Kevin Jones

Hi, there.

My name is Kevin Jones, also known as Bonez, and I’m a creator. Notice I didn’t say writer or author. Yeah, there’s a reason for that.

It has been a life-long dream of mine to create worlds, these fictional places of myths and legends, superheroes and Saiyans where I could escape to. It’s always burned somewhere within me, like an itch or a hunger. At first, watching cartoons and reading comics was enough to transport me and sate, my escapist appetite. But then, that hunger grew. I knew I had to create a world of my own.

I was born in 1989, in an era of VHS and cassette tapes. I didn’t have much in terms of of distractions. There was no Internet, there was no streaming or YouTube. I had to take matters into my own hands. I began drawing in 1996, when I was just seven years old. I started out drawing characters from Dragon Ball Z (DBZ). I used to be able to draw everything but the eyes...man, those eyes were something else.

I’m a lot older now, thirty-two in 2022 at the time of writing this. I have kids of my own now. There’s a lot of really cool stuff out there nowadays. Movies, cartoons, comics. But I decided that I wanted to give them something special. I wanted to give them, and the rest of the newer generation of little black kids something to love as much as I loved Dragon Ball Z growing up.

In a way, it felt Goku and I grew up together. And that feeling was special. I tried to lock it down, capture it in a bottle, put it on a page. I got to thinking, ‘How do I bring my childhood imagination to life?’ I’m a professional tattoo artist now, so you can imagine that I still draw a lot. I let the ideas stew in my mind, I let them crystallise into the story you have in your hands today. It wasn’t always a straightforward process. Far from it, in fact.

I started writing this story back in 2015, just sitting in my car, bored...imagining a life with powers, like I used to do when I was kid. I guess always wanted to be a Saiyan, but then again, who didn’t? Ha. Anyway, at the start, it was based of myself but something felt off, incomplete. I brainstormed and wrote draft upon draft, but it never did seem to click. Until one day.

Inspiration can come from the strangest of places, they say. I was playing with my kids at home like I had done a million times before, but something had changed this one time. The way they were acting gave me an idea. I knew then at that moment the kind of story I wanted to create. Everything suddenly clicked into place.

So, I basically just took my family and made them superheroes. Pretty cool, right? The Pariahs are an outcast people who don’t quite fit into any group. There are different clans, different factions with varying interests. This book draws from many of my own personal experiences. Between each chapter, there’s love, hate, manipulation, suspense, mystery, thrills, action, and above all else...family. I hope you enjoy this book, dear reader. I hope you can sit back, relax put your feet up grab some snacks, beverages and escape into this world that I have created. I hope you love it as much as I do. I promise you’re going to be left wanting more after each chapter as the mystery unfolds.

This journey is only just getting started, and I hope you stick along for the ride. And now, turn to the next page for ‘PARIAHS: THE BEGINNING.’