Avery Hill's Ricky Miller Interviews Karenza Sparks on Her Debut Graphic Novel - The Corus Wave

Avery Hill Publishing's autumn 2025 lineup gives us The Corus Wave by debut author Karenza Sparks. A standout graphic novel that blends fossil lore, architectural mystery, and academic adventure.

In this interview, Ricky Miller, of Avery Hill, discusses the inspirations behind this intricately layered story with Karenza Sparks. The story follows geology student Lorelei, her roommate Eddie, and their cat Raisin on a riddle-filled journey through England's ancient landscapes. As they chase the elusive "Corus Wave" - a theory left behind by 19th-century polymath Havius Corus - the trio uncovers secrets buried in stone circles, libraries, and botanical gardens.

Find out what makes The Corus Wave so special, and why you want to back this incredible new graphic novel on Kickstarter.

For people who haven't read it yet, can you tell us briefly what The Corus Wave is about?

The Corus Wave is a geological treasure hunt full of riddles and puzzles all about curiosity, adventure, and strange and ancient creatures.

Geology master's student Lorelei is researching the formation of a peculiar fossil when she comes across a theory by a 19th Century polymath whose work is mostly lost – the 'Corus Wave'. She decides to go to his birthplace to investigate, along with her housemate Eddie and their cat Raisin. They uncover a series of clues he left behind in his architecture to preserve his work for future generations, and together they unravel his message to the future and solve the mysteries surrounding the strange fossil!

One of the major focuses of The Corus Wave is fossils! Can you talk about what got you interested in fossils and do you do any fossil collecting yourself?

In college I took Geology as an A Level and I absolutely loved it. We had some palaeontology units and I fell pretty in love with triolobites in particular. I’ve forgotten most of what I learnt on the course, but I still have the fire of geology passion within me – my starting point for The Corus Wave was 'a treasure hunting story about some kind of strange geology'. I first went fossil hunting at the Jurassic Coast in Dorset as part of a field trip and I've been back multiple times, I think it's a really fun little excursion! I most recently went back this summer to celebrate finishing the book – we found some amazing pyritised ammonites and crinoid stem pieces! The fossil in The Corus Wave – palindenite – is a cephalopod pretty similar to an ammonite, and crinoid stems have an amazing star-shape that reminds me of the fossil too, so I was very happy to find them.

I love how you're depicting friendship in this book. Can you talk about what inspired you to make friendship such a central point of the story? 

It came quite naturally, but thinking about it there are a lot of reasons!

In my opinion, adventures are always more fun with a friend, and I wanted the mystery and the process of solving it to be fun and exciting.

Eddie and Lori are quite similar in a lot of ways, but I wanted someone who was more open-minded and outgoing than Lori to bounce off of her and to push her. Lori never would have pulled a brick out of a listed building at the start of the book, but Eddie definitely inspires her to get into the spirit of the thing.

On a more abstract scale, The Corus Wave is about connections between people through the titular wave – through time as with Corus and Lorelei, and in the present with the scientists, historians and hobbyists all working together to build a picture of the 'truth'. It's the idea of human scientific endeavour and how we can’t do it alone. Lori and Eddie's friendship, connection and moments of disconnection all tie into that theme.

The 'Corus' that the title refers to is Havius Corus, a 19th-century polymath. Can you talk about your contemporary female protagonist -- who is struggling a bit to get her life together -- interacts with that idea of a historical straight white man who can do it all?

I think Lori and Corus can relate deeply to each other – they both find themselves in privileged positions in academia – Lori as a university student and Corus as a respected academic, but their pursuit of the Corus Wave is rejected by both these institutions. Corus’ fall from grace is a bit more dramatic – becoming ostracised from scientific society and almost lost to time – and this represents a real existential fear of Lori's as someone who puts so much of her self-worth into academic success. For this reason through most of the story Lori doesn't hold much respect for Corus, despite the fact that he has made ground-breaking discoveries in her exact area of interest. Both Corus and Lori have to learn to find personal scientific fulfilment outside of academia, recognising its flaws and limitations and connecting more to the spirit of curiosity.

Side note - I'm sure in fiction Corus is written about as a man who remained single all his life, living out his latter years with a fellow bachelor who was frequently the subject of his poetry.

Your protagonist Lorelei and her roommate Eddie's cat, Raisin, travels with them via backpack for their adventures. Have you found that cats in general are sympathetic to this form of transit? Do you have recommendations for people who would like cats to be up for accompanying them thusly?

Absolutely not – my cats at least wouldn't stand for it for a second. Raisin is definitely a unique breed in that regard. But I have seen cats riding around on their owner's shoulders in cities, not often but more frequently than you would expect! I think the trick is: they'll only do it if they want to.

One of the themes of this book is about mysteries hidden both in nature and more deliberately in architecture and landscapes. Are there any particular real-life examples of this sort of thing you think are particularly cool?

Some mysterious locations that inspired The Corus Wave include: the bounty of standing stones in Cornwall (which I didn't realise weren't as common over the rest of the country) – as far as I can gather it's pretty difficult to tell why they were made or how they were used at this point, but it's fun to speculate whilst sitting amongst them, and to think about those ancient people who probably sat there too, and how no one disturbed them for all this time; The Sir John Soane House in London, which is packed to the gills with an eclectic display of statues, artworks, antiques and curiosities that Soane collected over his lifetime. There are secret panels which pull out to reveal paintings in his collection; and the Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra, Portual, a palace built in the 1900s. The owner was interested in alchemy, the Knights Templar, Freemasonry – things of that nature – and he had esoteric symbols built in all over. There is also a system of labyrinthine underground tunnels and an 'initiation well' on the grounds. There was obviously a lot of hidden meaning in the buildings, which I didn't even begin to understand as a tour-less visitor!

This is your first graphic novel! Can you talk about how the process went? 

I first conceived of The Corus Wave as a 50-60 page digital comic back in 2023, but the idea quickly grew out of hand. It was a pleasure to be able to give it the proper space to breathe in a longer, graphic novel form. I love to write and it was really fun to be able to play with a longer narrative like this with so many moving parts. That being said, The Corus Wave is more than twice the length of anything I've ever drawn before, which was definitely intimidating! By the time I finished sketching the end, my drawing had improved so much that I found the first pages unrecognisable. It was amazing to feel myself improving through the process, and with everything I learnt along the way I feel really proud of the final product.

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Check out The Corus Wave on Kickstarter now. There's going to be an awful lot to love about this one.