The Story Behind the Story: The Storm by Dan Jolley

So if you’re looking for a tense mystery-thriller… if you’re interested in a formidable female protagonist described as “a tall glass of Serena Williams”… if you’re intrigued by just how vile and deviant some aspects of human nature can get… and if you want it all wrapped up in a bow that smells like fried chicken and apple sauce? Then I invite you to check out The Storm. 

I’ve been writing books with fantastical elements, but which take place in the real world, for a while now. The Five Elements trilogy was set mostly in San Francisco, and the Gray Widow trilogy took place almost exclusively in Atlanta. But my new novel The Storm differs from those in a couple of significant ways.

First, this is my first book without any fantastical elements. No fantasy, no sci-fi – it’s a dark, sometimes nasty mystery thriller, and relies on nothing but good old-fashioned human awfulness for most of its conflicts. (A beta reader described it as Silence of the Lambs meets Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.)

Second, The Storm takes place in a tiny, fictional northwest Georgia town called Red Springs, inspired by a location that’s far more personal to me than San Francisco or Atlanta. I grew up in a tiny northwest Georgia town called Ringgold, and a lot of the features of Red Springs had direct inspirations from Ringgold itself.

This is not to say that Red Springs is a literal stand-in. Big chunks of the fictional town came from my imagination and nowhere else.

But there are a few bits, here and there, that I can point to and say, “Yup, that’s where that came from.”

The whole project began in my head in 2011.

I left Ringgold when I went to college, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and in the intervening twenty-odd years, lived in a few different places around the country. But in 2009 I came back to Ringgold, married a girl I had known literally all my life, and settled down here.

Then, a couple of years later, one fateful afternoon in April, a massive tornado hit Ringgold and essentially tore the town in half. Eight people died, including one retired school administrator and one entire family. The town suffered millions of dollars in property damage. Most visibly, about ninety percent of the trees throughout the town got knocked over, or uprooted completely or, in many cases, snapped off about ten feet above the ground.

This used to be a Shell gas station:

I took that photo this year. Eight years later. It’s taken that long to rebuild on the site.

One of the places the tornado hit the hardest was Cherokee Valley Road, the direct inspiration for Fox Valley Road in The Storm. Most of the houses there have been rebuilt now, but this is one that wasn’t:

That’s a driveway that used to have a house at the end of it. A lot of the houses along that road were reduced to driveways that just led out to bare concrete slabs.

There’s a cemetery right in the middle of town — Anderson Cemetery — and it used to have a lot of beautiful old trees that provided welcome shade for visitors on summer days. The tornado took almost all of them. The trees are still gone, but the town was quick to replace one of the two flags that fly over the graves. You might recognize it from the cover of the book.

By the grace of God, my house was spared completely.

It took a while for the roads to get cleared. Once I was able to drive through town again, I barely recognized the place. There were fields of rubble where once there had been houses and businesses. Vehicles lay upside down, cast about carelessly, some of them lodged in the branches of surviving trees. The steeple of my parents’ church lay in the middle of the main street.

My brother-in-law’s house took a little damage, mainly to one end of the roof, but the most unusual thing he found in the wake of the storm was the mangled, crumpled-up trampoline in his backyard. My brother-in-law did not own a trampoline.

Pretty soon, I started thinking about that. How something from some other household, something that belonged to someone else, just showed up in the wake of the tornado. And I thought about a house, a couple of miles from my own house, that had been abandoned for as long as I could remember.

This is that house:

I started wondering, what if the tornado destroyed that place, and scattered bits of whatever was left inside it all over the county? That idea eventually refined itself into, what if the tornado ripped that house off its foundation, and revealed something horrible underneath?

What if the thing that got revealed was a torture dungeon? A recently-used torture dungeon? What if the storm revealed that a predator had been dwelling among the townsfolk, undetected, for years, and that it took the tornado to expose this monster?

The rest of the book took shape pretty quickly after that. The question of who was using that torture dungeon, and for what, and who was going to be the one to try to stop that person, all fell into place, one after the other.

