Anna and I are wondering whether Starblood the graphic novel is cursed. It might just be the teething pains of working in a new medium, of course, but after four years of hard work by the artist and myself we still don’t have a viable paperback version of Starblood the graphic novel.
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, Anna and I released Starblood the graphic novel. The printer banned it as pornography, okay our bad, so we reworked it removing or obscuring any pictures of genitals.
It was re-released and sold for about 12 months (I still have at least 12 copies that I can sell through the website and at signings) before the printer said we needed to convert the file from RGB to CMYK. They withdrew the book until a new file was sent.
They rejected the file we sent in September and we worked on it some more, each time putting back the Kickstarter drive for Psychonaut and the release of the sequel until we knew we could get it printed. We tried to figure out the instructions for colour values (black in particular) with regards to CMYK (if any experts are reading this we would love to hear from you) and sent a new version. The printer warned us it was too ink heavy and would streak, I hoped they were wrong and asked them to produce a proof copy. Sadly, they were right. So it’s back to the drawing board – literally perhaps as Anna is considering making it line art. On the other hand I love the drama of its current form (if we can correct the ink issues) and will try and find the right alchemical formula to produce a version Ingrams can print successfully – or a different printer who understands graphic novels and can help us get it right.
Psychonaut the graphic novel will not be released until Starblood the graphic novel is sorted. The promised Kickstarter drive with all those fabulous rewards will not go ahead until Starblood the graphic novel is sorted. The Kindle version of Starblood the graphic novel is still available and has no associated issues.