My first exposure to Mike Carey was through is Felix Castor novel series, but he actually is a more prominent comic author. The Unwritten is the story of Tom Taylor, whose father wrote a best selling children's fantasy series with a main character somewhat inspired by Tom (Think Harry Potter). His father disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and since then, Tom has been doing nothing except getting drunk, and doing the convention circuit, signing books, and giving lectures. Many fans of the series are fixated on him, believing that he really is "Tommy Taylor". Things start getting weird, however, when someone accusing him of never having existed, followed by the very real appearance of a character from the Tommy Taylor book series. Tom knows nothing of any kind of magic, and all he knows is the geography of story telling that his father taught him. He knows where stories were written, and what real world places were used to inspire fictional locales. Here's
*contains no actual guidance for surviving a pipebomb explosion.