icarus, come home

Information

A character-centric novel following the leader of a once-powerful criminal organisation and the agent who infiltrates it in search of answers for himself. This story explores the bond between two people who seem to be from opposing sides, but as their worlds collide, they realise they aren't so different after all.

Art and Design

Cover Art

The cover art is a piece I drew specifically for this novel. It features one of the main characters of the story and his wings are a reference to Icarus, whom he is loosely compared to several times in the novel. I choose to draw it in black and white because I wanted something simple and minimalistic, fitting for a novel I wrote for the fun of it. Moreover, I had only a day to finish it before my novel went live, and I wanted it to debut with a proper cover.

Concept Art

Here are some drawings I made of the characters shortly after I finished writing the book. These are not their very first designs as the characters have existed for long enough that I have plenty of old concept art, but they have changed greatly since then so those would now be inaccurate (and frankly, they weren't very good drawings). These are just two that I have of them which are closest to how I envision them to look (I've still changed a bit since then), in addition to the cover art.

Background

I wrote this story a few days before the start of 2024, as I was studying abroad by myself over the New Years' break. It was something I'd wanted to do for a while as the main characters had existed for around a year before then, and having some free time with nothing to do, I decided to give it a try. My original idea was very different: Not only was it a plot-centric story, it also had a bunch of characters that I scrapped because they felt unnecessary. In the end, I decided to try writing something focused on the characters instead of the plot as I normally do, and over the next few weeks (21 days!), I wrote this novel.

I never intended or even wanted to publish it. It sat in my Google Drive for a year, in which I'd occasionally read it again and wonder what I was thinking while writing it. Then in February 2025, a little more than a year after I completed the story, I made a stupid mistake and shared it with someone who later stole my work. In order to protect it, I had to publish it and get the copyright. It was a messy three days after that as I scrambled to proofread everything (again), figure out how the whole publishing thing worked, and even design my own cover because I didn't want my debut novel to be stuck with a random cover.

If I'm being honest, this wasn't the story I wanted to debut with if I was to at all. Which I probably wasn't going to — publishing a book just felt so out of reach for me. But sometimes things don't go according to plan, and it's not as bad as I initially thought it would be. It's nowhere near polished as it's never been beta read (and I'll tell you now that if you're looking for a very realistic crime story, this isn't it), but I am proud of this story and some of the descriptions I wrote. I hope that it, and the story behind its publication, might inspire someone out there as well.