Most of my life, my creative work involved painting and sculpture.  The characters, Cecily and Berle, derive from personality composites of family members.  My stories center on the quirks of those personalities.  What I find interesting is that Cecily and Berle are now people to me.  I hear them talking in my head as I write of their antics.

I note the Frances books by Russell Hoban and the Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel were my greatest influence.

I had read my first graphic novel, PERSEPOLIS, by Marjane Satrapi several years ago.  The graphic novel form blew me past my ambivalent opinion of comics.  I found and read several other graphic works.  The stories were longer and displayed a great variety of artwork.  I realized that combining text and picture was the next stage of my art.

I found the classes I needed to learn the concepts of sequential art for comics or graphic novel.  I have since completed a number of graphic stories.  I have been used to working, completing, and delivering my own paintings.  I decided to publish independently on Amazon as the illustrations and story text are limited.

My Amazon URL:https://www.amazon.com/author/penelopemerrell

I also published some shorter graphic stories on Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Penelope+Merrell