Writing THE UFO FILES was not like writing a normal book. This is a found-footage story — reading it feels as if you’ve stumbled upon an investigator’s notebook. So each page contains photos, emails, notes, and other bits and pieces all jumbled together.
In order to write a story that way, I needed to have a sense of how everything would fit together. So I sketched out every single page of the book as I was writing. In this video, I share some of those. Scroll down to see some of the sketches alongside the final illustrated version!
The art is by the talented Weston Wei, and Sasha Moxon did the book design.
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To further complicate things, THE UFO FILES involves the discovery of an alien culture and attempts to communicate with these visitors. I needed an alien language… so I made one up! I actually used to make up languages for fun when I was in high school. So I was excited to have an excuse to invent another one. In the video, I show off some of the sketches I made as I was working on that. Here’s one of them:
THE UFO FILES comes out August 5, 2025. Preorder your copy now, then enter our giveaway to download free activity sheets and win prizes.
Sketches vs Final Book
What similarities do you notice? And what changed from draft to final page?
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