My name is Andres Salazar. I’m a storyteller. I’ve been hunkered down working on the second graphic novel in the series, Pariah Missouri. Part Huckleberry Finn part Twin Peaks it’s a mash-up of some of my favorite stories and ideas all set in Antebellum 1857 Missouri. It’s Steampunk without the punk, but a good dose of religion, folk magic, bounty-hunters, slaves and demons. It’s the A-team with Hiram Buchanan an undercover Pinkerton, Nellie a feisty courtesan, Jean Lafitte a practitioner of voodoo from New Orleans and Toro a Mexican/Comanche bounty-hunter as they ferret out evil.
Book Two introduces two new characters, Elijah Harris and Jasper Whitmer, both preachers on different sides of the Great Awakening. Both of there to save souls, or are they? This chapter is titled The Promised Land, so we will be exploring the ideas and religious fervor of the 1850s.
Book One was a Kickstarter last year. We did very well and I started hitting the convention circuit. I attended 14 comic book conventions in the last 12 months (That’s a whole another post I can write about those experiences). I sold over 1,000 copies of Book One and it was selected as the Staff Pick for July’s Preview in Diamond. Now we are at it again with a Kickstarter for Book Two. The book is already 96.3% done. I am putting some finishing touches on a couple of pages (out of the +100 page story) and re-working a few lines of dialog. It’s interesting how I wrote the script back in September of 2013 and now re-reading it as I letter in InDesign, there’s some things I want to change and add. The Kickstarter was selected as a Staff Pick by Kickstarter, so that must mean something, right?
If you go check it out, you can download a preview copy of Book One and Two to see if it’s your poison.
I work with an amazing artist/penciler, JL Pescador, and I color every page of Pariah Missouri in watercolors. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since the beginning. I wanted that old-timey feel and keep the color palette down to a minimum. Even made a Deluxe Hardcover complete with writer-commentary throughout the story, on every page as well as extra pages with additional epilogue, behind-the-scenes art, production sketches and reference pictures. It’s the blu-ray of the book. Because of the costs to make the deluxe hardcover, I will not be selling them at stores or through Diamond, it will be strictly a Kickstarter thing (or face to face).
I just finished the rough script for Book Three. It should be ready for print in July 2015. The goal is to finish the story by Book Five, which will be the end for our little town of Pariah, and the beginning of the American Civil War.
The other major news is that there is also a Roleplaying game that I have been developing, so with this Kickstarter you can get books 1 and 2 as well as the RPG, which I am extremely excited about, it has all of the info for running games in multiple systems.
We are over our funding goal and into our stretch goals, making the book better and better for everyone.
To see the Pariah, Missouri Kickstarter campaign to go: www.pariahmissouri.com
It ends THIS TUESDAY Sept 23rd.