P.A.N.I.C and The Pale Demon : Writing My First Books

Greetings, my name is Anthony Rocha, I thought I'd create a blog to document my journey writing my first novels. I'm currently working on two: My main one The Pale Demon and the prequel for it P.A.N.I.C.


The Pale Demon

Sal, a young man living in East L.A. is violently attacked on the way home from work and left for dead in a cemetery. A strange creature approaches his bloodied body and swallows him whole. Sal wakes up the next morning miraculously healed from his wounds wondering why he's still alive. As evening approaches, strangeness overcomes him and he discovers he has extraordinary abilities. Using his newly acquired powers he fights a growing criminal presence throughout the streets of Los Angeles as a costumed vigilante. Locals call him "The White Devil of Los Angeles" .

P.A.N.I.C.  

(Paranormal Authority of Nocturnal and Interdimensional Contact)

For thousands of years, warriors have fought dark and evil forces in the shadows of humanity , today they fight the same threats as a modern international secret agency known as P.A.N.I.C., they have an unlimited budget and are unaffiliated with any world government. PANIC Agents are the human warriors spread throughout the planet equipped with weapons and knowledge to fight the rise in paranormal beings that threaten humanity. Minerva Athie Bright, the new director of P.A.N.I.C. prepares a group of five candidates to become Agent Elites, P.A.N.I.C.'s greatest weapon to fight this menace 

The Pale Demon is a story I've been developing for a few years now, originally I wanted to make it into a comic book series or graphic novel but I ultimately decided to write it as a Fantasy novel instead since my artistic skills were still lacking.

I've drawn for as long as I can remember but I always knew I wanted to be a storyteller. Most of my life I put all my effort into just sketching as evidenced by the hundreds maybe thousands of images I sketched on a hundreds of note book paper and my sketchbooks during High School,  I did write some short stories in High School for a creative writing class senior year that were mostly bad except for maybe one that my teacher kept for a few weeks to verify that I didn't plagiarize it, I didn't, eventually he gave up and gave me an A for it. The only things I wrote since were sentences for the plot of another story of mine that I could never summon the confidence to continue.





 It took me years before I eventually began going to college and sign up for art courses to improve my art, which helped but not as much as I had hoped, I felt kinda let down by the community college experience, the art classes were overcrowded and some instructors were kind of unprepared for a day's worth of lessons, I did okay until the last semester when my grades began to suffer I ended up taking a break due to my worsening anxiety.  I have yet to take any writing or english college level courses, though reading hundreds of comics has given me the confidence and hunger to bypass my lack of education and get started on my stories. I mentioned I had planned The Pale Demon as a comic, I had the first issue plotted out completely by page before I  made the switch to write it as a novel, I plotted the first issue right after reading DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O'Neil, after that I blossomed my ability to write and develop stories. If you have an urge or a feeling like you can write stories like the ones you read, it's because you probably can, you've probably sat down wondering how to get started only to give up as a doubt conquered. I was in the situation, you just have to read a good book on writing to get you jumpstarted, for me it was DC Comics Guide to Wiriting Comics. 

These books are stories that I hope to be working on for the next decade and beyond and I want to share my real motivation for these stories. As an American born to Mexican parents, I attended conventions and read hundreds of mainstream comics and noticed a massive gap in the representation of Hispanic characters and creators. That's when things clicked, I realized something amazing, thought to myself there's room for someone like me, there's room for my stories. The only way I'll see stories with characters that look and talk like me is if I sat my ass down and wrote them. For most of the stories I am working on, most of my main characters are Mexican-American or from a part of Los Angeles, the other characters I hope to have will be just diverse. Location is another motivation, generally most superhero stories are set in a massive city with skyscrapers usually New York or a generic clone New York like fictional city, I want to give Los Angeles more love.


I was originally working on my Pale Demon story exclusively. I was about 30 pages into writing it then I hit a wall, I had to decide on how I wanted to proceed, I knew how I wanted to end but debated with how events would proceed; it took me a few months to realize but I finally ended with a plot structure I was happy enough to work from and continue writing. The same week I finished plotting it, I got the urge to write a prequel for the novel with characters that will be a big part of the world of The Pale Demon in future novels. That book is P.A.N.I.C., I created the entire plot of the book in a span of about 4 hours, it was easier to plot out since I had the elements brewing in my head from working on the main novel. I have about 5 books worth of ideas currently for these characters, including the two I'm working on.

My plan is to publish these two stories  beginning with P.A.N.I.C. and followed by The Pale Demon as e-books with some illustrations to get started.  Later I will rewrite them into longer books to become a proper book series and hopefully publish them as physical books. 

Thanks for reading, come back as I'll be sharing my sketches of characters from the stories as well as progress on my books.

- Tony