I’m starting the long, silly, confusing, and scary process of writing and drawing a graphic novel.

I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness, and I want to tell the story of a family involved in this turgid little cult. The story of each of my siblings, and my parents. How we entered the cult, how we left (or returned, or left again, or never left). What the cult is like on a day to day basis, what the core beliefs are. My family have an incredibly compelling story which deserves to be told, and this secretive, harmful organisation has a dragon’s lair of dirty secrets which need to be uncovered.

Whenever I look at other graphic novels that I admire, the authors are always ridiculously qualified. Art Spiegelman was an experienced and published comic book artist when he wrote Maus. Alison Bechdel had a long-running, successsful and influential comic strip when she wrote Fun Home. Countless other examples abound.

I am not qualified to make a graphic novel. I am a Physics teacher. I am not a professional artist, though I enjoy sketching regularly. I am not a professional writer, though I have to write bits and pieces for my job.

The thing I’m most interested in, and have always been most interested in, is learning – generally, by doing. Right now, the next huge project of my life is to learn how to make a graphic novel, by making a graphic novel.

So, in both the production of this blog and the narrative of the Graphic Novel (title as yet undetermined), I will be open and honest: I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m finding out as I go along.

Come find out with me.