I soon realized that the protagonist was the first Black female sheriff the town had ever had. I realized that the story needed to be set in mid-2017 when Trump and all his supporters were still in their relatively-unblemished honeymoon phase. And I realized that the antagonist — a creation I’m pretty damn proud of, if I do say so myself — would be inextricably linked to the kind of systemic, baked-in, Deep Southern racism that still lives and breathes and thrives in ugly little corners of the country. The kind I’ve witnessed first-hand way too often.

So if you’re looking for a tense mystery-thriller… if you’re interested in a formidable female protagonist described as “a tall glass of Serena Williams”… if you’re intrigued by just how vile and deviant some aspects of human nature can get… and if you want it all wrapped up in a bow that smells like fried chicken and apple sauce?

Then I invite you to check out The Storm.

Dan Jolley
February 16, 2019

The Storm

by Dan Jolley

December 13, 2018

292 pages

A tiny town in Georgia’s northwest corner — ninety-five percent white. Five percent black. Utterly unprepared for the devastating tornado that rips and smashes through it one dark August day. 

SHERIFF ZANDRA SEAGRAVES already faced an uphill battle. Elected by a fluke, Red Springs’ first-ever black, female sheriff leads the recovery efforts, despite knowing how much the townspeople–and her own department–loathe her. But Zandra has no idea just how hellish things are about to get. 

Because one of the relief workers stumbles across a ghastly secret: the tornado tore a long-abandoned house off its foundations, revealing a grisly, recently-used torture dungeon below it. 

A monster has been dwelling in Red Springs. Undetected for years. Preying on the unsuspecting populace. His atrocities only brought to light because of the storm. 

Now, amid the tornado’s wreckage and surrounded by people who want her gone, Zandra has to hunt this monster down before he disappears again. And to do it, she’ll have to peel back all of Red Springs’ dark, corrupted layers. One vile secret at a time. 

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About the author:

Website-Twitter
Dan Jolley began writing professionally at age 19. Starting out in comic books, Dan has worked for major publishers such as DC (Firestorm), Marvel (Dr. Strange), Dark Horse (Aliens), and Image (G.I. Joe), and soon branched out into licensed-property novels (Star Trek), film novelizations (Iron Man), and original novels, including the Middle Grade Urban Fantasy series Five Elements and the Urban Sci-Fi Gray Widow Trilogy.

Dan began writing for video games in 2007 and has contributed storylines, characters, and dialogue to titles such as Transformers: War for Cybertron, Prototype 2, and Dying Light, among others. Dan lives with his wife Tracy and a handful of largely inert felines in northwest Georgia, and enjoys connecting with readers via his website.

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Dan Jolley Guest Post: Top Five facts about Gray Widow's suit.

Top Five facts about Gray Widow's suit.

When I was nineteen, I was part of a Dungeons & Dragons group that included a guy in his mid-twenties named Dan Shepherd. We all called him “Snake” to keep from confusing him with me (I never found out where that nickname came from). Snake was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, with a dust-dry sense of humor and deadpan delivery that rivals Stephen Wright’s. He was the DM, and he led us on the hands-down craziest D&D campaigns I’ve ever experienced or even heard of. During the course of our adventures, we wandered into the Forest of Giant Insects and Monster Trucks…we fought fantasy versions of both the Predator and Jason Voorhees…and we attended a concert given by a minor nobleman called Umlaut F, who spent the whole evening doing Paul McCartney covers.

Insanity aside, Snake made an observation about superhero comics at one point that really, profoundly stuck with me. He said, “Why create a character so powerful that you have to give him a stupid weakness? I’d rather see someone who could be killed by, y’know, bullets.”

That was a revelation to my comics-reading, dumbass nineteen-year-old self. Why indeed? Why give your protagonist such a great advantage that their weakness turns out to be arbitrary, such as some sort of alien mineral, or the color yellow?

