FITTING INDIAN COVER REVEAL + Repost of 'Draw What You See, They Said'

In honour of being allowed to talk about Fitting Indian finally.

OKAY so a few months ago I sent out a newsletter with this you-can’t-make-this-shit-up story and then quietly removed it from my substack when I found out that actually I was not yet allowed to talk about the book in question (oops). Today, like a year later, I’m finally here to show you the cover + a little process video for that!! Since the cat is out of the Instagram drafts, I’m also reposting the story below!

COVER!!!! Fitting Indian by Jyoti Chand and ME coming May 13th, 2025

Corresponding back cover that has my entire family on it:

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From December 2023:

Character design does not come naturally to me so usually I like to use someone around me as a starting point, especially because I’m keenly aware that people can look so different in different lighting, from different angles, at different points in their cycles, and while holding different expressions on their faces. Starting with a real person who has a real smile makes it easier to create a character and have a sense of how they might smile or how their eyebrows might look while furrowed.

For the graphic novel I’m working on, Fitting Indian by Jyoti Chand, I used many friends and acquaintances as foundations for the characters that you’ll see on this substack in the coming months. The main character of the graphic novel, Nitasha, has a brother who is a tall, wholesome Punjabi man who is a good boyfriend, a great older brother, and works as a doctor. As my reference for this character, I used my boyfriend, Shantanu, because he’s a tall, north Indian-looking man who is a good boyfriend, and a great younger brother, and although he is not a doctor, he looks like he’s read a book in the last eight months. (I cannot confirm if this is true).

Over the next 6-7 months I plodded along and sent in 280 pages worth of sketches. When they came back a couple of months later with notes, I finally had some version of the book put together with both images and words and so I showed it to a couple of friends to ask for advice/critique. When it finally made its way to my boyfriend, he made it 3 pages before the aforementioned brother showed up and then he started to look wildly confused.

Below is a picture of Shantanu when he saw his face plastered all over my sketches.

I’d somehow managed not to tell this person that I speak to at least once a day, that I’d stuck him in this book. He ran through a list of times I’d asked him for a posed reference photo to confirm that they were all for this book and wondered LOUDLY how on earth it never came up that I’d basically been drawing a portrait of him every day for months. I insisted that this was mostly a convenience thing since it’s usually a little bit of a headache to ask for reference photos and Shantanu was used to taking my direction and posing by now.

Still not able to believe that this was the first he had heard of this, he asked me what the character’s name was. I could not stop laughing because I knew the next thing out of my mouth was going to make this situation borderline ridiculous.

Guys. The character is called

Shan.

……….

Shantanu, famously a narcissist (if you live in NYC or Delhi you might see stickers of a drawing he made of his OWN FACE plastered around the city), is now irrevocably convinced that this whole thing was set up as an elaborate declaration of my obsession with him. Oh god.

I spent the next day combing through the book to see who else I’d based on people in my life. Original character designs for the main character’s best friend were loosely based on my roommate Mo (also easily accessible for photos!) but she’s since evolved. The house that most of the book is set is based on my cousin’s house because I have only ever lived in cities and have very little insight into how a suburban American house looks/is set up. I’d learned my lesson and obviously texted the cousin in question immediately to warn her and ask for permission.

If you see yourself in this graphic novel: oops?

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As of this morning, we were #1 on Amazon (pls go to your local bookstore) in “books about teens and self-harm” which seems oddly specific