A little backstory:

I was hired to write the graphic novel by David Dabel, who had some background in the comic book industry (or at least more than I did). He also offered me a percentage of sales. Once an agent was onboard, I did some rewrites to satisfy her. Later I made adjustments for the publisher who picked it up. It came out in May 2025 to not much fanfare, other than an endorsement from a bestselling writer. I haven’t seen any money from it so far. The agent is currently selling the foreign rights.

Out of curiosity, I googled it today. There was an AI Overview listing a string of solid reviews. Hell, maybe one day I’ll even see a check.

The Curse of Monte Cristo is a 2025 horror graphic novel that reimagines Alexandre Dumas’s classic tale, The Count of Monte Cristo, with a supernatural twist.

Overview of the Reimagining

Written by David Dabel and Carlton Holder and published by Simon & Schuster, this version incorporates the authors’ shared Haitian heritage and shifts the setting to the onset of the Haitian Revolution.

Edmond Dantès: In this version, Dantès is a Black man who has escaped enslavement and become a sailor.

The Demonic Pact: While imprisoned in the Château d’If, his desire for revenge summons Faria, who is reimagined as a demonic entity rather than a human priest.

The Price: Faria offers Dantès the power and wealth needed to destroy his enemies in exchange for his soul.

Historical Setting: The story follows Dantès as he returns to Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti) during a time of rebellion against French colonial rule.

Key Themes

Horror and Supernatural: The book features gothic atmosphere, visceral art, and elements of voodoo and dark magic.

Colonial Struggle: The quest for vengeance is reframed as a struggle against the oppressive colonial powers that enslaved Dantès.

Internal Demons: The narrative explores whether Dantès’s deal with the demon is any different from the pact he has made with his own inner rage.

The graphic novel is illustrated by David Lentz and Rodrigo Catraca, featuring a sharp, high-contrast visual style to match its dark themes.

Releases

The official release date for both my Cold War psychic spy novel, Mindbender: From Harlem with Love, and my young adult science fiction adventure, Diary of a Girl at the End of the World, is July 1st, 2026. ARCs will start going out next week.

In Review

My short story, Glimmer, is in review at one of the top science fiction journals. My short story, The Lives and Times of Ursula Abaddon, is also in review at another of the top science fiction journals. Considering that my previous submissions were rejected fairly quickly, I take the fact that it has been quite a while as a good sign. However, if they are rejected, I’ll be submitting them to other large journals.

My horror short story, As She Was, is being considered by a very popular horror fiction podcast.

In Development

I’m currently writing the six episodes of season one of my horror fiction podcast Rachel@Midnite. I want to produce all the episodes at one time before releasing them so that I can keep to a weekly or bi-weekly schedule.

I have finished the adaptation of the screenplay, The Last Manchurian, into a graphic novel script. It came in at about 238 pages, but I believe it will probably swell to 245 pages in the rewrite. I will be doing revisions and then beginning the panel artwork. Once I am far enough along in the art, I will begin the graphic film. I will hopefully be hiring people for sound, animation, and editing to share chores with.

I currently have an executive producer attached to my live action film, Blood on the Sun. It looks like we also now have a cinematographer who has been involved in award-winning films aboard (she saw the vision of my script) and possibly a name actor for one of the supporting roles. We will be going out to women’s groups and other organizations for financing, as well as the actress I am interested in having play the starring role. I am set to direct.

Upcoming Programming

As I’ve mentioned before, my Exile Circus YouTube Channel will be launching soon. I will be showcasing the visions of my worlds in short videos and pseudo-documentaries, which I call Micro-Docs.

In the Pipeline

• Untitled Children’s fantasy picture book

• Whom Gods Destroy (graphic novel & graphic film)

• Black Madonna (stage play)

• The Lives and Times of Ursula Abaddon (graphic novel & graphic film)

Anyway, this should take me well into 2027, if I don’t pass out from exhaustion or end up in an insane asylum (if I do, let’s hope it’s Arkham—it’d be fun to have supervillain cellmates).

The types of projects you won’t see in the mainstream.