The protagonist of the Gray Widow Trilogy, Janey Sinclair, can already do some pretty remarkable things. She’s about as strong as three very fit adult men combined; she can see in total darkness; and, most significantly, she can teleport from one patch of darkness to another. That’s where her “Augmentations” end, though. She’s not super-fast, she doesn’t have any kind of super-healing ability, and she is by no means invulnerable to harm. Because of that, and because in the course of the story she decides go out and try to correct some injustices on the streets of Atlanta (not to mention confronting the aliens who eventually show up), I decided Janey had probably better get her hands on some sort of personal protection.

Being able to teleport makes it incredibly easy to be a thief. Janey is not a thief by nature, but when she infiltrates a military weapons research facility and finds a suit of gray body armor several times more effective than Kevlar—finds it sitting in a vault, collecting dust, no less—she doesn’t feel a bit bad about making off with it. The suit, composed of a material called Vylar, has done its job of keeping Janey alive prettty well so far.

Here are five characteristics of it that make it perfect not only for Janey’s purposes, but also for my taste in superhumanly-augmented protagonists.

1. It stops higher-caliber bullets better than traditional body armor.
Janey’s primary reason for wearing the suit at all is that she doesn’t want to get shot and killed. Ordinary body armor is great against handguns, but won’t do much against, say, an AK-47. The Vylar suit will protect her against larger-arms fire, but even then, she does her absolute best not to get shot in the first place. The suit won’t let bullets penetrate, but she’ll still get swatted down and covered with nasty, painful bruises nonetheless.

2. It covers her face.
This one’s pretty superhero-tropey, but most tropes exist because they work in one way or another. If you’re engaging in any kind of behavior outside the law, it’s in your best interests not to let anyone know who you are. Janey hovers right above the poverty line, thanks to making her living as a fine artist, and really doesn’t want to have to come up with bail money.

3. She has to wash it out every night.
Not exactly an advantage, I know—okay, not an advantage at all, but something that’s always bothered me about characters who wear outfits that have to be hot as blazes. Janey sweats just like anybody else, and by the time she’s done prowling through the Atlanta streets from dusk till dawn (or dealing with extraterrestrials who view humans as raw material), particularly in the summer, the Vylar suit is absolutely drenched. Janey’s developed a routine that includes hosing the suit down in the shower and hanging it up to air-dry before she takes the time to bathe herself.

4. It takes paint well.
At first, Janey isn’t even aware that, thanks to a pronouncement made by a colorful street preacher within earshot of a reporter, the press has dubbed her “the Gray Widow.” She doesn’t intend to announce herself, or even give herself a name at all; she just wants to find crimes being committed and shut them down harshly. But once it’s clear that the Gray Widow moniker is going to stick, Janey decides to run with it, and uses her painting skills to decorate the suit with some spider-ish patterns, including eight black eye-spots on the helmet. That also inspires her to start putting the same eye-spot pattern (“The Eyes of the Widow”) around the city, along with a public message: If you can see this, I can see you.

5. Its protection only goes so far.
In the second book of the trilogy, Gray Widow’s Web, Janey encounters another Augmented individual, a young woman who calls herself Aphrodite Lupo. Aphrodite’s Augmentations are very different from Janey’s, and involve both shape-shifting and massively enhanced strength. Thanks to those characteristics, and Aphrodite’s desire to murder Janey right in her face, Janey finds out the limits to which the suit can be pushed—resulting in a bunch of holes in the suit in really inconvenient places.

I hope you’ll join Janey as she continues trying to exorcise her personal demons, attempting to keep the Earth safe from outside threats, and inadvertently following DARPA-inspired fashion cues.

Gray Widow's Web (The Gray Widow Trilogy Book 2)

by Dan Jolley
May 26, 2017

316 pages

JANEY SINCLAIR never knew how or why she gained her ability to teleport. She never wanted it, and for years tried her best to ignore it. But when horrible violence shattered her world, she vowed to use her mysterious talent to protect the citizens of Atlanta, in an effort to prevent anyone else from suffering the kind of agony she had. Wearing a suit of stolen military body armor, Janey became known to the public as the GRAY WIDOW.

