Note: WOAH! Sorry, post-Perth Comic Arts Festival settling down is still messing me up. I am back properly now – if one day late.

In the original outline of TCM, this is pretty much where the story ended. Zeynel leaves with a note, Ayse discovers his disappearance the next morning, and the next 100 pages wouldn’t exist.

But like, after having written Book 1, it became obvious that Zeynel would struggle to leave, despite his self-sacrificial nature, because of his overwhelming love to Ayse. That was an interesting psychological conundrum to me to explore. So it was to be, even if it meant a hundred more pages.