I decided to shift the focus of my entertainment company. I was going to throw most of my money (I’m dumb that way) into a micro-budget horror film I was planning to shoot in late spring in the South of France. Instead, I’m going to focus on adapting my scripts into graphic novels and animated full-length motion pictures.

I’m doing this because I love my projects too much to let them languish unborn any longer.

I haven’t drawn in a very long time, so hopefully my art chops will be up to the task. Wow, that’s scary. Am I finally taking on more than I can handle? Nah, my ego’s too big to think that.

These won’t be your typical GNs and animated films. They will be adult. The subject matter may surprise some.

The more genre-driven projects will be submitted to European film festivals that cater to those audiences.

For my more important projects, like Blood on the Sun—which deals with the ongoing abduction and murder of Indigenous women—and Mindbender—which deals with racism in America—I will focus on more dramatic festivals.

I have twelve fully developed projects—at least four of them were in development at Hollywood studio companies—and I will be going down the list, with plans to direct and produce those films as live-action movies later on.

I will be branding the worlds of my stories through my upcoming Exile Circus YouTube Channel.

Stay tuned.

My focus is now on releasing Mindbender: From Harlem with Love (my spy novel) and The Girl at the End of the World (my YA sci-fi novel) through my imprint. Both are scheduled for release in early 2026.

The reason for this shift is that I received two contracts and one expression of interest from publishers for Girl. However, the offers did not include marketing budgets. This seems to be becoming more common in traditional publishing. For instance, I was promised an aggressive marketing campaign for my recently released graphic novel The Curse of Monte Cristo that never materialized, despite it being acquired by a large traditional publishing house and distributed by one of the top distributors in the world.

The good news is that I’ve decided to release my Cine Novel, Lullaby for the Beast—part of my Unfilmed Series (screenplays of mine that were in development in Hollywood but never produced)—in serial form here on Substack, starting this coming Friday.

Background: a film distribution company in Hollywood gave me a meager budget to produce and direct the movie, which I shot in the Lake Arrowhead mountains in 2008.

Alongside it, I will release excerpts from my unpublished manuscript, Hell in a Highland, about the making of this never released horror film. The novel manuscript is fictionalized, but I would say about seventy percent of it actually occurred. The production was plagued by unusual mishaps, culminating in a blizzard that hit the mountain and killed a number of people who froze to death in their vehicles.

Some of my friends who knew what happened swear the movie was cursed from the start.

I’ll leave that for others to decide.

I’ll also provide production stills from the movie shoot. You may see a couple of familiar faces from actors who have gone on to solid careers in Hollywood.

I guess this is my Happy Halloween gift—Halloween being my favorite time of year.

I’m revealing a few visuals from my PITCH DECK here. Since I plan to direct, I’ll also be editing a director’s reel for potential investors or producing partners.

Here’s the LOGLINE:

A junkie dying of AIDS finds himself in an elemental battle with a demon for the soul of the drug dealer who the creature is possessing and the life of the young woman who is its latest victim.

SIMPLE DESCRIPTION:

A soldier who died facing a demon on the battlefield in World War II, is resurrected in present day France in the body of a junkie named JOSEPH at the moment of his death.

ISAIAH, an unrepentant drug dealer, inadvertently allows a higher demon in while watching occult imagery on the Dark Web. Possessed, Isaiah kidnaps a young Hindu woman named SANGEETA and takes her to the ruins beneath a defunct Methodist church, a WWII era bomb shelter.

Now Joseph and TAYTU, an Ethiopian theologian wavering in her belief, descend into the demon’s KINGDOM to face the Devil and save their friend.

My DIRECTOR’S VISION:

King Demon is a horror film written by a lifelong horror fan (i.e., fanatic). It’s a love letter to classic films like The Exorcist and Night of the Living Dead. Films that aren’t just scary, but also explore the human condition in all its naked beauty and raw ugliness. Films like these fueled my childhood nightmares as well as my imagination.

This will be a movie that pushes the boundaries of traditional horror storytelling beyond the standard white Christian narrative, to include a broader audience of scary movie enthusiasts from different races, cultures, and beliefs. An audience that is currently being underserved in American films. Horror doesn’t just happen in small, rural towns. In fact, in this film, Hell comes to an urban ghetto in France.

