A pair of young women are making a go of it in the graphic novel business with
Ashur Collective, a company that is producing stories about rogues and their adventures in Detroit.
Kelly Guillory, a Wayne State University undergrad studying industrial design, and her friend from New Jersey, Jaime Acocella, met online while exploring their fandom of the graphic novel genre.
Guillory and Acocella have been writing their own books for years so they decided to take a stab at their own series with Ashur Collective. Guillory handles the illustration. Acocella does the writing.
"We have four books worth of manuscripts so we thought, 'let's make some money off of this,'" Guillory says.
The partners have participated in
Wayne State University's Blackstone LaunchPad entrepreneurship program. They have collected a few thousands dollars worth of seed capital from a crowd-funding campaign and winning a grant from the Blackstone LaunchPad’s
Warrior Fund. They plan to put the finishing touches on their first book this month and publish it later this fall.
"We want to turn it into a series if we get the interest," Guillory says. "First we have to get the interest."
Source: Kelly Guillory, co-founder of Ashur Collective
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.