Sometimes, you use real life elements to create fiction. The opposite's also true, as fiction can make us want to do something, travel somewhere, meet someone. Hopefully, we're always inspired, be it by life or fiction, to do something more, to live life to its fullest and to be always open to new discoveries.
In 1998, I was fresh out of college, not unlike Brás and Jorge at the second chapter of DAYTRIPPER and, like them, Bá and I went on a trip across the country to see its natural beauties that led us to Chapada Diamantina, that beautiful natural park with mountains and canyons covered with deep forests and surrounded by rivers, lakes and waterfalls. We saw the sunset on the same mountain top that Brás and Jorge saw the sunrise, and it was then, on a small village called Lençois that rests inside the valley, that we saw for the first time the celebration of Iemanjá's day, which happens every year on February 2nd. It was a beautiful, magical party, celebrated with joy and candle light, where you felt happy to be alive and believed anything could happen. As we continued traveling, we made our way to Salvador, where we heard stories of how there wasn't any Iemanjá's day as the one they celebrated there, at the Rio Vermelho beach, where thousands of people gathered all day long. We left Salvador thinking about all those gifts and candles that would be floating on the ocean at sunset, on decorated baskets, waiting for Iemanjá to claim her presents.
Popular celebrations are a big part of Brazilian culture and many popular festivities take place on open air, in the streets, in parks, in beaches and rivers. We wanted Brás to experience one of those popular festivities, be part of something bigger than himself, somewhere where he would be a stranger discovering things at the same time as the reader, and we knew, as we started to think what could Brás do and where could he go, that we would take the young and hopeful Brás to Salvador for Iemanjá's day. Fiction inspired by real experiences.
10 years after that first trip, we returned to Salvador in 2008 to see, experience and research Iemanjá's day at the Rio Vermelho Beach, inspired by this fictional story we were starting to write.
And it was incredible.
Jump to the present, and we're ready for the release of DAYTRIPPER as one big book, hoping it reaches new readers and travels to new places, and guess what's the release date in comicbook stores?
February 2nd, Iemanjá's day.
We'll be at the beach, lighting candles and celebrating, being grateful for this wonderful trip and wishing for the next one.
Fábio Moon
P.S.: Thinking of how unconventional this story was, and how extremely difficult it was to explain its structure and how it would all make sense in the end, we are extremely grateful to Bob Schreck, our original editor on the series, who got it right away and fought at our side to get the series approved, even if he, as well as everybody else (us included), didn't quite knew how we would pull it off. And, looking at the weird coincidences of our lives, turns out Bob's birthday is on February 2nd, so thank you, Bob, and happy birthday.