My vision and hope as the writer and director of King Demon is that it becomes an economic success and cult classic of modern horror and independent films. In the vein of recent successful horror films like Talk to Me and Late Night with the Devil, this movie is a genre film that transcends genre storytelling by offering a compelling, character-driven human drama with complex characters in poignant portrayals; scenes where emotions are stripped bare.

My final goal as the director is: to create one of the scariest movies ever.

I know, a lofty ambition.

I’ve included some visuals from the Pitch Deck.

The gossip I heard in Hollywood about why the show was canceled—despite its popularity—was that it was subtly anti-war, and the network happened to be owned by a munitions company at a time when America was at war. But then again, aren't we always?

I’ve always liked that line, and as a self-imposed exile (an Independent) from the corporate machine that is Hollywood, that line resonates with me. I just want to do my own thing creatively in the film and publishing worlds.

That long-winded introduction brings me now to my actual news.

I’m working on publishing my novel Mindbender as well as my novella Rachel@Midnite. I don’t want to make the mistakes I made the last time I self-published (which was many moons ago, and things have changed considerably since then). I’m planning a long pre-order marketing campaign rollout. I haven’t set a release date yet, but it will likely be after the first of the new year.

I’m putting my cine-novel Lullaby for the Beast on hold for the moment, making the novels the priority.

In the meantime, I’m editing my short horror film The Stain of Negative Existence, and will be submitting it to film festivals in the fall.

I’m also polishing my feature-length micro-budget horror script King Demon, moving the location from London, England to Lyon, France. As part of my package for potential investors and producing partners, my short film will also serve as a proof of concept (and I have two more scripts I will be preparing packages for).

In addition to that, I’m producing my Rachel@Midnite horror fiction podcast and beginning work on my next graphic novel, The Last Manchurian, and my stage play about Josephine Baker—specifically her wartime activities as a spy for the French Resistance (title under wraps for now).

And, since I only have two hands, I’m always looking for investors or investor partners who are interested in diverse genre entertainment.

I haven’t actively begun searching for investors yet but plan to in mid-September when I have my full package for King Demon.

Investors can invest in individual projects or the company as a whole.

Anyway that the news from the Raggedy Edge.

For now.

PUBLISHING

My Young Adult science fiction novel, The Girl at the End of the World, will be going out wider to agents and publishers. I recently passed on a contract offer from a publisher over non-negotiable terms in the agreement (bummer).

Through my company, Exile Circus, I will publish the following novels:

Mindbender—the full, expanded novel with bonus content.

Rachel@Midnite—the complete, expanded novel with additional material (and later a companion podcast).

My cine novel Lullaby for the Beast, in one volume with Hell in a Highland—a novel inspired by the true story of the abandoned filming of the movie Lullaby for the Beast.

In September, I will begin adapting my screenplay The Last Manchurian into a graphic novel. I will also start writing my Josephine Baker wartime stage play (the title is under wraps for now).

FILM

I’m rewriting my horror film King Demon, changing the setting from London, England, to Lyon, France. I will be seeking French producing partners and plan to direct the film there.

My action thriller script Ricky is in development, with a director and producers already attached. They are currently in talks with a lead actor the director has worked with before about interest and availability. While not a done deal—nothing in my mind is a done deal until filming begins—the producer aims to shoot in Spain this November. I’ll update you if the project moves forward.

Anyway, that’s all the Exile Circus news for now.

CKH

Welcome to the first Cine Novel in my Unfilmed Series, titled Lullaby for the Beast. Thank you for purchasing it, and I hope it lives up to your wildest nightmares. I strove to deliver chilling scares and well-drawn characters for you to care about and fear for.

I’d like to share some backstory about the film I once attempted to produce and direct from this screenplay. Looking back, in my opinion, this film was never meant to be made. In a way, it’s cursed, much like the Poltergeist movies. Shortly after the release of the second film in the series, actress Dominique Dunne who played the older sister was strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend. After the filming of the third movie, Heather O’Rourke, the actress who played the younger daughter, died under mysterious circumstances. There have been other movies throughout Hollywood history that have been considered cursed, like Rebel Without a Cause—in which all three lead actors died mysteriously.

