Hello, Insiders.
David here with your regular COVID-19 Uncanny Kingdom update.
Those of you who’ve read the Uncanny Ink series will already know of Sharez Jek, Erin’s sinister tattooed nemesis. What you might not know is that his look was part-inspired by Rick Genest, AKA Zombie Boy (sadly no longer with us)…

Rick was recently memorialised as a 3-metre tall statue, currently on show in the medical exhibit at London’s Science Museum. Here he is, accompanied by my somewhat smaller (but no less significant) daughter…

While Rick was a talented artist, actor, fashion model, and Guinness World Record holder, the fictional Sharez Jek took a somewhat darker path and became a sadistic hitman.
Jek first shows up in the second Uncanny Ink book and remains a thorn in its hero’s side for a while after that.
Of all the villains we’ve written, he’s one of my favourites. Writing Jek was a chance to purge the very worst ideas in my head. All the horrible clag hiding in my brain folds—the vicious, perverse, inhumane things I would never act out in real life—I took a pressure hose to the lot and blasted it onto the page.
That’s Sharez Jek. The id run amok. Horror incarnate. A villain that other villains run from.
So what are you waiting for? It’s almost Halloween and you’ve got reading to do…
BEGIN THE UNCANNY INK SERIES TODAY!
Or if you’ve already read the first book in the series and want to get straight to Sharez Jek, here’s his first appearance in Uncanny Ink 2: Bad Blood.