About:

The Ascension was originally penned as a series of novellas back in 2014/2015. With the first of nine novellas finished and the second in draft Jules contacted an editor with a view to get the novel published as an independent.

Then life got in the way and in May 2016 he suffered a heart attack and five days later a severe stroke. When I got to the hospital that afternoon the doctors told me that he’d be lucky to survive the night. It seems that luck was on his side that night and the next day he was still on this earth but had a long and arduous recovery ahead of him. The stroke left him with the right side of his body badly affected, his right arm limp and useless and the right leg weak and barely usable. If things could be any worse he had a severe case of Aphasia. All his thoughts and dreams of being a published author gone never to be known if it’d ever be a possibility again.

Fast forward 4 years to February 2020 Jules, still suffering from Aphasia and with only the use of the non-favoured left hand, became One Hand Media (an insight into his not lost sense of humour) and embarked on turning The Ascension [The Last Ascension] in to a graphic novel, despite not having any background in art. Discovering Clip Studio he started drawing images to go with the words written before the stroke. Despite the progress he made on it by November 2020 he decided to scrap everything done to that point and started to follow tutorials on YouTube and also paid courses on Udemy. He tells me that the course by Kirk Michael Russell was the best one he followed and he learnt so much from all this study. It led to a much better art style and he discovered the distressed art style that you see in the graphic novel. During his journey with Clip Studio he discovered the revelation that you could use Photoshop brushes in Clip Studio. This was a major step in his journey to get to where the artwork is now.

His Aphasia was a very real hinderance to the creation of The Ascension graphic novel but with his friends and family at the end of a video call to proof read the words and to support him in this endeavour he has overcome the odds and his disabilities to produce a great graphic novel. I am so very proud of what he has achieved and I hope you enjoy reading as much as I have.

Tom (brother of Jules)