A little over fifteen years ago, I set out to make a horror film in rural Lake Arrowhead and the surrounding mountain townships (Rimforest, Twin Peaks, Crestline). It was the kind of place where, if you weren’t from the mountains, you were called a flatlander. Outside of affluent Arrowhead, the other towns were populated by the poor and working class—lumberjacks, meth heads, trailer parks, and the undereducated. The forests teemed with coyotes, and the fog was the thickest I’d ever seen (and I’ve lived along the canyons of LA). The mountains had a conspiratorial, almost incestuous atmosphere, not in a sexual sense, but in a claustrophobic one.

It was also a place out of time. Teenagers hitchhiked on the winding mountain roads (when was the last time you saw someone do that?). Back then, they looked straight out of the ’70s: longish hair, goth or rocker attire, band patches sewn onto their denim or leather jackets. If there was a 60 Minutes report about Satanic cults in those mountains, you wouldn’t be surprised.

It was just that kind of place.

During filming, my then-fiancée and I would return home to find stone shrines arranged in strange symbols on our doorstep, a recurring, unsettling phenomenon. We received eerie phone calls, only for the line to go dead.

A crew member, who also played one of the undead in the film, went home one weekend, two weeks after the shoot, and drank himself to death.

Our location (yes, there really is a Strawberry Lodge, just like in the screenplay) was as strange as it was remote. The child actors reported seeing the ghost of a young boy. The walls would shake for no reason at all. One night, while waiting alone with the equipment, I was overcome by the unmistakable feeling of being watched.

I chose to wait outside until I was picked up.

The Los Angeles production company funding the film went bankrupt after paying only half the budget, ensuring we couldn’t finish.

After we wrapped our half-finished production, a snowstorm was headed our way. Despite having weathered many storms on the mountain, my ex and I felt an odd foreboding and decided to leave for a week. The storm escalated into a blizzard. Highway patrol later found people frozen to death in their cars on the way to Big Bear for skiing.

Were there actual Satanic cults in those woods, conducting rituals, who took umbrage at our film for trivializing their religion? Who knows? What I do know is that a streak of bad luck plagued my ex and me, which went away only after we abandoned the project entirely.

Later, I wrote an unpublished manuscript titled This Film Is Cursed: Cult of Mathaluh. Mathaluh (pronounced Ma-tha-luh) was the fictional rock band in my screenplay that sold their souls to the Devil.) I describe the manuscript as being inspired by true events, but I fictionalized parts for entertainment purposes.

I plan to serialize the novel on Substack this summer. You might read it and think, this never happened. And you’d be right, to a degree. But more of it happened than you’d believe. About seventy percent of the manuscript is factual—including the werewolves.

Best,

CKH

I am. Me. Carlton.

Many years ago, while perusing the aisles of my favorite Los Angeles bookstore, I stumbled upon two tantalizing curiosities. The first was a book of Quentin Tarantino’s True Romance screenplay. The second was a double-feature book containing Oliver Stone’s screenplays for Platoon and Salvador. Both presented the screenplays in a modified screenplay format. They weren’t novelizations.

As a fan of all three films, I bought them immediately. Reading Salvador brought back the climactic finale scene of James Woods and John Savage as war correspondents documenting the bombing of a village. And Stone’s script really brought it to life.

Useless Fact
I once knew John Savage (a brilliant actor) and his daughter Jennifer (also an accomplished actor). They’d signed onto an indie film I wrote and planned to direct, Karma Chameleons. John was set to play a mob attorney; Jennifer would portray Lucidity, a one-hit-wonder singer. Despite strong interest, funding fell through.

Those books included behind-the-scenes insights into the films’ production and the creative inspirations behind the stories. They cemented my love for screenplays as standalone literature—not just blueprints for movies.

While I love writing novels and screenplays, they are each different beasts. Novel writing is internal, diving into characters’ minds where poetic prose matters as much as plot. Screenwriting, though, is a visual medium. You don’t worry about grammar. It’s stream of consciousness. You don’t write “Joe Blow got angry”—you show Joe hurling his flat-screen TV through a window.

