Stargazer

Stargazer, my two volume graphic novel series that deals with a young girl named Marni and how she copes with the death of her grandmother, is now available for free as PDF ebooks. In many ways the story echoes the road to god knows.... How so? Well, Marie's struggle in road is really one of learning to let go. She begins to realize that while she loves her mom, she can't solve her mom's problems (especially her mental illness) for her. She's not trained to do so nor does she have the emotional distance to do so. She can support her mom, but she can't solve these issues for her. At the same time, Marie is struggling to learn to stand on her own two feet and become an adult. It's not easy for her and that struggle plays a key role in the story.

I wanted to revisit some of those themes but do it in a different way. Marni (and her name deliberately echoes Marie's) is a younger girl - a child in comparison to Marie's teenager. She is faced with similar issues of letting go (this time over the death of her granny) but is unable to do so. She basically takes a different path than Marie does and Stargazer really deals with that choice and the consequences of it. Stargazer is set in a fantasy world and uses the tropes of fantasy, but that doesn't diminish the underlying issues. And I think when both stories are read and compared, the reader can readily see the growth of these two characters and how their different choices effect both them, their friends, and their worlds.

The main website for Stargazer is at http://stargazer.vonallan.com. And you can find the links to download the PDFs right here.