Winnie Foster has just graduated from college… and has already hit a roadblock. Working a dead-end job she hates and struggling to make ends meet, Winnie is certain it can’t get any worse. Certain, that is, until one fateful night when an accident sends Winnie hurtling into another world where she is promptly kidnapped and sent to a Demon King… as a sacrificial bride! Now, aided by humans and demons alike, she must try to find her way home while maneuvering her way through court politics and a war of the races… But will the price of the ticket home turn out to be more than Winnie is willing to pay?

Picatrix updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and has existed on the web since March 2005.

It all started with a list… one of those ‘Things to Do Before I Die’ lists. I had just finished college and, much like Winnie in the beginning of the story, found myself thinking, ‘What now?’ And so I drew up the list and at the top of that list was to ‘create a webcomic’. After all, I’d always loved comics and webcomics were just beginning to become an established part of the internet, following the ‘user created content’ boom of the early to mid 2000s. It seemed like it was time to check ‘create a webcomic’ off my to-do list… it was either that or run a marathon!

Picatrix started out, quite literally, as a dream. Having discovered the manga section at my local library, I’d settled down for the evening with a stack of graphic novels and a six-pack of Red Bull. The result: One very fitful night of sleep and a bizarre dream that seemed to encompass bits and pieces of each of the graphic novels I’d read. That, in a nutshell, is Picatrix.

Initially, Picatrix was meant to be a quick and easy yearlong project to better acquaint myself with the ins and outs of creating comics. Little did I realize just how attached to the characters I would become! A year came and went, the story was told. And I realized that the story had so much more potential beyond the strict retelling of the dream that inspired it. Thus began the second and third redraws (the second was abandoned after I realized that I’d made critical errors, both in the storyline and in the page format). But through all the challenges, Picatrix has been a lot of fun for me to work on… I hope you have as much fun reading it as I’ve had creating it!

It’s been a wild ride since that strange dream in February of 2005. I’m excited about the future of Picatrix. The entire story is slated to be approximately 1000 pages long and stretch over six books. There are so many scenes that I’m just dying to draw! I hope you enjoy following Winnie’s adventures as much as I do creating them!

J.L. Haram

A special thanks:

To Bjarte: Picatrix wouldn’t exist without BJ’s help and support. There aren’t words enough to thank him for everything he’s done to make this dream a reality.
To My Parents: To my mom whose sense of humor and quirky personality has found its way into all the Picatrix characters and to my dad for supporting my work, even though he’s never been much into manga.
To Sam: For all the help and advice she’s given me and for all the fantastic gift art!
To Sara: For giving me a good kick whenever I slack off!
To Picatrix’s readers: You make Picatrix possible! Thank you!

JamieLynn Haram lives in rural Lyon County, Minnesota with her husband and two cats. She works freelance as an illustrator and an author. In her free time, when not working on Picatrix, she can be found in her garden or at work renovating her aging farmhouse.