But now the extraterrestrial source of her “Augmentation” is about to reveal itself, in an event that will profoundly impact Janey’s life and the lives of those closest to her—
TIM KAPOOR, who barely survived the assault of twisted, bloodthirsty shapeshifter Simon Grove and still struggles to pull himself together, both physically and mentally.
NATHAN PITTMAN, the teenager who got shot trying to imitate Janey’s vigilante tactics, and has since become obsessed with the Gray Widow.

SHA’DAE WILKERSON, Janey’s neighbor and newfound best friend, whose instant chemistry with Janey may have roots that neither of them fully understand.
And Janey’s going to need all the help she can get, because one of the other Augments has her sights set on the Gray Widow. The terrifying abomination known as APHRODITE LUPO is more powerful and lethal than anyone or anything Janey has ever faced. And Aphrodite is determined to recruit Janey to her twisted cause…or take her off the field for good.
Unrelenting ghosts of the past clash with the vicious threats of the future. Janey’s destiny bursts from the shadows into the light in GRAY WIDOW’S WEB, leaving the course of humanity itself forever changed.

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About the author:

Website-Twitter

Dan Jolley started writing professionally at age nineteen. Beginning in comic books, he soon branched out into original novels, licensed-property novels, children’s books, and video games. His twenty-six-year career includes the YA sci-fi/espionage trilogy Alex Unlimited; the award-winning comic book mini-series Obergeist; the Eisner Award-nominated comic book mini-series JSA: The Liberty Files; and the Transformers video games War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron. Dan was co-writer of the world-wide-bestselling zombie/parkour game Dying Light, and is the author of the Middle Grade Urban Fantasy novel series Five Elements. Dan lives somewhere in the northwest Georgia foothills with his wife Tracy and a handful of largely inert cats.

Interview: Author Dan Jolley (Gray Widow's Walk)

Today we talk with author Dan Jolley about his newest release Gray Widow's Walk, comics and the importance of flossing! 

Sharon: Welcome back! It has been two years since you were last here…has much changed in your life since then? (interview)

Dan:  Well, professionally, the biggest, most successful project I’ve ever been associated with came out -- the parkour vs. zombies video game Dying Light -- so now I can actually say my words have been read (or heard, rather) by millions and millions of people. That’s one big triumph. The next one came a bit later, when I got two novel series greenlit: a Middle Grade urban fantasy series from HarperCollins called Five Elements (debuting October 18, 2016), and the one we’re talking about today, the Gray Widow Trilogy from Seventh Star Press.

Personally, the biggest change for me was a bad one. My wife’s mother lived with us, and we lost her last year to cancer. Since I work from home, I was the one who spent the most time with her, and she and I were super close. I won the mother-in-law MegaMillions jackpot with her. So losing her turned our lives upside down. It’s not the kind of thing you ever “get over,” but we’re getting better. Granny, as everyone called her, will most likely be the subject of her own book sometime in the next few years.

Sharon: Sorry about your loss…it is wonderful that you have the ability to give her a story like that.

Dan: She SO deserves it.

Sharon: When/how did the idea for Gray Widow’s Walk form? Why did you set it in Atlanta?

Dan: Believe it or not, I first got the idea back in 1987. I was watching an episode of The Equalizer, and William Atherton played this terrifying contract killer called Alpha. At one point, Alpha put on this costume: he dressed as a Catholic priest and painted his face, one half solid white and the other half solid black. Something about that image really resonated with me, and I got the idea of creating a superhero character called “The Priest.” (Forgive me, I was sixteen.)

Over the course of many years, I tried to do something with the character, first in comics, and then in prose form. I actually finished the first draft of the novel in 1996, and by then the character had changed so much there was basically nothing left of the original “Priest” concept. The book had also become a sort of science-fiction/horror amalgam, though it still maintained a lot of superhero tropes. I showed it to a few literary agents, but the overwhelming response was, “Superhero fiction? No one’s looking for this! What are you thinking?” People also questioned why I had set it in Atlanta; that was simply because I’m from Georgia, and at the time there wasn’t much fiction located in the city.

