Arnon Z. Shorr is an author, screenwriter and filmmaker of character-driven adventures and thrillers, where heroes grapple with the extraordinary, and in doing so, learn important truths about themselves.

Arnon spent most of his childhood between worlds: a Hebrew speaker in America, a private school kid in a rented two-bedroom apartment. Whenever he’d set foot in one world, his other foot would betray him as different. For that reason, he tells stories that embrace the peculiar, where encounters with the unexpected reveal who we are.

Joshua Edelglass is a freelance illustrator from Massachusetts. He is also the Assistant Director of Camp Ramah New England. At Brown University, Josh wrote and drew the political cartoon, WorldView for The Brown Daily Herald.

That experience gave him the bug for cartooning, a passion that has never left him.

Josh’s work has appeared in a variety of exhibitions, including Pow! Jewish Comics Art and Influence that ran at the Brooklyn Jewish Art Museum in Spring 2018.

Josh was included in the Jewish Comix Anthology, published in 2014 by Alternative History Press. Josh was also included in SCI: The Jewish Comics Anthology vol. 2, which was published in the fall of 2018.

Bee: How completely do you develop your characters before beginning to write?

Arnon: I never know everything about my characters before I start to write. As I write, I try to sort of listen to who the characters are – I’ve got to be open to the discoveries that come up about them.

That’s what makes them feel fresh and real. That said, before I start writing, there are two things about every major character that I try to figure out:

What do they want? And what do they need to learn or change about themselves in order to achieve what they want? What a character wants is what drives that character through the story.

The thing that needs to change informs what obstacles get thrown in the character’s way. With those two elements locked into place, I usually find the rest of the story tells itself.

Joshua: I spent a good deal of time, before I started drawing any pages, designing the characters. 

In a visual medium like comics, the design of each individual character is so important and, when done well, can help tell so much of that character’s story to the reader. 

Some characters came to me quickly, while others went took me a number of different sketches before I was happy. 

Arnon’s input was hugely important.  I felt good about each character before I dove into drawing the pages… but by the time I got to the end, I felt I “knew” those characters so much better. 

It’s quite an experience to draw these characters, over and over, while illustrating a 100-page graphic novel.  I miss drawing them now!

Bee: Which character do you love to hate?

Arnon: I love (to hate) self-confident villains who are at least a little bit correct. That is, their villainy is grounded in something true, but they’re too narcissistic to realize that their interpretation of that true thing is wrong.

Joshua:  Agreed!  Some of De Guzman’s smug expressions were among the most fun panels to draw.

Bee: Tell us about your cover. Did you design it yourself? 

Arnon: Josh Edelglass designed the cover – but we discussed what the cover should be from very early in the process, and went through quite a few variations of it. I’ll let Josh tell you more of the story (and you can hear us talking about it in this

YouTube video, too!

Joshua: It was a fun journey to arrive at the finished cover!  I started sketching the cover about a year before I actually drew it; just some doodles to start getting some ideas on paper. 

I’d do a series of sketches, and then Arnon and I would talk about them; then I’d go back and do more sketches, and we’d discuss those. 

With each step, we identified elements we liked and wanted to keep and elements we didn’t think were working. 

When Arnon & I had a bunch of sketches we were both happy with, we shared them with the team at our publisher, Kar-Ben. 

They helped pick the design they wanted us to go with, and then we worked with them to refine the exact layout. 

Once we were all on the same page, I started working on the final image, showing it to the Kar-Ben team at the pencil stage, ink stage, and pencil stage.  I polished the finished painting in Photoshop, and then their team added the awesome logo/title treatment.

Bee: How long did it take you to write Jose and the Pirate Captain Toledano from concept to fruition? 

Arnon: This book has an unusual origin story. It started as a short film! Back in late-2016, I developed an idea for a short film about Jewish pirates. I crowd-funded the project, filmed it, and premiered the film in Los Angeles on 5/2/17.

During its very successful festival run, audiences kept asking for more of “The Pirate Captain Toledano”.

I explored the possibility of expanding the story as a feature film, but the costs were too high and my clout in the industry not sufficient to lift a project like that off the ground. So I explored other storytelling formats, and after much discussion with Josh – who I had known for a long time – we settled on trying to get the story told as a graphic novel.

From there, it took a year of pitching the story to agents, and then to publishers, before we landed at Kar-Ben Publishing.

Since I had  been living with the story in my head for several years, the process of actually putting it down on paper was quick. From the start of our contract with Kar-Ben to my submitting the first draft book ‘script’ for their review only took a few months.

Of course, with a graphic novel, that’s just the start of the process. Josh still had about a year’s work ahead of him to illustrate the whole thing! In the end, our book had its debut on 5/1/22 – one day shy of the five-year anniversary of the premiere of the film.

