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My Dear Handel & other stories
Written and narrated by Salomey Doku
(April 2025 - Personal Project)
'From that time, and for many years hence, I always felt that I must be the luckiest, and happiest man alive’...
'My Dear Handel' is my take on Herbert Pocket's POV of the events of the novel 'Great Expectations' (1861) by Charles Dickens.
CLICK to Read the e-book free, here!
This story forms part of a personal side project. I wrote it as a way of studying close male friendships, and what they used to look like in Dickens' day.
Apart from being delightfully self-indulgent, it mainly serves both as research and as a companion story to a graphic novel I'm currently developing that looks at close male friendships today, and at the impact having a close bond with a friend can have on mental health for men.
Artwork for 'My Dear Handel' and for Great Expectations in general is a work-in-progress effort.
You can keep up with my character art, animations and sketches over on my social media channels!
Eventually I plan to upload all artwork I create for this side project here on my website.
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The Daisy Chain
Written by Salomey Doku
(August 2025 - Personal Project)
'The Daisy Chain' is an alternative sequence of events based on the novel 'David Copperfield' (1850) by Charles Dickens.
This sequence of events follows David taking Emily's place after thwarting James's plot to seduce her, and ending up seduced himself. I wrote the storyline through to a similar conclusion as the original book, albeit with an ending where James lives!
My main goal was to expand on Dickens' themes of identity, the power struggles between these two boys, the level of manipulation (devastating) while looking at the introspection of the developing situationship from both perspectives. It was a way to prove to myself that James COULD have lived without destroying Dickens' plotline.
The Daisy Chain is many things:
It's friendship, becomes queer-platonic, becomes queer, has religious conflict and drama (lots of scheming and running away), identity and power struggles, manipulation, vulnerability, regret and dealing with heartbreak (becomes queer-platonic again?) tale.
It can also be read as a warning - for Christian youth - as David repeatedly ignores warnings from those around him (looking at you, Agnes 🥸) about his developing relationship with James, only to find himself in a situationship and struggling desperately to keep his head above the waters he realises he's thrown himself into, but through it discovering his faith more (thanks Agnes, MVP🫶🏾). It's a slightly deeper study than the original book about the types of friends you make, and where they lead you. It's also a study on how vulnerable young adults can sometimes be sadly taken advantage of by those they wholly trust. Above all it's a story about grace - and how you can't be too far gone for it to get you.