Sharon: We should call you Dan “trend-setter” Jolley!

Dan: HA! Riiiight. J

So anyway, the book went on the shelf.

Many more years later, I met Stephen Zimmer, and he told me he’d be willing to give the book a read. So I hauled it out, dusted it off...and realized it didn’t work. I mean, it was hopelessly dated, for one thing, but also I just wasn’t satisfied with the story anymore. I gave it a good bit of thought, and the solution finally smacked me over the head: the main character needed to be a woman. This required another, not-insubstantial re-write, but I was happy to do it, because it felt really really right and I knew I was onto something good.

I finally showed the book to Stephen, and he said, “Yup, that works! Let’s publish it!”

Sharon: Tell us about the heroine of Gray Widow’s Walk, Janey Sinclair?

Dan: At one point in the book, Janey describes herself as a “weird loner.” She’s never felt as if she fit in anywhere; for one thing, her father was a stage magician, and she spent a lot of time traveling with him when she was a girl, which prevented her from making long-lasting friends or putting down roots. For another, she is what I refer to as aggressively multi-ethnic—her background, which she details in the story, includes German, Seminole, African-American, and Filipino, and because of that, she’s often felt as if there’s not really a place where she truly fits in. (I have a niece and nephew who are both African-American, adopted into a white family, and I’ve seen some of the societal friction that can cause.)

By the time she reaches adulthood, Janey has grown accustomed to a solitary way of living her life, and since she makes a living as a painter (fine art, not houses), she sees nothing wrong with her hermit-like habits.

Two things disrupt that solitary life, though: first, she meets and falls in love with a young man, marries him, and then loses him in a devastating way. Second, out of the blue one night, she develops the ability to teleport from one patch of darkness to another. The amount of anger she’s been building up suddenly has a very effective outlet. Janey steals a suit of military body armor, takes to the streets of Atlanta, and starts dealing out the kind of justice she wishes could have prevailed in her own life. Of course, once the public becomes aware of her, things get much, much more complicated, on a scale she’s not really prepared for.

Sharon: If you acquired the ability to teleport would you use it for good (superhero stuff) or for evil (robbing banks) or would you be a shade of GRAY?

Dan: I’d like to think I’d use it for good…but I’m afraid it’d be pure human nature to use it, not for evil, exactly, but for selfish purposes. That’s actually one of the central concepts of my comic book series, Bloodhound — that most people, if they gained superhuman abilities, would not only use them selfishly, but that the public would never even be aware of them. Money would just go missing from a bank, or someone would just fall over dead, and there’d be no way to know who did it or how. There wouldn’t be anyone in a shiny purple-and-gold costume flying around goading the police. It’d just be a mystery.

Who knows, maybe Bloodhound and Gray Widow will cross over at some point?

Sharon: Was it easy to come up with your main character’s superhero name? What were some other names you thought about?

Dan: Coming up with original superhero names is incredibly difficult, because if they haven’t been used already in comic books, they’ve been used already in games like World of Warcraft. I mentioned that the character was originally called “The Priest.” That was on-the-nose and terrible. I finally changed his name to “The Redeemer,” and for a while the book was called “Redeemer’s Law.” But “Redeemer” is already a comic book character.

It got slightly easier when I changed the protagonist from male to female, but even then I ran through a ton of possibilities, and discovered that I either didn’t like the names, or that they had, of course, already been used somewhere. Finally, my wife Tracy suggested that I make Janey’s body armor some color other than black, and use that in her name; one color change and some Google searches later, I discovered that there had never been a character called “The Gray Widow.” Stephen King has some monsters in one of his books called “Gray Widowers,” but those are actual spider-like creatures, so I think I’m okay.

Sharon: You did some things on your wife’s “honey-do” list to thank her for helping?

Dan: She gets a kick out of helping me come up with stuff, and her good-idea-to-bad-idea ratio is a lot more favorable than mine. At one point, Shawn deLoache and I were working on another project and got kind of stuck on a plot point, and Shawn said, “Why don’t you go ask Tracy, and we’ll reconvene tomorrow?”

