When demons burn her life to the ground, a waitress squeezes into a stranger’s stolen rental van and embarks on a journey of evil-fighting and bad road coffee. As Maggie’s past recedes in the rearview, questions arise:

• What happens when a vampire decides to stop drinking blood?
• How long should one irradiate a snack pie in a gas station microwave?
• Are all demons this brittle?
• Is there a Dunk-A-Donut near here?

I spent more time creating Broken Lines than I ever spent on any other creative project. Not only because it took a long time to write and illustrate the actual book, but because before that it was a graphic novel (completed and never released), and before that it was a comic book series (mostly completed and partially released), and before that it was a single comic book (completed and never released), and before that it was a series of odd vignettes I’d photocopy and hang up on random telephone poles and bulletin boards.

I made an error that creators sometimes make: I wanted this one project to be too good, I wanted it to contain too many things, I wanted it to be some kind of grand statement before I was ready to pull that sort of thing off (hot pro tip: you’ll never be ready to do that). I kept postponing finishing it because it was easier to just keep picking at it and reworking it instead of releasing it to an audience.

I’m immensely proud I made and released this book, because it was an albatross I had to unburden myself before I could move on to other things. It is chock full of stupidity, for better and for worse.

Read a 30-page excerpt & reviews at tompappalardo.com/broken-lines

I’ve uploaded the Broken Lines book trailer to a new YouTube channel just for my writing. There will be a buncha new content coming in 2026. Please watch this sixty-second video and subscribe to the channel if that’s your thing.