INKZOS
I was telling stories long before I knew what to call it.
INKZOS is the publishing side of LOON HQ.
It’s where the stories that have lived in my head for decades finally get somewhere to live outside of it.
- Writing.
- Drawing.
- Graphic novels.
- Supernatural worlds.
- Characters.
- Monsters.
- Gods.
- Bloodlines.
- History.
- Betrayal.
- Love.
- Death.
All of it belongs here.
But to understand INKZOS, you have to understand where my fascination with the supernatural came from.
It didn’t start with a movie.
It started at home.
I grew up in a Cuban household with a mother who was a Santera. I watched her help hundreds of people through spiritual ceremonies and rituals that were very real to the people participating in them.
I witnessed ceremonies involving the Orishas, spiritual possession, divination, offerings and rituals that were unlike anything most kids around me were experiencing.
I saw consecrated cowrie shells and pieces of coconut cast in search of messages, warnings and guidance. I watched offerings prepared for the Orishas that could include flowers, fruit, liquor and, depending on the ceremony, more.
The relationship between the practitioner and the Orishas is rooted in devotion, obligation, offerings and reciprocity.
That was part of the world I grew up around.
I’ve never seen a vampire.
I’ve never seen a werewolf.
I’ve never had a demon walk into the room and introduce himself.
But when you’ve grown up seeing some of the things I’ve seen, the line between what we understand and what might exist beyond our understanding gets a hell of a lot more interesting.
That’s where my imagination lives.
I didn’t grow up with much. I grew up with an imagination.
I was raised poor.
- 01Welfare.
- 02Food stamps.
- 03Section 8.
- 04Government cheese.
- 05Powdered milk.
- 06Clothes off the Goodwill racks.
There wasn’t money lying around for entertainment, hobbies or whatever I wanted that week.
So I had my imagination.
And imagination is free.
I could build entire worlds in my head without needing permission from anybody.
I could create characters and decide where they came from. Why they were angry. Why they loved somebody. Why they hated somebody.
- 01Who are they?
- 02What happened to them?
- 03What do they want?
- 04What do they fear?
- 05What are they willing to kill for?
The older I got, the more I wanted to get those stories out of my head and onto paper.
So I read. A lot. Hundreds of books.
I used to carry a dictionary and thesaurus around with me because when I found a word I didn’t understand, I wanted to know what the hell it meant. Then I wanted to know how else I could say it.
That changed the way I wrote.
Words stopped being something I simply read. They became tools.
I started learning how the right word could make something feel violent, beautiful, frightening, heartbreaking or intimate without changing what actually happened.
Writing became another canvas.
Then came the drawing.
Drawing was already another obsession of mine.
Winning a Reader’s Digest drawing contest when I was young gave me the first little piece of outside confirmation that maybe there was something there.
Later, I learned the Reilly Method in school.
But I had a problem.
I could write characters, scenes and action faster than I could figure out how to draw what I was seeing in my head.
When I showed my teacher what I was writing and explained that frustration, he introduced me to the Loomis Method and taught me how to use it.
That changed things. Because now writing and drawing weren’t two unrelated things I loved doing.
They could work together.
A novel lets me tell you what I’m imagining.
A drawing lets me show you.
A graphic novel lets me do both.
Three worlds. Three different kinds of darkness.
Cover art / INKZOS
Bloodlinked
A dynasty built in blood never dies.
BLOODLINKED is the first major world coming out of INKZOS.
It begins with vampires, but I’m not interested in writing another vampire story.
I’m building a bloodline.
A family. A dynasty built on power, loyalty, betrayal, love and grudges old enough to have outlived generations.
At the center are two brothers born into the same blood and destined for completely different thrones.
One is the rightful heir.
The other takes everything from him.
And that’s where the story starts.
Moonbound
The Royal Lyacons
Before werewolves became folklore, there was Lycaon.
King of Arcadia. A man transformed into something that was neither completely human nor completely beast.
Four thousand years later, his bloodline still rules.
The Royal Lyacons are the Judge, Jury and Executioners of the supernatural world.
They protect the veil separating humans from everything humanity convinced itself wasn’t real.
Vampires know them. Creatures fear them.
And when something threatens that balance, the Royal Lyacons don’t send warnings.
They arrive.
Some legends were never legends.
Cover art / INKZOS
Undergod
Cover art / INKZOS
Some sins don’t end in Hell.
A man’s soul falls into Hell.
His punishment is already waiting.
Then Samael looks into his memories.
And sees her.
The woman the man tried to assault before two police officers stopped him.
Something about her catches the Devil’s attention.
Enough to make him leave Hell.
Enough to walk among humans.
Enough to find her.
Not to kill her.
To make her his queen.
He saw her in another man’s memories. Now he wants her.
But I don’t want these stories to only be read.
This is where INKZOS starts crossing into everything else I love doing.
I’m developing plans to turn these stories into fully produced dramatic audio experiences. Not simply somebody sitting behind a microphone reading a book.
I want to produce them.
- TR 01Voice.00:00:04:12
- TR 02Character performance.00:01:18:03
- TR 03Sound design.00:02:41:20
- TR 04Original score.00:03:09:15
- TR 05Atmosphere.00:04:56:08
Footsteps through an empty corridor shouldn’t just be written.
SFX: FOOTSTEPS ON STONE. SLOW. GETTING CLOSER.
I want you to hear them.
A werewolf transformation shouldn’t only live inside a panel. The breathing changing. The weight of the body hitting the ground. Everything happening around it.
SFX: BONE. BREATH. IMPACT.
I want to hear the bones break.
Something moving through the woods shouldn’t need to be seen before you know it’s there.
SFX: BRANCHES. SILENCE. SOMETHING BREATHING.
Sound can tell you first.
When a character walks into an enormous room, I want the voice to belong inside that room. And music can tell you something terrible is coming without saying a single word.
That’s why I want to push these projects beyond traditional narration and closer to dramatized audio, where performance, direction, music and sound design become part of the storytelling itself.
Audio isn’t an afterthought. It’s another canvas.
- I write.
- I draw.
- I compose.
- I produce.
- I direct.
- I build sound.
- I use my voice.
INKZOS gives me a reason to throw all of that shit into the same room and see what happens.
That’s INKZOS.
It isn’t just the name I put on a book.
It’s the publishing home for the worlds I’m building.
- Some will live across hundreds of illustrated pages.
- Some will continue across multiple books.
- Some will begin and end in a single volume.
- Some will eventually have voices.
- Some will have their own music.
- Some will have sounds built specifically for their worlds.
But every one of them starts the same way.
An idea gets into my head.
- Who?
- What?
- Where?
- When?
- Why?
- How?
I keep digging until characters have histories, monsters have reasons, worlds have rules and something that didn’t exist before suddenly feels real.
Bloodlinked is first.
Moonbound is already waiting.
The Devil is looking for his bride.
And I’ve got a hell of a lot more stories in my head.
Let’s put some ink on the page.