A scene from Chapter 7. Original art by EDGINGonDEATH.
For the past thirteen weeks, my brother / co-host / frequent collaborator
and I have been serializing novels on the Agitator Patreon in an effort to adapt the creation and release schedule typical of manga into prose projects. It’s the commitment to create and drop each week that’s key. The manga lit model is simple: every week you write a new chapter and publish it, no retconning or editing allowed. It’s the literary equivalent to freestyle rap. David’s project is a bizarro black comedy called Ronin Trash, a blend of Yakuza-coded Okie rednecks and cartoon demons, already with more moving parts than a Guy Ritchie crime flick. And mine is a cyberpunk hoodrat noir called Samurai Jesus. Here's an excerpt:There's no known endgame with these projects. Could be this is my Berserk and I'll be writing Samurai Jesus until I die. But for sure, once a year, whatever's been serialized in both SJ and Ronin Trash will be formatted into omnibus volumes and we'll be hitting the anime convention circuit, ‘cause the audience for this kinda shit is pretty clear.
So what is Samurai Jesus about? I don't really know yet, since it's all coming out off the dome week by week. Though, I do already have the marketplace pitch, which is imagine if Tarantino directed Ghost In the Shell.
There's a masochist cyborg who runs a martyr-for-hire service to folks with bounties on their heads. There's buddy cops who keep showing up because the Agitator Discord fucks with them and I will give the fans what they want. There are folks with Japanese names who live in places called Supwood and Little Mexico. It's a playground. It's chaos. It's the most fun I've ever had writing.
The manga lit model is just the mode I work in now. And I think for anyone who considers writing either a career, a passion, or a hobby, it'd be a useful experiment to at least try for a while.
You've got seven days. Come up with the ideas, the setting, the characters within the act of writing it. Get one chapter down. No changing it. Keep it moving the next week.
You'll have a legit novel cranked out that way in less than a year.
You can read both Ronin Trash and Samurai Jesus as they drop over on Agitator Z. $5 a month gets you access to the novels in development, the Discord community, and bonus episodes of Agitator.