Meet Writer & Publisher Delvin Howell (Part 1)

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Hello friends,

Back in February I attended an African film night as part of the Barbados International Film Festival. While there, I ran into a young writer and publisher, Delvin Howell. I was intrigued both because he was doing fantasy, and because he'd set up his own imprint. As a writer, Delvin had a lot to say, so this interview is split into two parts. Here's the first:

Delvin, what made you become a writer?

As a toddler, I was always fascinated by stories. After every episode of a cartoon show, I would make my own version where things went differently than was aired. For example, maybe the villain won in the end, or the damsel saved herself instead of waiting for the hero to come. This fascination evolved into making my own characters and comics along with my longest-standing friend, Jaryd Niles Morris since primary school.

We had no idea what we were doing. These were rough approximations of our favourite stories at the time, but we made these comics throughout secondary school until we were forced to consider a career path. In Barbados, animation and film were not industries that existed even back in early 2000s, so we had to make a decision of what to pursue after school. Jaryd went on to have a successful career in commercial photography and creative design, and I went on to pursue economics and law.

However, before we stopped working together, two things happened.

1. He exposed me to Japanese comics, which changed my outlook on the medium and what narrative possibilities could exist within it.

2. We came up with the idea about a Bajan (Barbadian) comic with a dude who did stick-licking and fought with sugarcane - a simple sometimes comedic idea that would evolve into the Offset series.

A lasting story idea

Offset was that one story idea I could not let go from my mind. It lingered, grew and transformed the more I thought about it. I believed that if we did a Bajan comic story, it did not have to be done as a joke. It had just as much potential to be taken as seriously as any of the other titles we knew. Harry Potter/ Lord of the Rings leveraged European culture and customs. Japanese titles like Dragonball and Naruto did the same with Japanese culture. Why couldn’t we do the same with our own stories? Offset grew with that in mind.

Luckily, Jaryd introduced me to Matthew Clarke who was doing comics in Barbados and at a level close to what I enjoyed from Japan. When I saw his work, I believed things were possible. However, as Matthew was busy with school, I grew impatient after graduating university myself, so I decided to take the plunge and write the manuscript for the first entry of the series, Offset: The Mask of Bimshire*. This eventually won the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Award for Young Writers in 2010.

Meanwhile, Matthew had an innovative idea to do an anthology series gathering stories and comics from local creators into one book called MASS Anthology. This included a one-shot comic from Offset which captured an amazing battle between two of the characters, Kyle Harding & Damian Collins. Through this endeavour I met several other local creators including Tristan Roach who went on to illustrate Offset.

Matthew, Tristan, myself and Alan Lynch would go on to become co-founders of Beyond Publishing Caribbean, a publisher of Caribbean comics. We have released multiple titles across many genres.

Tell us more about your writing

I usually write fantasy. However, I do dabble in elements of drama, science fiction and horror from time to time. I am known within the group as a war monger- as I love a good action scene. However, I believe in emotional impact whenever possible within any stories I make. The more emotion you feel from reading my stories the better. Fantasy also allows me to twist things that exists in the real world, even going to surreal places just to ensure the emotion is felt in the scenes.

I have written two titles to date.

Offset which follows a young stick-licker named Kyle Harding who discovers an underground obeah trade in the Caribbean island of Bimshire. It combines elements of Caribbean Folklore, Crime Drama, Martial-arts action and Family secrets in an explosive urban fantasy tale. The Offset series consists of two novels: Offset: Mask of Bimshire, Offset: Children of the Gulf and a comic/ graphic novel adaptation – Offset Volume #1 (which covers four issues).

Loose Change is a comic series that takes place in a prestigious business school that consistently breeds multi-millionaires and evaluates you on your ability to make money. It has two primary protagonists, Desmond ‘Dez’ Holdipp, a genius boy from extremely humble roots who wants to learn how money works to repay his mother who worked hard to make sure he received an education, and Marcella ‘Marcy’ Fowler, a hardworking girl from a wealthy family (The Fowlers) with a long history of starting and managing powerful businesses. Marcy and Dez will be rivals driving each other to improve while managing monthly trials similar to The Apprentice/ Shark Tank.

A lot of Caribbean writing is about past or current struggles, but you've gone a different way. Why is that?

At Beyond, our mission is to show the Caribbean in ways that haven’t been seen before. We took the opportunity to leverage the comic medium and current resources to tell stories that we were not seeing from the region or from overseas. This comes from a firm belief that we have more to offer in storytelling than what was currently out there.