Blood of My Blood - Part 6: Blood to Blood
The End
This is it, the finale to Blood of My Blood!
A quick heads up: if you’re viewing this on email, it might get cut off because it’s a longer post. View the webpage in a browser to see the whole thing.
Stick around after the pages for a little about my inspiration for Blood of My Blood and what’s next.
Content Warning: as you might have guessed if you’ve been following the story, there’s going to be a fair amount of blood…
Blood of My Blood is a magical realist graphic short story with horror undertones for everyone searching for their body's "Owner's Manual".
Need to catch up on the story so far? Links to all the parts are here:
Part 5 « Home
Part 6
Part 5 « Home
About the Story
How did you come to be? Do we really know how our parents brought us into the world?
This was one of the two main ideas that inspired me to make Blood of My Blood.
The other is that, to me, the story of Blood of My Blood is gallows humor for those of us who struggle with mysterious chronic health issues. Just having fun with the idea of what if the most absurd catastrophization of our condition were true?
Combine those in a cauldron (this one calls for copper, not cast iron) under the new moon and we have a dark mystery of our own origins.
But on another note, I also believe that art can’t be locked down into just what its creator(s) want it to mean or to communicate. There’s a difference between what you think you’ve created and what you’ve in fact created. And people bring an infinite array of experiences and points of view along with them when they take in an artistic creation.
All that to say, part of the power of art is that it can move people differently. I find it fascinating to hear the different takeaways people can have to the same work of art.
Sometimes a work of art can have a more powerful interpretation and impact on someone than the artist even intended.
Thank you for joining me on this journey!
So what’d you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Please feel free to leave a comment below, message me via Substack, or email me at wccreations@pm.me.
And if you enjoyed Blood of My Blood, maybe you know someone else who would like it, too?
What’s Next?
Like with Phased, now that I’m done serializing Blood of My Blood, it’s time to do a print run! And then try to get the book into the hands of readers.
But this time, I also want to try doing a Kickstarter campaign, just to learn the process. I’m going to self-fund a small print run of Blood regardless, but I think it could be useful to get familiar with how to do a Kickstarter in case I have projects in the future that would benefit from crowdfunding.
It’ll just be a small target and low pressure. But look forward to hearing more about it in the near future. And if you want to pledge for the campaign, I’d be grateful! It’d mean a guaranteed sale.
Finally, besides the print run of Blood, I plan to do very short comics for a while to focus on iterating on my drawing and rendering skills. Although in this final installment of Blood I’ve started to see hints, glimmers of swagger starting to peek through in my linework, there’s so much room to grow.
More to come on the short comics—they’ll be around a theme, and I’m looking forward to that project, too.
Till next,
William
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Zoe's melting scenes were captivating! I expected her to be healed or transformed into something else in the end, but it turns out that she was only temporary to begin with...
And although I expected the father to be in on it, it was unsettling to listen to them talk about Zoe. Unsettling and touching. Their emotions were like an artist mourning the loss of their creation, or an inventor failing a test run; but it was unsettling because Zoe is a human to me.
Fantastic work! And thank you for all the interesting notes along the way!