ABOUT THIS PROJECT
This is a story about a selkie (a creature in Celtic and Norse folklore who looks like a seal in water, but can shed her skin to appear human on land) who grew up never knowing she was one. Developing this story feels more like an excavation and discovery than a creation, in that it’s very deeply based on my own experiences with childhood abuse and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In the words of Amanda Palmer, it’s very “low-blender,” born straight out of a therapy session, where my childhood with an emotionally abusive mother and sister is thrown in and loosely mixed with some fictionalization and mythology to help express with more truth and depth what is barely expressible directly. “I’ll eat you up, I hate me so,” captures some of the feeling of being absorbed by another person in their effort to keep themselves from drowning in their own pain, and is the concept at the heart of this tale.
This story is my way of processing my own past, learning to grow into my own person after a lifetime of living in the cracks between my family members, and hopefully also helping others feel less alone in their own invisibly abusive situations.
There’s a lot I don’t know about this story yet, but its roots are set in betrayal by those who should have cared for you, understanding trauma and mental health, learning to question things your family, culture, or faith always accepted as true, and becoming fully yourself.
———WORKING TITLE——
Devil in the Deep Blue Sea
THE MAIN IDEA
Mo, haunted by the ghost of her dead sister, lives on an isolated island where religion is law, and the old pagan tales of the sea and its folk are forbidden. When a mysterious fisherman tells her she is a selkie, she begins to question everything her late mother taught her to believe. As she begins to dig into her own and her controlling family’s secretive pasts, the insulated community is racked by a series of gruesome, unexplained deaths all centering around the church graveyard. As the number of deaths increase and Mo starts to embrace who she really is, suspicion turns to Mo, and she must come to terms with a life of false realities, question the world around her, and connect the dots between her family and the deaths to stop the dangerous forces at work before the community that raised her hunts her down.
TONE
Though I don’t have a fully fleshed-out plan for the visual or storytelling style of this project, some of my major influences are the 1995 film The Secret of Roan Inish, Emily Carroll’s graphic novel Through the Woods, and the Netflix series The End of the F***ing World. It may not seem intuitive to marry folktale, horror and dramedy, but these are all stories that have spoken to me as I’ve considered this project. They all carry the thread of trauma, and different ways of expressing and dealing with it.
SOME THINGS I DON’T KNOW YET
This idea started in my head as a graphic novel, but I could see it being a standard novel or even a tv series, and want to use whatever format serves the story best. I don’t have a full outline, just some characters and a handful of plot points, plus a list of ways I want parts of it to feel, based on some of my own process in sorting through my past. But I know there’s something here that needs to be developed, and could be powerful.
ABOUT ME
I’m Gracie, an illustrator trained in animation at Huntington University. I’ve been trying to make my way as a freelance illustrator since I graduated in 2012, with a few detours as an elementary school art teacher, curriculum designer, and part time local shop sales clerk along the way. I love illustrating, and I’ve stumbled my way through the business side of things, but story is what keeps me going. It’s the heart of things for me.
As an abuse survivor with CPTSD, stories have held me together. They’ve helped me feel less alone, taught me what life can be, given me tools and armor to get through some really hard times, connected me with other people, and spoken truths about love, joy, beauty and pain more deeply through fiction than I’d ever heard anywhere else.
I know I have stories to tell, too.
Stories that help me speak my truth, and find my voice, and help others to feel seen and heard and empower them to have voices, too. I also know I have a hard time getting those stories out there for people to find, and I could use some help learning how and making it happen. At this point in my life, after a lot of growth (and therapy) and finally cutting abusive relationships out of my life, I’m ready to do that digging and start figuring out not just how I can make enough money to scrape by with small contract jobs or print sales, but how I can actually tell stories rooted in who I am, and in a way that reaches people, and matters.
And I’m really open as to what that looks like. I haven’t fully figured it out yet.
I’m interested in:
Illustrating
Writing and illustrating for graphic novels
Writing novels
Making things with my hands, like sculpture or puppets
Writing for tv or movies
But I do know I have to tell this story, period. This one is really important to me, both in my own personal growth, and in finding my voice as a creator. It’s a part of me that I haven’t let out yet, and need to.
Some of my personal illustration work:
(including some pieces based on my favorite books)
(to see more of my illustration work and writing, visit my Instagram @gracieklumpp)
GRANT REQUEST
To be honest, I don’t have a number for you. I know I want to tell this story, but I want to tell it in whatever way the story needs, whether that’s as a graphic novel, a tv series, a novel… The how is less important than the story itself, for me, and I could use some objective help determining the format for it, which I know would change the amount and kind of resources needed to complete it.
If it is a graphic novel, it could be so helpful to have some money to help me get by while I focus on this project, so I don’t have to keep taking on as much client work while I do, but to be completely honest, I’d be so grateful to have the help even without the money attached. I need to tell this story, and I’d love partner with you through this journey.
more STORY DETAILS
Mo has lived her whole life on a small island in cold northern waters. The island’s sea-based roots, culture, and mythology have been largely stamped out by a strict, high-church religion, which now controls most aspects of life on the island. Oralie, Mo’s passive-aggressively controlling mother, is a star member of this religious community.
Mo has always been drawn to the ocean. Her whole life, she’s felt like she doesn’t quite belong anywhere, and isn’t wanted for who she is. In the midst of a rigid culture she’s never felt at home in, the sea pulls at her with the closest sense to belonging she’s ever had. She feels more connected to the sea than she’s ever felt with anyone or anything in her life, but the sea is considered an evil, “slippery slope,” associated with the island’s sinful pagan past.
Mo’s older sister died when Mo was just a baby, but her jealous, judgmental ghost has been with Mo ever since as her constant companion. Only Mo can see and hear her. Between the whispering torments of this ghost, the pressure from the church, and the shame from her mother, Mo feels different. Bad. Spiritually weak. She tries to fight this weakness in herself.
When Mo was younger, she wasn’t so alone. She and her best friend, Lowell, were inseparable until Oralie suddenly decided he was a bad influence, and forbid her to see him ever again. Since then, Mo is mostly alone with her sister’s ghost and Oralie, and keeps to herself as much as possible.
When Oralie dies, it is a turning point for Mo and the whole community, as secrets start to unravel. Mo learns she may be a selkie, and as she starts to dig into her family’s past, strange things start happening on the island.
Fully isolated and made up of a tight-knit religious community where crime is incredibly rare, the island is thrown into chaos when bodies start appearing, unceremoniously crushed and half buried in the earth near the church cemetery. It starts small at first, with a few animals, and escalates quickly to people in the community as Mo uncovers a past Oralie never spoke of, realizes the truth of how Oralie mistreated her, reunites with Lowell, and enlists his help to find her selkie coat.
Pressured by his own family situation, Lowell impulsively forces himself into the coat in an effort to escape the island, ripping it into pieces before Mo even has a chance to put it on and fully accept who she is. When the priest finds out and publicly outs her as a selkie as a kind of altar call, the community turns on Mo and blames her for the murders. Persecuted and trapped with her selkie coat in shreds, Mo’s only way out is to piece together the connection between Oralie and the deaths, and confront her past and true identity to stop the mysterious forces at work before the community that raised her hunts her down.
I do have more of this project developed in my own notes, but wanted to keep it brief here. I’m happy to share if you’d like to see more.
Before you go, I made this video to tell some of my story and share what I’m trying to do with my life and work on Patreon:
Thank you so much for reading this far, and for considering my application!