If novel writing is classical music, then screenwriting is rock ’n’ roll.

Like graphic novels (comic books in book form), I see published screenplays as cine novels. I’ve accumulated a trove of unproduced screenplays and TV pilots, each a story I loved deeply in inception. Now that I’m no longer chasing Hollywood, I’ll be adapting them into novels, micro-budget indie films, or graphic novels—whatever suits the material best.

First Up in the Unfilmed Series:

My debut cine novel will be Lullaby for the Beast, a horror story about backward Satanic lyrics in a bootleg record, crafted by a 1970s band that sold their souls to the Devil.

Coming Soon:

A double-feature of two TV pilot scripts:

• Death Defyer: A dramedy about a rogue stuntmen’s association (think Sons of Anarchy).

• Butterfly Gothic: A supernatural actioner following hitmen who return from the dead—tonally in the flavor of The Crow and Watchmen.

Each release will include background on the scripts’ origins and original art.

I’ll be selling them here on Substack. I have a lot more scripts for my Unfilmed Series, so it should be a lot of fun.

Let me know what you think!

I will be serializing my novella Rachel@Midnite. I’ll also be giving my protagonist Quixote his own horror podcast where he will spew Creepypastas during the witching hour.

Here’s the description:

It’s just an ordinary day at Rachel State University, where an unusual light in the night sky always leads to weekend-long UFO-themed keggers and campus-wide, drunken debauchery. But when you’re located just off the Extraterrestrial Highway near top secret military base Area 51, an ordinary day just isn’t very ordinary at all.

Then again, nothing’s ever been normal for Beauregard Quixote Freidkin, a RSU student of Mexican and German descent who, due to a life-altering encounter with a ghost website, has become a divining rod for the bizarre. And when Quixote begins to host a campus radio show where he spins retro Eighties music and explores campus mysteries and urban legends of the internet, he comes to the attention of some very strange people—as well as dark forces who don’t want their unholy mechanisms brought into the light of day by this freak king.

Van Wilder meets Fox Mulder in dark and deliciously irreverent adventures in this New Adult horror dramedy series.

I’ll keep you posted.

Quixote can’t wait to meet you.

Then, on Tuesday, I’ll be releasing the first installment of Volume One of my Mindbender series. Volume One: From Harlem with Love will consist of six parts. There will be three additional volumes, which I’ll be releasing sporadically throughout the year.

After Volume One of Mindbender concludes, I plan to produce a Substack original horror fiction podcast called Rachel @ Midnight. I’ve never been involved in creating a podcast before, so that should be a fun challenge.

I’ve previously mentioned Mindbender’s evolution being pitched in Hollywood, but now I want to talk a little about its creative evolution.

Years ago, I spoke with Michael Sellers—a former CIA agent turned Hollywood film producer—when he ran his film distribution company, Quantum Entertainment. When I asked him about the CIA’s remote viewing program during the Cold War, he didn’t dismiss it with a Men Who Stare at Goats kind of ridicule. Instead, he said, and I quote, “They had guys who were scary.”

I wanted to create an African American protagonist who would be embroiled in some of the greatest historical events of that era: Marilyn Monroe’s death, the civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam assassination program: Phoenix, and the assassinations of JFK and MLK, to name some.

It was important to me that these events were seen through the lens of the Black experience. I also wanted to highlight the irony of this tragic figure’s plight: that he enjoyed more freedoms in the European countries where he was spying than in his own country, where he was forced to sit at the back of the bus and dine in restaurants with no restrooms for Coloreds.

I wanted this character to bear witness to the birth of the Civil Rights Movement.

In my mind, this character was equal parts James Bond and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

My goal was to create a taut spy drama while also offering a social commentary on racism in America.

I can’t wait to introduce you to John.

I like arthouse better. And I’m no longer in Hollywood.

The script, King Demon, is finally out to investors. Hopefully that goes well. It will be a micro-budget independent film, and I plan to shoot it in Europe. I’m currently exploring the possibility of filming in France.

