Guest post - Bob Dixon

I actually began my writing career back in the very early 90’s in the comic book field. I created and developed a number of comic book titles for Pocket Change Comics (Assassinette: The Mind Stalker, Shadow Slasher, Psyco Duck, The Holy Knight, and Warzone 3719). Mouch and Company: The Dream Psychic is actually based on one of the comic books (Jester’s Dead), although I had to adapt the original story line a bit to make it flow better as a novel. Additionally I have written two children books - Rooty the Tree Troll and Holiday Bunny. When I was younger I never did a lot of reading as far as novels instead most of my reading were hours filled with comic books although now I’m just the opposite I will always have a fondness for the comic book field.



I began writing as a way to get away from the outside world, I was in college on a cross country scholarship and sustained an injury. It was during that time I started writing poetry afterwards I decided to try my hand at comic books and had a good run at that for a number of years eventually I moved on to writing a novel which I based off of one of my comic book creations.


Originally, Mouch and Company’s characters were featured in my Jester’s Dead comic book. At that point, Mouch was a humanoid character whose head was striped and vaguely shaped like a top hat. He also sported a long cat-like striped tail. He was a “pacifist assassin”, which meant that his shadow twin, Mav, completed all of the missions. Mouch’s friend, Sherman, was added for comic relief. A few years back, I decided I wanted to write a novel and felt that these characters would be fun to write about. Granted I had to make some changes for the story to work in a novel format, but not as many as you might think. Mouch is now a human teenager and many of the other characters, particularly Teqi, have undergone even more dramatic transformations. I had been toying with various story lines and had been fleshing out the characters in my mind for awhile and I just knew I wanted to do something more with this group. Since I had never read anything similar to what I was envisioning in my head, I wanted to try my hand at storytelling on a grander scale, i.e., a novel.


I would say my biggest struggle with the writing of this book revolved around the fact that it was my first attempt at this format. Yes, I had plenty of experience writing comics. However, writing a novel is quite different. I realized that there were things I just didn’t know so I set out to do some research. Also, with a comic, I know that I’m writing a story that must be fleshed out and wrapped up in the space of twenty-two pages. I have illustrations that work together with the writing to tell a complete story. It’s entirely different when it comes to novels. They say a picture is worth a thousand words; you’d better believe it! I had to adjust my writing style, making sure that my words alone helped the reader to visualize exactly what was going on in the story. Plus, the novel can be as long or as short as necessary in order to tell the complete story. I had to adjust the pace of my storytelling so I didn’t reveal too much at once, but at the same time, told enough of a story to keep the reader interested.


I’m always asked about authors that have inspired me and my answer to that question is that I have not really drawn a lot of my inspiration from any particular author. However, when I was kid, my grandfather used to tell the most amazing bedtime stories. Listening to those always fired my creativeness; my mind journeyed into worlds that simply didn’t exist outside of my imagination. Many of the writers I enjoyed when I initially started writing were comic book writers, particularly Stan Lee and Jim Starlin.


Currently, I have three other books under contract as well as a movie script that I’m working on with an independent film maker who already has a deal for the movie with the Dish Network. It’s an urban drama and I’m really enjoying working on that, even though it is a completely new experience for me. I have also recently finished the second and third books in the Mouch and Company series.

My webpage is http://www.authorbobdixon.weebly.com/