Interview with the author: The Boy with Nails for Eyes
Dystopian fantasy graphic novel, The Boy with Nails For Eyes, is currently crowdfunding on Unbound.
The Orcadian interviewed its creator Shaun Gardiner to find out more.
What can readers expect from the book?
In short, a dark fantasy story.
The story is set in a dystopia, mixed with magical elements. It isn’t intended to be a ‘straight’ narrative as you usually see, but as in a fairy tale there are strange detours, unexplained events, outcomes out of all proportion to what caused them – a kind of rough and dangerous magic working beneath the surface.
Aside from that, each page of the book was crafted to be as individually beautiful as I could make it. Every page took at least a few days to create, and some pages took weeks, even months.
Where did the inspiration for this book come from?
There are so many ideas that have fed into The Boy with Nails for Eyes that it’s very hard to pin it down to a single moment of inspiration. When I was at school, I was struck by a painting done by a previous student. It was a very unnerving picture — a spectral, jagged figure with crude smears of black where the eyes should be.
Many years later I saw the music video for the Tool song Sober. There was a brief glimpse of a mechanical figure with a metal mask for a face, with one eye missing and the other pierced by this huge swivelling nail. I thought of Norse mythology — Odin, sacrificing one of his eyes in the well of Mimir to gain wisdom. That second image married with the memory of the painting from school that same evening, I painted the first picture of The Boy with Nails for Eyes. A few weeks later, the story began to slowly take shape.
It’s changed beyond recognition over the years, taking on influences such as the War on Terror of the early 2000s. I was born in Bahrain and was there during the Gulf War. We were all issued with gas masks by the American military, and I remember waking up one night to find the rest of my family in my room, my mum holding the masks, my dad stuffing a towel under the door. It turned out Iraq had launched a Scud — we were all terrified of the thought of chemical weapons. I recognised that same feeling of paranoia in the days after September the 11th, and Bush’s declaration of the War on Terror. That feeling pervades the story.
How did the crowdfunding for this book come about?
I had been shopping the comic around to agents and publishers for a long time. I found it to be a frustrating process. I tended to receive positive responses, which were still rejections. I was running out of options, and was wondering where I’d go next if I wasn’t able to place it with anyone.
I received a boost when the book was long-listed for the Myriad First Graphic Novel competition earlier this year.
I was speaking to an editor at Unbound, the publisher, about an entirely different project — an illustrated poem. Almost as an aside I mentioned that I had this other graphic novel whose first volume was finished and ready to go. I showed her the first couple of chapters and she fell in love with it (her words). We decided to temporarily shelve the other project and proceed with this.
What would it mean to you to see this book published?
It would be fantastic. I’ve been working on the project over 15 years, since my early twenties. It’s been a labour of love — for myself and my wife Anna as well, who had major input into the work. I honestly had no thought of publishing it properly, it was just important to me to allow it to be exactly the story it needed to be. I basically taught myself digital art by working on it, and honed my drawing and writing skills through it. It sounds strange, but I’m as much its product as it is mine. Having it out there as a book, something physical that can be picked up and read, would make it real in a way that it isn’t yet, for all that I’m satisfied that the story is what it should be – or near as I can make it.
To find our more about The Boy with Nails for Eyes and support Shaun’s project visit: www.unbound.com/books/nails-for-eyes/