I’ve worked as a second unit director on a few films in LA and directed some short films, but this would be my first feature-length directing project. I intentionally chose a tiny budget so that I would have the artistic freedom to film it the way I see it. I’ve written the script to accommodate the minuscule budget.

I’m also considering writing some flash fiction set in this world for Substack.

Here’s the storyline:

A junkie dying of AIDS finds himself in an elemental battle with a demon for the soul of a drug dealer the creature is possessing and for the life of the young woman who is its latest victim.

Is anyone else currently working on a film project?

Below are some visuals from the investment package.

I sold my first screenplay, Bridge of Dragons. It became an HBO World Premiere Movie (remember those?).

I watched a TV teleplay I wrote being produced (granted, it was an episode of Power Rangers).

I was hired as a creative consultant on a Saban Entertainment/Fox Kids TV show in development (it never made it to air).

I sold an action TV series I created, starring model-turned-actress Talisa Soto. I co-produced and co-directed a pilot presentation (we got beat out by a Marvel series).

I wrote El Padrino—a crime drama starring Damian Chapa, Faye Dunaway, and Jennifer Tilly, among others (it went into litigation and didn’t see the light of day until years later).

It was all downhill from there.

Fast forward.

2025:

I co-wrote the graphic novel The Curse of Monte Cristo, which is being released in April, distributed by Simon & Schuster. I can now all myself published author.

My arthouse horror film that I plan to direct, King Demon, is out to investors.

I just finished my young adult science fiction novel, The Girl at the End of the World, and it’s going out to agents and publishers next week.

I’m adapting my short story Blood on the Sun into a screenplay to direct.

I’m developing a horror fiction podcast called Midnite Review of the Freak King.

And there are other projects in the works.

I’m not saying all of this to brag—because, as we all know, anything can happen.

I’m saying this to remind the world (and myself): That I’m still here.

It was a rough twenty-five years. But life is about reinvention. Hollywood wrote me off years ago. They controlled the technology. They monopolized the audience.

They don’t anymore.

Professional film equipment is incredibly cheap. And the audience? Well, they’re right here, on Substack.

And I’m happy to be here. To share my journey with you. To share my art with you.

And this isn’t about money.

It’s about creating. It’s about self-expression unhampered by agendas and bottom lines.

Which is why it came as something of a surprise to me that in the film and publishing industries, commerce is the most important factor. Not art. As far as they’re concerned, Art’s just some guy from Brooklyn—I heard that somewhere once.

When I was taking meetings for my screenplays at the studios in Hollywood years ago, I had many scripts where the star could be of any ethnicity—which, ninety-five percent of the time, meant a White actor would be cast in the lead role. And that was fine. I wrote those scripts to be commercial and marketable. Would I have liked the ethnicity to be open? Sure. But I had come to understand the realities of Studio Hollywood.

However, what stuck in my craw was when I would have a script told from a Black perspective—being that I am Black, from Brooklyn (though my name’s not Art). I would hear fun things like:

“We love this story, how you worked in civil rights, and your powerful message about racism at the end. But is there any way the main character can be White?”

“Uhh…”

Or—

“We would love to make this film, but the international audience simply doesn’t like Black movies.”

“Uhh…”

When I would ask, “What about Denzel Washington and Will Smith?” the pat Hollywood answer would be:

“The international audience doesn’t perceive them as Black.”

What? Wait, hold up. What the hell? Okay—I call bullshit.

Denzel played Malcolm X. Will played Muhammad Ali—two of the Blackest Black men in American history.

I eventually learned that there was simply no real interest in Hollywood for films with different racial perspectives—despite proclamations about the search for diversity. My creativity, however, was colorblind. I wrote scripts about Black people, Hindu Indians, Native people, Asians, and an LGBTQ neo-noir crime drama—even though I’m a straight Black man.

Later, when I was shopping my first novel about an African American remote viewer working for the CIA, I heard a new term from book agents:

“We’re looking for projects that are global.”

“Uhh…”

Hmm. Got it. That makes sense. Never mind that my spy novel is set in Europe during the Cold War, deals with historical world events, and features an 85% White cast.

