She’s a writer, and he’s an illustrator. In eight years of marriage, one would think Geneva and Marcus Clawson would collaborate on a project. In fact, Geneva says the two had often been approached about a possible collaboration, but just never had been able to.

“It’s always been in the back of our minds, but we’ve never really had the opportunity,” she said. “We’ve always been working on either individual projects, or life and work have gotten in the way.”

However, the opportunity finally came when Marcus had a week off from work and suggested to his wife that they create a book together. Geneva would write the story, and Marcus would provide the illustrations. This collaboration culminated in the book “I Found a Darkling,” the story of a young boy who finds a shadow creature and learns the dark is not so scary after all.

The Clawsons reside in Suisun City with their three children, but they have ties to Benicia, especially Geneva who grew up in town. She is the daughter of former longtime Benicia High School math teacher John Dillow, and she had worked at Bookshop Benicia prior to becoming a mother. Geneva has always had a knack for writing, and she would spend her childhood creating paper books with stories and drawings. As an adult, she has written short stories and has always credited family as the influential force behind her passion for writing.

“My mom always read to me as a child, and she gave me a great love of books and a love of words and a love of language,” she said. “As a mother now, my children inspire them. It’s for them that I want to write children’s books and create stories that can guide them in life.”

The genesis for “I Found a Darkling” came in 2012 when Geneva had come across the word “darkling” and thought that would make a good name for a creature. She went to her computer and typed out the sentence “Today, I found a Darkling” without any story attached to it. Finding the file years later after Marcus had his week off work, she decided to use that as the first sentence of the book, and four-fifths of it became the title.

“The idea just came into my head of this little shadow creature who likes to live in the shadows and was playful, friendly and nonthreatening,” she said.

As the parents of three very young children, the Clawsons were very familiar with the fears that kids have of the dark and of sleeping at night. Their goal was to create a book that suggested the dark did not have to be scary.

“We were working on the theory that it’s the unknown that they’re really afraid of, and the dark symbolizes that,” she said. “We thought that it could be a comfort to our own children and other people’s children to be able to envision something friendly and kind and playful in the dark rather than something scary.”

In addition to Geneva’s prose, the book also utilizes Marcus’ black and white illustrations, which Geneva says perfectly captured what she had envisioned.

“Seeing the first illustrations come to life was pretty magical,” she said. “I had the concept in my head, and I’ve written so many things, but I’ve never had them illustrated before. I got to see my husband sit down and start doing sketches and jot down ideas for how we wanted the Darkling to look. He drew the first page, and it was so perfectly what I had imagined. It was really exciting.”

The Clawsons had thought about going through the traditional publishing route, but ultimately decided to get it crowdfunded through Kickstarter, where Marcus had success with his graphic novel “Mallow Man: The Sweet Taste of Justice.”

“One of the things we love about the independent creators community is to be able to share with each other our experiences and our knowledge, and we decided it was important to be able to chronicle the work as we go through it,” Geneva said. “(Traditional) publishers tend not to do that.”

Geneva hopes the book will encourage children not to be afraid of the dark.

“The dark doesn’t have to be scary,” she said. “There are a million ways to imagine the world, and you can choose what perspective you want to take. Something can be scary and intimidating, or you can decide to try and find something good in it.”

To learn more about “I Found a Darkling,” visit its website at IFoundADarkling.com. To donate to the project, visit ifoundadarkling.com/fund.