Goodreads asked Chad-Michael Simon:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Chad-Michael Simon I've been an artist and storyteller my whole life. In my early 20s, I was enamored by comic strip artists like Bill Watterson and Berkeley Breathed and wanted to develop a strip of my own. One evening, on a page of doodles of character ideas and faces, I drew a odd-looking girl with curly pigtails and a defiant pout, and I wrote the name Millicent next to her. I drew another girl named Miriam and knew at once that they were sisters. I added an older brother and a grizzly bear, and Yellowstone was born as a comic strip. Over the years, the story evolved into an idea for a graphic novel and then an actual novel. I wrote the first draft in 2005, and it's been with me ever since.

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