Message received loud and clear. Different industry, same old schtick.

Which is why I was genuinely surprised when a graphic novel I had worked on was picked up by a mainstream publisher—and is being distributed by Simon & Schuster, no less.

Although I had always wanted to be involved in the comic book world—I grew up in the ‘70s New York comic book scene long before being a geek was chic—whenever I worked with an artist, they would inevitably flake out on me. So I gave up on that idea long ago.

Alas, the comic book industry was the great white whale I could never harpoon.

Then I was approached by David Dabel, who had dabbled in the comic book world before, or at least had a better understanding of it than I did. David had the idea of reimagining The Count of Monte Cristo as a horror graphic novel. The concept intrigued me—once again, I am a lover of all things horror, so it didn’t take much arm-twisting—and before I knew it, we were off and running.

I was still dubious about it being published by a mainstream company, especially because David—a man of Caribbean ancestry—wanted the book’s hero, Edmond, to be a former Haitian slave who had escaped to Paris, where he found fortune… and then misfortune.

Side Note Number One: I say slave, not enslaved person. That term is an attempt to humanize slavery. Slavery was inhuman. Period.

Seeing a gladiator or slavery movie where someone is being whipped is one thing. But as a former stuntman in Los Angeles, who used to hang around with other stuntmen from rodeo backgrounds, I know how excruciating just one lash would be. I’ve heard the crack of a whip. I know how it can flay flesh right off the bone.

Slave is the accurate term.

I didn’t see publishers lining up to buy our graphic novel, The Curse of Monte Cristo.

However, David had a plan to self-publish the book if he didn’t find an agent and publisher.

I became busy with other projects.

Months later, who knows how long, David contacted me to say that he had found an agent in New York interested in representing the book: Tess Weitzner—then at Trident Media Group, currently at Frances Goldin Literary. David told me he had submitted to a staggering 150 agents. After a series of edits with Tess and David, the book proposal with the script and sample art was sent out to about ten publishing houses.

Once again, I wasn’t biting my nails, waiting by the phone. I’d been through near-deals with film studios that almost happened. So my mental posture nowadays is: Eh, we’ll see.

Side Note Number Two: I once had a supernatural action TV series I created, packaged by CAA (one of the big three talent agencies) and picked up by a studio company. We even shot a pilot presentation starring model-turned-actress Talisa Soto (License to Kill, Mortal Kombat). They were already discussing our accommodations in Vancouver, where we’d be shooting the series.

Then we got the bad news.

The company could only add one more new show. It was between us and a Marvel series.

You can guess how the rest of the story went.

About two weeks later, Tess said she had a company interested in the graphic novel—Andrews McMeel Universal (distributed by Simon & Schuster). They primarily work in the children’s literary space. During a Zoom meeting with Katherine Gould of Andrews McMeel, she said her company wanted The Curse of Monte Cristo to be the flagship title for a new line of adult books.

Lawyers did whatever the hell it is that they do and negotiated the deal.

What makes me most proud of this project is that the story survived the development process unscathed. Pretty much every screenplay of mine that has been produced has been drastically altered.

One of my scripts even became an HBO World Premiere Movie—remember when they had those on Saturday nights? The film was nearly a completely different story from my script.

I waited tensely for the publisher’s story notes.

I received exactly one:

Fewer panels per page. We want the artwork to breathe.

Well, whaddaya know. The story survived in the end.

The other thing that makes me truly proud is that our hero was a Black man. The author of The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas, was of Black ancestry. His mother was a Haitian slave.

In my heart of hearts, I believe that if Dumas could have made the protagonist of the book Black, he would have. But at that time in history, I doubt he would have ever gotten it published.

The Count of Monte Cristo went on to become a massive hit and one of the most beloved novels of all time.

In honor of Alexandre Dumas, the finale of the graphic novel takes place in Haiti during its revolution—when Black slaves overthrew French subjugation.

I hope people receive The Curse of Monte Cristo in the same spirit in which David and I wrote it.

The book will be released on April 15th. Here's the link

I’ll end with my favorite quote from the classic novel: