It has been roughly 5 years since the concept of Cupid's Rising from my brother Phoenix while walking from St George Utah to Venice Beach California.
Originally, my brother had called me to tell me he had a dream about me, his one of many that week. He told me to write and illustrate a comic book, and since I was homeless, sell the rights to the film to George Lucas. Such a loving brother right? Tongue I asked him what Cupid's Rising would look like. And he told me to just make it up.
It was not until I had arrived in Riverside that I was given a golden leaf notepad and a no 2 pencil. I spent some days story boarding some basic concepts, while living at a shelter and receiving services at the Place. It was not the greatest story I had told, and my cousin owns the originals for it as a gift from my travels.
I took the covers of each issue I had made, about 3 of them, and crafted written chapters which later became Tazchael of Benai. Once the people at the Place saw I could publish a book, Mike Mitchell asked for a story dedicated to him. I said, "Not only will it be dedicated to you, your name will appear before Jesus Christ's."
I wanted to include a deeper meaning in all my stories, and well this is the beginning for many of my written creations. Even the more recent Buffalo Soldier series I am working on spawned from this book. And looking into it with some more remembering on my end, it actually shows a part of the Cupid universe in a way that is metaphor and mythology. I remember when I read the prelude for the first time in a year, I was caught off guard by seeing Buffalo Man in there.
So I spent about a year writing a not so great first draft. Admittedly, the entire prelude was from a dream I had had while trying to come up with the story.