Sharon: Before publishing Gray Widow’s Walk, your first adult novel, you were writing comic books. Do you have any upcoming comic projects you can talk about?

Dan: I’m actually working on a series of YA graphic novels now, published by Dark Horse Comics, called LARP! I’m co-writing with Shawn deLoache, and all the art’s done by Marlin Shoop. The first volume is available now, and we’re close to done with the second.

LARP! is about a kid named Pete Ford who’s always been a short, shlubby nerd. But an unexpected growth spurt coinciding with a move to a new school across the country gives him the opportunity to join the cool crowd for the first time ever. The problem is, there’s a fantastic Live-Action Role-Playing club in the new town, and Pete’s faced with a dilemma: to geek or not to geek?

The Flock: *chants* Geek, Geek, Geek!

Sharon: What was your last dream about?

Dan: I had one last night that started out at a sort of modern art gallery showing, and turned into something about a paramilitary group hunting bloodthirsty aliens that had disguised themselves as human. I think. That might have been it. I don’t usually remember my dreams all that well, and the parts I do remember don’t often make much sense.

Sharon: you could totally write a SyFy movie with that

Dan: Yeah, except now that I think about it, that’s basically the plot of that new SyFy series Hunters. Coming up with ideas is easy. Coming with good ideas, that haven’t been done to death? That’s really freaking hard.

Sharon: Do you have a talent that most people don’t know about?

Dan: Not a good one. I sort of see individual letters instead of whole words, and because of that I have a tendency to read words and names backward just as easily as I read them forward. It also makes me insanely good at word-scramble puzzles, and I spot names that are anagrams of other names pretty much instantly. Like, when Kurt Busiek’s beyond-excellent comic book series “Astro City” came out, I saw that a character’s name was Asa Martin, and instantly thought, “Oh, that’s ‘Samaritan’ rearranged.” Talk about a marketable skill!

Sharon: Find a word scramble tournament in Vegas…let me know so I can place my bets ;)

Dan: I’ll keep an eye out for that. J

Sharon: What is your favorite position to sleep in and how many pillow do you use?

Dan: I have to sleep half-curled on my side. If I’m on my back, my throat sort of falls closed or something, and I heave out some truly earth-shaking snores. Tracy’s good about nudging me if I wind up on my back, though, and when nudged, I’m good about rolling back over onto my side. As far as pillows, it’s a normal one between my knees, and one I got from a chiropractor under my giant head.

Sharon: What is the nerdiest thing you own?

Dan: This guy: Adam Warlock, from Marvel Comics. I’ve had him since around 1990. That’s the Soul Stone embedded in his forehead, too -- one of the Infinity Stones that are playing such a major role in the Marvel movies.

Sharon: Wow, he’s cool…doesn’t Vision have the same thing in his head?

Dan: As I understand it, if I’m not snarling up my Marvel lore too much, the one in the Vision’s forehead is the Mind Stone. Different color, different powers, etc.

Rapid Fire:

Sharon: javelin or shot put?

Dan: Javelin! I can pretend they’re Zeus’s lightning bolts!

Sharon: you are such a nerd! <G>

Dan: Proud and card-carrying!

Sharon: air guitar or air drums?

Dan: Air drums. You get more exercise that way.

public domain image

Sharon: flossing or no flossing?

Dan: RELIGIOUS flossing.

Sharon: Whoa! Bad experience from not flossing?

Dan: I read somewhere that not flossing can actually lead to a whole host of health issues, including heart problems. My family already has enough of a history with bad hearts, so I don’t want to chance it.

Sharon: American Ninja Warrior or Dancing with the Stars?

Dan: American Ninja Warrior. I question that other show’s definition of “star.”

Sharon: salt water or fresh water? Fresh water!

Dan: Much less chance of getting eaten!

Sharon: LOL! Good thinking….

Sharon: Thanks for stopping by. You want a moon pie?

Dan: You bet I do!

