A Long Journey

Just recently, I've purchased and listened to a song sung by Susan Enan, entitled "Bring on the Wonder." It starts:

I can't see the stars anymore living here
Let's go to the hills where the outlines are clear

Then it goes into the chorus:

 Bring on the wonder
Bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long

This is a slower song in terms of beat and rhythm, with a guitar as the main instrument. The feeling I get from this song is one long journey, not necessarily a physical journey, but one that is internal. It could be for one person, possibly for more, or even for a couple, depending on how you interpret it. Ever since first hearing it on YouTube, it has served as a sort of theme always present in my head whenever I work on the DA Shadow Phantom series. Thus, this song has been a great inspiration.

Cover for the Album in which "Bring on the Wonder" is included

The second verse especially seems to go well with my main character, though I myself relate to it as well.

I fell through the cracks at the end of our street
Let's go to the beach, get the sand through our feet

To me, this seems to be an escape of sorts, or a desperate desire for escape. I know I have felt this many times, and my main character Dalan feels this quite a bit as well throughout the course of the story. Then the chorus.



Storytelling and art are more about the journey for me than the actual end result. While some journeys in real life can be painful ones that people don't want to recall or even have gone through at all, stories sometimes show how journeys, both beautiful and painful, can build character. They can be learned from if they aren't shoved down so deep that the people carrying those memories become bitter, afraid the bad things that happened in the past will come up and get loose in their lives again.

So far, my journey as an author through the DA Shadow Phantom series has been an intense one. If you don't mind some very slight spoilers to DA Shadow Phantom, I'll lay out the first part of the story here, since this story is what is currently consuming most of my time. I am currently alternating between writing the story and creating the art for it, including cover images and character design.

The story starts with Dalan, the main character, in summer school. He seems to be a stand-offish kind of guy right off the bat, not really involved with school or with any friends except for his best friend from childhood, Matt Spencer. Heather Dennison, a girl in his class, has known him since middle school, but he hasn't talked to her much. The first time the readers meet her, her kitten, Chester, has stowed away in her bag to school.

DA Shadow Phantom Comic - Chapter One: Mark of Evil, pg 1

Here, the readers learn that Dalan is afraid of cats, which is a very odd quirk as far as most people are concerned. After being attacked by the stowaway kitten, he jumps out of the classroom window and runs home. There, the reader discovers a mysterious mark on Dalan's back shaped like a pair of bat wings that seems to be the reason as to why Dalan is so stand-offish, why he does not easily trust people.

This is Dalan's introduction as presented at the beginning of the story, before Chapter One:

I walk around with a curse, so I hide it.

I hide myself from everyone else in the outside world,

hoping they won't see through my thin facade.

 A turn around sketch of Dalan in his transformed state

Dalan's so-called curse is that his uncontrolled emotions trigger a transformation. He begins to turn into a blue-furred creature with superhuman strength and fangs and claws, and he can't control it, so he doesn't trust himself around people. He doesn't want anyone even to see the tattoo on his back, the mark of his curse, lest they should guess the truth. The intro goes on to say:

I may hide from the world...but really,
all I want is to be able to look up into the sky at night,
cluttered dirty orange as it is with city lights,
and know that I'm not alone,
that I'm not just a face in the crowd...
or a faceless figure forever in the shadows.

Thus, Dalan's desire is laid out. He wants to be normal, to be able to live life as a normal teenager and have fun with his friends, if he had them. Eventually, Heather notices how strange he acts and tries to follow him when he escapes from school to go into the city, attempting to find out just what it is she can sense is going on with him. At some point, Dalan takes to patrolling the streets at night, protecting innocent people from criminals. He does this as an attempt to pacify the creature he can feel inside of him, struggling to get loose.

 DA Shadow Phantom Book One cover image - in progress

The image above is my progress so far in creating the cover image.  On the left is the image I have done so far without text. I have the foreground figure done, along with the preliminary shading. It is a digital artwork, so I am working in layers in Photoshop. The city in the background is still just line art right now and unfinished. The image on the right is an experiment putting the image and text together.

I'll try to finish up the cover image in the next couple of days, then Volume One of DA Shadow Phantom will be up on Amazon for sale. It's an ongoing story, so there's plenty of fun to be had with it, both for me and for my readers, I hope.


Happy reading!


For more artwork and story-related stuff, or if you just want to get in touch with me and see what I'm up to, visit me at these websites:

Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/nicole.hubbard.50

Facebook DA Shadow Phantom: https://www.facebook.com/pages/DA-Shadow-Phantom/125944890946328?notif_t=page_new_likes
Facebook North Country Series: https://www.facebook.com/NorthCountrySeries?fref=ts

Deviant Art profile: http://nykol-haebrd.deviantart.com/
Tumblr profile: http://nyko-shad.tumblr.com/