The book is fiction. The town it's built on is real, and the crater is real, and the bridge is real, and Fat Lance was named for a real best friend.
Mike Uhlir is a Wetumpka, Alabama transplant who fell hard for the town and its impossible history. StarFell is his love letter and his ghost story — a horror sci-fi book a kid is allowed to read, with real dread, real grief, and no vulgarity.
The spark came from sitting in the Fain Theater watching The Blob, and from learning that the place he now called home was sitting in one of the rarest above-ground impact craters on Earth — a roughly 85-million-year-old wound in the ground, hidden in plain sight under a postcard-pretty river town.
During the pandemic, Mike built a bolt-accurate CG model of the Bibb Graves Bridge for the book's animated intro — rebuilding a bridge he loved, rivet by rivet, while the rest of the world was falling apart. StarFell is what came out of that.
StarFell is a thinly-disguised love letter to Wetumpka — site of a real impact crater roughly 85 million years old, "one of the rarest above-ground impact craters in the world." The book is full of places you can stand in:
The concrete arch bridge over the Coosa River that opens the book. Mike rebuilt it in CG, bolt for bolt.
StarFell's 1820 jail — where Johnny Gale spends Issue 3 chained to a wall.
The single-screen movie house where Mike first watched The Blob. The spark.
The local museum that holds StarFell's real history — and one of the book's standing sets.
A real, endangered river snail native to central Alabama. In the book, the crystals make it bigger. Much bigger.
Every Southern town has a legendary giant catfish. StarFell's is named for Mike's childhood best friend.
The memorial motive runs through all of it. The book is dedicated, in spirit, to the people who made the place real. Leave your mark.
StarFell is a collaboration of artists who took the script and made it stand up.
StarFell has been covered by Southern lit and comics outlets — and the bridge built in CG has its own video.
→ Watch the CG bridge intro on YouTube
→ StarFell Studios — the official site
→ Press, retail, or interview requests
"It's better to give her flowers while she is here,— Johnny Gale
instead of bringing them to her when she's gone."
For press, retail orders, interviews, signings, or just to say hello — Mike reads every note.