Rising Stars: Meet Zack Solomon of Mesa

Today we’d like to introduce you to Zack Solomon

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I knew pretty early on that I wanted to be a writer. I come from a family of theater people, musicians, actors, each of them storytellers. I loved sitting around the table listening to them tell stories, embellished or not. In combination with that, I was big in cartoons, video games, books, and movies as a kid (still am), and I loved imagining myself as a character in my favorite stories. I had so much fun simply playing pretend in my room, acting out fight scenes alongside the Power Rangers or Naruto or the Teen Titans (admittedly, I still do that).

I didn’t become serious about writing until around late high school. That was when I knew I wanted to go to college and study creative writing. My parents were a bit reticent, but once they saw the kind of feedback I got on the very first short story I submitted to my beginner’s writing workshop, they relaxed significantly. I worked my way through the program, learning as much as I could, making friends, and honing my craft.

Since exiting school, it’s been a real whirlwind of excitement. I’m still in disbelief that I’ve gotten as far as I have in just a couple of years. It started with working with one of my screenwriting professors in my last semester at ASU on writing comic book scripts. I took what he taught me and sought out and assembled an international team of artists to turn my script in a full-fledged comic book. After about three months of concentrated work, we had a finished product. I had physical copies made and took them to my local comic book store. I wasn’t expecting much from it, but I ended up with a dedicated signing event and invitations to future events at the store. One thing led to the next, one conversation with one person led to being introduced to another, and it’s been kind of a domino effect from there. Now, I have five published books, am working on a full-length graphic novel, and have way more friends and colleagues than I ever thought possible.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
While my journey sounds pretty linear on paper, it’s been anything but. All along the way, I’ve constantly struggled with things like impostor syndrome, self-doubt, and other mental health conditions. It’s difficult to make art that you’re passionate about when you can’t stand the sight of what you’re creating, y’know?

It’s gotten easier over time, and I’ve gotten some great advice from fellow creators who I admire immensely. However, it is still a constant battle. One that I don’t think will fully disappear ever.

In addition to my own mental health struggles, the comics industry itself is incredibly enigmatic. There’s very little Google-able knowledge out there about how to break into the industry, how to meet fellow creators, how to get your work in front of its target audience, etc. I feel incredibly lucky to have gotten to the point I’m at currently. I just as easily could have met nobody, gone to zero events, and simply churned out stories in my bedroom and releasing them into the void that is the Internet and hoping that somebody with connections reads one of them. I’ve quickly learned that this industry, along with any artistic field, is not for the faint of heart.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Right now, I’m most known as a Horror writer specializing in comics and zines. Over the past year and change, I’ve released four issues of a horror anthology zine called The Bleekhaven Accounts. The anthology collects different short stories set in the same mansion, an eerie and cursed place called Bleekhaven, with each story being set in a different time period. It’s been a tremendous amount of fun to work on this project, and it’s been received so much more positively than I ever could have imagined.

What makes me the most proud about The Bleekhaven Accounts is how well it’s been accepted into the comics sphere despite being prose stories. I’ve recently started hearing from the employees at the local comic book store I work with that customers have begun recognizing my zines without ever having met me. That’s still something that I’m trying to wrap my head around because of how unexpected it is.

I feel like one of the things that sets me apart from other comic creators is this kind of innovative package that I haven’t really seen in other comic book stores. The traditional route is to make a comic and sell it in the comic book store. It only makes sense, right? However, comics take a long time to make, they’re expensive, and the story gets chopped up into a bunch of tiny pieces. I hadn’t ever really seen something like The Bleekhaven Accounts in a comic book store before. It was something I could do all on my own, it felt fresh and like it was in its own lane separate from the other books on the shelves.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I was a pretty shy kid growing up. Usually content to sit and play with a toy or watch something on the television as opposed to running all around and jumping off furniture (that was my brother). Don’t get me wrong, I had my moments. If you ask my parents if I was ever hyper as a kid, they’ll likely tell you a story involving a five-year old Zack, a can of Coke, and a bowl of M&Ms.

I always had a pretty active imagination, and I still do. Nowadays it’s called an Anxiety disorder, but that’s neither here nor there. One of my favorite and most frequent activities when I was a kid was playing pretend. Whether that was acting like dragons or vampires or flying on Nimbus 2000’s with my friends at school, or fighting hordes of enemies alongside my the AtLA Gaang, I was always somewhere else mentally. I still did pretty well in school despite my constant daydreaming, and my favorite subjects were English and Science.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hewritesatnight.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zack__solo/