in the comic, or fix things that I wish I hadn’t done, or add to the story in ways that I wasn’t able to. Not to mention that adapting a series of four-panel strips into a coherent novel is difficult without some changes involved. So think about it in two ways. The first is to view the comic as the first draft of the book. The other is to think of the book as the “Ultimate Bardsworth Universe”, a la Marvel.
I’m excited to be doing this finally. I’ve always been more of a writer than an artist, so to take these characters that I love and work with them in an environment that I’m comfortable in is kind of a dream job. And I hope you guys are excited by this prospect, too.
