A Sacred Text was my first published work, and remains my most ambitious project to date…primarily because I was too naïve to understand the enormity of what I was trying to do. It was a story that was ultimately beyond my abilities at the time to accomplish properly, but looking back on it now, I’m proud of how ambitious and uncompromising it was as a first piece. Despite the awkward illustrations, faltering dialogue and clumsy lettering, I feel like I told a good story that had more raw heart to it than almost anything I’ve done since.

The story is of an escaped slave of a great empire who seeks to return to his homeland. On his way, he comes across a mysterious religious community hidden deep within the desert. There he discovers a profound connection with its people, and ultimately must play a crucial role in their destiny.

A Sacred Text is set in a fantastical world, but it’s very much inspired by the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I was traveling through the Middle East when I came up with the idea; I had just seen the Dead Sea Scrolls in their museum outside of Jerusalem and was tremendously inspired by their mystery. Who had saved these texts and hidden them in the desert, and what happened to the community that had written them and followed their teachings?

The same day I saw the Scrolls, I sat down in a café in Jerusalem and wrote the first draft of the script in five hours. I tried to incorporate the thoughts on religion, culture and sexuality that had been bouncing about in my head during the half-year I spent wandering about North Africa and the Middle East. The basic premise I built the story off of was what if it was a non-believer, a foreigner and an illiterate who saved those Scrolls? What if it was an infidel (such as me) that saved the Word?