Notes on "Blood Money"

Blood Money began its printing process this past weekend. Jaime and I were overjoyed to pen the last page of this graphic novel. It’s been a long journey of planning, pitching, and hoping everything would turn out okay with it, and as much fun as it’s been creating this book, we’re ready to move on to the next installment and expand our fictional universe.

For some readers, Blood Money will be the only book they might pick up, due to its inclusion of Detroit in its subject matter. Since I’m able to enjoy a little breather now before I have to head back to work tomorrow, I thought I’d address this subject head-on:

When Jaime and I were finishing up the script, there were lots of suggestions given to us about what to mention concerning Detroit. Imagine you’ve only got so much space to tell someone something, and you want to blurt out as much as you can. You’d stutter and your words would fall over themselves, and in the end, your message wouldn’t be that clear. At least for me, it wouldn’t. Not if I had to think of it all on the fly.

Anyway, we thought all of this over and came to the decision that anything said about Detroit, needs to be organically brought about in the story. No forced conversation, no weird sidetracking to show the underdog spirit of the Motor City. It sticks out like a sore thumb when you do that and can make the reader feel like you’ve wasted their time.

That said, this is a pulp fiction story first, and a commentary on Detroit second. We included landscapes of places like our favorite bars, the River Rouge, downtown, Greektown, and so on. We took the view of two visitors who are slightly familiar to the city but aren’t sold on it yet. One guy takes to it moreso than the other. They return home with different narrations of what transpired during their time in Detroit.

We took this model from such stories as Y Tu Mama Tambien (an erotic film with government commentary steadily mentioned in the background) and Talk To Her (a romance/drama with commentary of gay rights in the background). Movies like this have a main plot with a subtle mention as the storyline progresses. You didn’t buy your movie ticket for it, but you’ll remember the message delivered to you anyway.

In the background of Blood Money as well, are some comments on the government. I’ll let you read to find out what those are.

All this, we took care to make sure each mention, each inclusion, was as organic as we could possibly make it, that way the story experiences as few bumps in the road as possible. Because honestly, this is our first graphic novel, and we’re bound to have other problems and technical issues elsewhere. There’s no need to add to them.

And now I’m very tired and I’m going to stop writing–but thanks for reading and checking out our book. We hope we see you this Thursday if you’re close enough for the premiere party!