30 Characters Challenger: Jay Faulkner
OK … *DEEP BREATH* … here we go:
Hi there everyone, my name is Jay and I’m the confused guy wondering just what on Earth he is doing here amongst all of these creative, talented people. All I can say, in advance and by way of a pre-emptive apology, is that I LOVED Tyler’s concept for 30Characters so much that I entered it before really thinking through the consequences: i.e. having to actually come up with 30 new characters during November, and attempt to draw them, even though I am not an artist! 🙂
Anyway, I’m here now so am going to make the best of it so may as well tell you a little bit about me. Like I said my name is Jay (Faulkner) and I currently live in Northern Ireland; my dad was in the Royal Air Force so I’ve spent a lifetime moving from country to country and air-base to air-base so don’t’ really ‘feel’ like I am from anywhere in particular. Home, for me, is simply where my loved ones are, which is my wife, best friend and soul mate, Carole, and our two wonderful baby boys Mackenzie and Nathaniel. I’m lucky enough that the rest of my family also happens to live in Ireland so am close to them too.
Educationally I have a degree in Art and Design but, after moving to London a long time ago, I fell into the evil grip of ‘working for a living’ and unfortunately I realised that I got paid more for tinkering with computers than I did for sketching so picked up an increasingly growing set of qualifications in I.T. So now, by day, I am an I.T. Services Manager, specialising in Information Security – yes that is as boring as it sounds which is why by night (and any spare moment during the day) I teach martial arts and write … though usually not at the same time.
Writing is probably my main creative outlet these days, though I still try to dabble with art when I get the chance, and took the plunge in August 2009 by actually sending a piece of my work to a magazine – they were mad enough to publish me and, since then, I have been writing and submitting (rather than writing and burying in the garden) more and more.
I’ve been lucky enough to have been published in Offshoot Magazine, Apollo’s Lyre, Campfire Tales, Nanoism, Long Story Short, Every Day Fiction, Static Movement, Twisted Tongue, Trapeze Magazine and Full Armor Magazine to name a few and my work can be found in multiple print anthologies, including Rigor Amortis, a collection of zombie romance tales … yes, you read that right, zombie and romance!
I was also short listed in the 2010 Penguin Ireland Short Story Competition and am currently working on my first novel, ‘Wednesday’s Child’.
I founded, and edit, ‘With Painted Words’ – http://www.withpaintedwords.com – a creative writing site with a monthly image prompt that is just about to celebrate its first anniversary.
That’s a lot of words but, in summary, I would say that while I’m a hopeful writer, martial-artist, sketcher, and dreamer that mostly I’m just a husband and father.
If you want you can find out more by visiting www.jayfaulkner.com
The honest reason for taking part in 30Characters is pretty simple: to have fun. I don’t have a comic, I am not planning to pitch for a comic, I am not thinking about going back to art full-time. I’m just here to put some of the ideas spinning around in my head down onto paper and see what they look like. I am pretty sure that they will be (mostly, at least) super-hero based, though I ‘may’ attempt to sketch out some of the characters from current and upcoming stories too.
For now though, and try to put something ‘arty’ into this introduction (as well as steal a phrase from all good kid’s TV shows) here are some sketches that I made earlier:
The next two images were created for Martin Eden, creator/owner of Spandex (http://www.spandexcomic.com), for a month long theme he called ‘Japandex’. In his own words this was “To celebrate the Spandex team’s trip to Tokyo in issue 2, Spandex creator Martin organised ‘Japandex’, a very special online gallery of Japanese-related art – with a Spandex twist!! The artwork was provided by some of the UK’s top artistic talent and debuted in June 2010. You can see it all here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=183778&id=137375331859 ”
My contribution was my ‘take’ on Neon and Glitter, inspired by traditional Japanese images:
Category: Participants
Welcome to the challenge, Jay. Having fun is what this challenge is all about.