Menmar
Why Menmar?
I decided to write this story a few years ago, because I've always been drawn to Middle Eastern folklore and aesthetics. When I first drafted this plot, around 2014, I had just begun taking bellydance lessons and I was rapidly getting involved with the whole bellydance world and culture that my country had to offer (I am Brazilian and we have large Middle Eastern colonies here), so Menmar was a fitting narrative developed in my mind.
However, I was also in the beginning of my college years and I suffered a massive artblock right after; I was only able to draw or create out of fulfilling assignments, and so I had to bench Menmar for a while, along with other projects that I either forced myself to finish (which I did to almost all of the ongoing novels I had back then) or completely dropped them.
Around 2018-2019 I managed to get out of my artblock and began working on Menmar again, as a pilot project to launch myself professionaly. Since it had just a handful of notations and only a prologue and half a chapter done, I could rewrite and update it to my current writing without sacrificing anything I previously created.
And I couldn't be prouder; being a comic book artist was my lifelong dream, and I feel I finally am living it; I know it's just the beginning, but, a few years ago, I believed it was a dream that ended and was far beyond my reach. Menmar is my journey through an academic-induced art block added with a toxic relationship in which I no longer am, and how I overcame all those things to finally build, make or create something that may help and inspire someone else across the world that needs hope. That needs to see a light in the end of the tunnel just as I needed. However, I did not have that help, so I am giving Menmar to the world in order to give this hope and help to someone that needs it.