Joshua:  Once Arnon’s script for the graphic novel was written and approved by Kar-Ben, it took me about nine months to illustrate everything.

 I was drawing from September ’20 through May ’21.  It took me about three months to pencil all the pages, three months to ink, and then three months to paint and assemble all the layers digitally.  

Bee: How did being a father influence your writing?

Arnon: I landed the book deal to write José and the Pirate Captain Toledano just before the pandemic kicked into gear. I have three young kids – so I found myself writing a lot in our walk-in closet while the kids were going stir-crazy under lockdown in the rest of the apartment.

But the reward at the end of the book’s long journey came when I received my first author copy and my son read it for the first time.

He finished the book, looked at me and said “that was awesome!” It was my first review, and it couldn’t have made me happier. 

Joshua: I have twin daughters, and they got to see the whole process of illustrating this book, from beginning to end!

 For nine months I had all the in-process pages spread out in our basement.  I loved that they got to see all of that; it was always fun to answer all of their questions.

 And, as was the case with Arnon, it was of course an enormous thrill for me when they finally got to read the finished book!!

Bee: What writers have you drawn inspiration from?

Arnon: I’m not sure how much their inspiration is readily apparent in the pages of my book, but I was a big Roald Dahl fan when I was a kid. I’d like to think there are moments of whimsy in my story – and certainly, the idea that a kid can be capable, intelligent, worth paying attention to – those are very Dahl-like ideas.

Later influences include Michael Crichton, whose work tends to be colder, more technical, but who somehow manages to draw thrilling adventure out of scientific or historical fact.

And Neil Gaiman, who manages to evoke a sense of spiritual wonder in his stories. I don’t think my writing is anything like the writing of those authors, but I think that under the surface, deep in the core of the stories I tell, there’s some shared DNA.

Joshua: Good choices, Arnon!  I love all of those wonderful writers you mentioned. 

I have always been inspired by Douglas Adams, for his mastery of silliness, and Isaac Asimov, for his mastery of geometrically-precise plots. 

In the comics/graphic novel world, I adore and am continually inspired by the work of writers such as Jeff Smith, Mike Mignola, Brian Michael Bendis, Kurt Busiek, Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, Peter David… and too many others to count!

Bee: What kind of messages do you try to instill in your writing?

Arnon: I sneak in all sorts of messages! But the big one – the message that seems to resonate through everything I write – is a celebration of difference.

We live in a world where people are preoccupied with making everyone the same. Even well-meaning calls for “equality” often (unintentionally!) conflate that with “sameness.”

I think that we have a natural and unfortunate fear of difference, and that’s where a lot of our discord comes from.

But difference (“diversity” is another word for it) is a core ingredient of humanity’s secret sauce. I’d like to see us celebrate it. 

Joshua: That focus on a celebration of difference is a key part of what immediately interested me in Arnon’s story for what would become José and the Pirate Captain Toledano.  I love that emphasis in Arnon’s work!

Bee: You are sitting in a coffee shop. What does your writer mind see?

Arnon: It’s a tactical assessment. Where are the comfy chairs? Which are unoccupied and somewhat isolated from the bustle?

Are they near power outlets? Can I plug in my charger? Will my back ache if I sit there too long? How’s the coffee selection?

 Does this place know how to brew a good cup of joe? (I’m a coffee snob, after all…) If it’s a kosher establishment, I check out the pastry case.

If it isn’t, I try not to look – why tease myself? And of course, I need to decide: is the place noisy enough? Just noisy enough, you know? So I can settle into the flow of the work with all distractions drowned-out.

But not so noisy that it’s hard to think. There were a few coffee shops in LA like this. Now that I live in Massachusetts, I’m still looking for the best places here.

Fortunately, I can make the best coffee you’ve ever had in my own kitchen, so at least the caffeine supply is uninterrupted.

Joshua: I don’t drink coffee, so I’d probably be asking myself, what the heck am I doing here in this coffee shop?  Hopefully I’m meeting a friend.  If I’m trying to work, the peace of my home studio is the place for me. 

I love listening to podcasts as I draw.  Other than that, all I need is a nice block of uninterrupted time…

Bee: What are you working on now?

Arnon: It’s a long list! I’ve got ideas for new books that I’m pitching (with Josh) to our book agent to see which she likes best.

I also have several screenplays out to executives, producers and managers in Hollywood (yes, I’m looking for representation as a screenwriter and director – in case you know anyone!) And I’m polishing a draft of a “Toledano” limited series pilot. If the book does well enough, let’s see if we can adapt the story again – back to the screen!

Joshua: As Arnon mentioned, we’re cooking up some future projects right now! 

We have a lot of ideas; we’ve got three in particular that we’re both very excited about.  Hopefully in the coming weeks we’ll choose which one to focus in on, and then we’ll be off to the races…!  

Bee: Thanks again and good luck with Jose and the Pirate Captain Toledano!

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