Kirsti and I have officially started drafting our ideas for our second graphic novel to deal with Asperger Syndrome, Something Different About Her. Having roughed out our general approach, we met at the beginning of the week to talk through a sample first chapter in more detail.
We’re setting the novel in Haven Bay – the place Sophie and her family go to on holiday at the end of Something Different About Dad. There’s no particular connection with the previous book other than we really wanted to use a seaside location as our protagonist’s home.
Our central character is called Sam, and she’s sixteen, starting her A-levels and beginning to come to terms with her recent diagnosis and wondering what life now holds for her. I’ve been reading quite a bit more widely this time around – Liane Holliday Willey, Rudy Simone and Luke Jackson, for example – blending their writings about their experiences with information from Kirsti.
I think we’re now trying to aim to tell a relatively “typical” narrative based on the most common difficulties and encounters a character of this age would face – bullying, isolation, concerns about how to find their “place” in the adult world. Our goal is to try and do the same as we did in Something Different – use a graphic narrative to help put advice and suggestions into some kind of real-life – but not neccessarily autobiographical – context.
I’m sure we’ll be spending longer on this project than we did on the last book, as it’s slightly more complicated, and may end up being longer, too. I’ll keep posting work here – and may even set up a separate gallery for some sample pages.
Haven Bay – I want to go there too.;)
Brr a bit cold this time of year?