The middle of the first chunk of A Palestinian Tale was written after The Marriage. It’s working title was ‘Train Jockey.’ A peculiar name, isn’t it? It came about from a writing prompt and exercise in writing short stories. Mary Robinette Kowal leads this fantastic lecture on short stories. Following along, I wrote Train Jockey and invented the character of Safia.

It was as I was working with this piece that the thought of making it into a comic came to me as a whim. I started to refer online to “Palestinians in Space.” Using Clip Studio Paint, I began to explore making a comic, and the first panels started to come together: a monochrome first pass.

I was happy with my first attempts, and my first reader, Natasha, was on hand to give me feedback along the way. An important detail in Train Jockey and the comic was the establishing shot of the twin moons. This detail was meant to be a shorthand way of introducing the genre of the story. But, as it turns out, two moons can’t just be hanging in the sky like that! Back to the drawing board…

Next time, we’ll take a look at the first colour tests for our plucky protagonist, Safia, and see how she has evolved.