Auteurs et autrices / Interview de Norm Konyu (anglais)

Hi Norm, thanks for agreeing to speak to us. Could you please introduce yourself? I’m Norm Konyu, an animator, a Canadian, and a graphic novelist, though not necessarily in that order. I have decades of animation experience behind me, working for places like Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Dreamworks, and the BBC. The graphic novel side of things is a more recent affair. Animation is a collaborative process and you are usually working as a group with somebody else’s ideas, somebody else’s designs, and graphics novels were a way to do something that was 100% me, for better or for worse! Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked with so many fantastic people throughout my animation career, but there comes a time when you want to do something for yourself. How did you meet your French publisher, Glénat? I wish I could tell you it was some great cosmic coincidence or the hand of fate, but the fact of the matter is that I was already published by Titan Comics in the English speaking world, and their foreign rights department introduced my work to Glénat. Similarly, the same department introduced my work to Black River who have published a French edition of one of my more lighthearted books, A Call to Cthulhu. In the UK, you have crowd-funded your books via Kickstarter. Why did you choose this approach? With my first book The Junction, I really had no idea whether anybody would be interested in what I was doing, so crowdfunding seemed like a good way to test the waters. Adding to that, it was during Covid lockdown, so it was one of the few options readily available. After The Junction and the realisation that some people were indeed interested in what I was doing, I found it was a way to free myself up creatively - I could make any work that I wanted to do without any other publishing considerations. I’ve been lucky enough that Titan have picked up most of my titles after their initial self-published lives, taking my work to a wider audience. Your first booked published in France is “Downlands”. Coud you please tell us more about it? Alhough I’m originally Canadian, I have lived in the UK for most of my adult life, and there is a rich mix of history, folklore, and superstition here that just doesn’t exist on the same scale in my home country. Every town has something of historical interest, a ghost story of its own, or a local folktale, and being transplanted to these shores, I’ve found myself fascinated with this. Downlands draws upon many of these elements, especially from the specific area I live in, the South Coast, and is the tale of a teenage boy who has lost his twin sister just after she tells of seeing a Black Hound, something he finds to be deeply rooted in British folklore as a portent of death. It sends him on a journey of discovery- of the history of the street he lives on and of the generations that have been there before him, until he discovers a world hidden just beyond sight, a world of darkness that few know exists. Your second book, “The Junction”, is coming out this month. Downlands may reflect my UK experience, but The Junction draws upon my memories of growing up in small town Canada as the backdrop for its story. 11 year old Lucas turns up on his Uncle’s doorstep, 12 years after vanishing. He is silent and withdrawn -- and still 11 years old. It’s up to a police detective and a child psychologist to puzzle out where he has been for so long, how it is possible that he hasn’t aged a day, and where is Kirby Junction, a town that Lucas’ diary claims he has been living in... Both books feature themes of grief and childhood. Is that something important, or even personal to you? A lot of readers think I’m drawing on a personal loss for both these books, but not so. I must count myself fortunate that I have yet to experience this. There is no denying that grief is a great driver of stories. Like anger, it can force a character to do things he or she would not normally do and give focus to the narrative. And children in horror stories- there's something about that that makes a horror story even more effective. Its the imagination of childhood before we fully understand the world. It’s the disturbed innocence of childhood. And it’s the fact that within each of us, our most primal fears and memories are created during our own childhoods. Your third book is called “The space between the trees”. As far as you know, will Glénat publish it as well? What is the story about? So, with all the out of sequence publishing, The Space Between the Trees is actually my fourth book, and yes, Glénat will be publishing it as well, though I’m unsure as to the timeline. It has plenty of the darkness that can be found in The Junction and Downlands, but is a shorter, snappier tale. And shock horror- it doesn’t have the theme of grief and childhood like the other books!! I like to think of it as a sort of Twilight Zone episode, where a house hunting couple’s day unravels with a visit to an inescapable forest where nothing, absolutely nothing seems to be within their control. What will your next graphic novel be? Your website refers to “a mix of archaeology, WW1, and weird goings on”, which is very intriguing! Could you please tell us more? What more could you possibly want more than ‘a mix of archaeology, WW1, and weird goings on’ ?!! As you can see, I haven’t refined the ‘elevator pitch’ for this one. Heck, I haven’t even settled on a title for it yet! It is influenced by the archaeological mystery that is Silbury Hill here in Wiltshire, a 30 m high earthen mound built around 2400BC and what might happen if somebody started digging... It’s going to be on a scale somewhere between The Junction and Downlands, and I’m a fair chunk through the vector artwork stage. When I may actually get it completed is an unknown quantity, I’m afraid. Here’s a few vector images just as a taster! (see here, here and here) Although your stories feature dark/mature topics, there is nothing gruesome or bloody in your art, and no profanities/swearing in the text. Do you consider your books to be for readers of all ages? I have no issues personally with profanity or gore, as long as it feels natural. My favourite kind of horror is the creeping, just out of sight kind which explains the lack of blood in my books(so far). In The Junction, the main character is only 11, so I decided not to have any cursing (even from the adults), and it seemed to suit Downlands with the older characters as well. Sure, kids at that age are certainly swearing away, but I felt I could tell the story without it, and allow a larger and younger readership access to it. I wouldn't say this makes my books 'all ages' though, because the themes of loss may be a bit heavy ,or my sometimes non-linear timelines could be a little confusing for younger readers. I'm not saying I'll never have blood or profanity in my books- I have one tale kicking around in my head which would certainly have a lot of both! Your graphical style is very unique and (possibly?) influenced by your animation work. Could you please tell us more about the creative process? My drawing technique is definitely influenced by my animation work! I’ve worked on a lot of preschool shows (like Hé, Oua-Oua) which are often clean and graphic, built with vector software, but as much as I enjoy that look, I’m equally in love with texture, so my style is a marriage of the two. I create the underlying graphical drawings in vector format, and then, using Photoshop, I map in watercolour textures from a library of scanned real world swatches that I’ve built. Perhaps a bit of a convoluted method, but it works for me! A traditional question for our non-French authors: have you been to France before? Can you speak French? Oh yes, I’ve been to France on a number of occasions, more than a dozen times, but to my shame, despite being Canadian, I don’t speak French beyond a few basic phrases (which I still manage to mess up on a regular basis). I will be in France and Belgium this February to do a short signing tour for The Junction. Come hear me mess up some basic French phrases! Feb 04 – Profil BD, Ath Feb 05- FNAC, Lille Feb 06 - Planète Dessin, Paris Feb 07 – La Boussole, Villefranche-sur-Saone Norm, thank you for your time, and all the best with your existing and future books! No, thank you for inviting me to participate!