MELROSE DOWDY
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Byzantine

5/24/2025

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Without a doubt, Byzantine is my most ambitious work I've published so far. It's just over 200 pages of art and storytelling set in a fantastic world of afterlife adventures and treats. With over twenty illustrations, this is the largest collection of my artwork in print anywhere!  You can read about it on Amazon.

This book explores the absurdity of people existing in Heaven as they do on Earth. The protagonist seeks what’s most important to her. A bureaucratic system of deeply imperfect people hold her back. It’s romantic, it’s a bit comical, and it’s honest about the absurd hopes that we have of recognizing each other if we meet on the other side. It’s a dream, but byzantine.

That's all I'll say about it for now. I have one more trick up my sleave after this...
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Completion

5/24/2025

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Most of the creative projects on the internet, from video games to comics, novels, and everything in between, never get finished. They're products of people giving their second-best energy, their sloppy-seconds afterthoughts to the arts. The whirlwind of ideas and pretty pictures is fun when you're young, but it breaks you when you're middle-aged: the internet is a wasteland of dead projects and deader artists. Social media is an ocean of OCs, excerpts, prototype images, and mockups that go nowhere. All this creative energy dissipates, leaving so many artists empty-handed and bitter.

In 2023 I got a short story published through Grendel Press, in 2024 I self-published a novella, and in 2025 I've self-published a novel and am preparing to self-publish a second novel. The works are finished, but they're worthless if no one gets to experience them! I'm making sure they're available to those who have an interest in what I make. All these hours of work culminate in products that can move people whose hearts are open.
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Between AI witch hunts and overt politicization of spaces intruded upon by interlopers who value politics more than art, the internet's creative spaces are poisoned wells. A person can only become a resentful and bitter product of hate by lingering here. After Arizona Kenopsia is published--either late this year or early next year--I'm going to take an adventure somewhere strange and beautiful, where art is king and no one knows what's happening on X or Bluesky. Where the children with messianic complexes and half-written stories are nowhere to be found, but the hours are spent revering process, completing works, and valuing merit and craft.
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    Melrose Dowdy

    Author of Death in the Highlands, illustrator of many more things. I woke up today. I'll create something.

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