Later this month, Dark Horse will publish Deva Zan, the first novel by artist Yoshitaka Amane, who is best known as the illustrator of the Vampire Hunter D novels and the designer for Final Fantasy. Anime News Network has a preview of the novel, which Amane wrote and illustrated.

I interviewed Amane this year at New York Comic Con, and here's what he had to say about the writing process for Deva Zan:

When I draw one picture, it's just a representation of something I are thinking of -- it's not so much I am a story writer, but when you draw 200 pictures of something with the same theme, then a story naturally comes out of it. And that's kind of what happened with this. I didn't sit down and pen a story; it's been a long time coming. There were tens of thousands of drawings, the story emerged from the drawings and I was able to interpret the story from that.

With "Final Fantasy," there were certain things they needed from me, maybe it's a certain type of look or a character or whatever, but with this I was able to freely express myself and see what comes out of me as a person, and maybe a Japanese person, is more reflective of Eastern tastes.