Gray Widow's Walk

by Dan Jolley

April 19, 2016

344 pages

Seventh Star Press

“The only thing in this world you can truly control is yourself.”

Janey Sinclair’s ability to teleport has always been a mystery to her. She tried for years to ignore it, but when tragedy shatters her life, Janey’s anger consumes her. She hones her fighting skills, steals a prototype suit of military body armor, and takes to the streets of Atlanta, venting her rage as the masked vigilante dubbed “the Gray Widow” by the press.

But Janey’s power, and her willingness to use it, plunges her into a conflict on a much grander scale than she had anticipated.

Soon she encounters Simon Grove, a bloodthirsty runaway with a shapeshifting ability gone horribly wrong…

Garrison Vessler, an ex-FBI agent and current private defense contractor, who holds some of the answers Janey’s been searching for…

And Tim Kapoor, the first person in years with a chance of breaking through Janey’s emotional shell—if she’ll let him.

But as Janey’s vigilantism gains worldwide attention, and her showdown with Simon Grove draws ever closer, the reason for her augmented abilities—hers and all the others like her—begins to reveal itself. Because, high above the Earth, other eyes are watching. And they have far-reaching plans…

Gray Widow’s Walk is book one of the Gray Widow Trilogy, to be followed by Gray Widow’s Web and Gray Widow’s War.

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About the author:

website-twitter

Dan Jolley started writing professionally at age nineteen. Beginning in comic books, he has since branched out into original novels, licensed-property novels, children’s books, and video games. His twenty-five-year career includes the YA sci-fi/espionage trilogy Alex Unlimited; the award-winning comic book mini-series Obergeist; the Eisner Award-nominated comic book mini-series JSA: The Liberty Files; and the Transformers video games War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron. Dan was co-writer of the world-wide-bestselling zombie/parkour game Dying Light, and lead writer of the Oculus Rift game Chronos. Dan lives somewhere in the northwest Georgia foothills with his wife Tracy and a handful of largely inert cats. Gray Widow’s Walk is his first adult novel.

The Genesis of The Imaginarium Convention- Part I: concept and venue

Ever wonder what goes into creating a convention? Stephen Zimmer has agreed to take us through the steps. He has agreed to do a six week series about what it took to put together Imaginarium which will make its debut this September.

http://www.entertheimaginarium.com/

The Genesis of Imaginarium

Conventions start with ideas, conceived in the imagination, and then they take their first steps in the physical world. With Imaginarium, the idea took form as a result of what kind of convention I would love to see as a writer myself.

I go to many conventions, including several truly wonderful ones that are “must-go” events each year. So when I talk about building the convention that I always wanted to see, it is in no way a negative reflection of any other.

Quite simply, I wanted to see an event where creative writing and storytelling stood as the centerpiece and focus of the entire convention. I wanted to see something that was rich in content, yet fun to attend. Out of these main focal points, the idea of Imaginarium was born.

In concept, Imaginarium is a convention all about creative writing, including all genres of books, as well as screenwriting, poetry, comics/graphic novels, game-design, and all areas that involve the creative writer. A comprehensive collection of panel sessions and workshops is set within the atmosphere of a convention environment, making it a great place for all kinds of folks to gather for learning, networking, promoting their works, and, just as importantly, having fun.

It is the kind of event that readers and writers alike can enjoy, and where different genres and types of writing can smoothly come together. Because of this, there are unique opportunities for learning and cross-networking that you will not find at more genre-specific events. I strongly believe that there are many things that pursuers of one discipline can learn from another, especially in the arts of storytelling.

This year, Imaginarium will feature over 140 panels and workshop sessions organized along twelve primary categories. All sorts of topics will be addressed, from social networking to book blogging, from editing to publishing, to screenplays, writing for comics, game-design, and all kinds of topics addressing various aspects of the craft of writing.

The Guest of Honor for our debut is Rose Pressey, a tremendous success story in the indie book world and a resident of Imaginarium’s home state of Kentucky, making our choice of her one that is perfectly suited for Imaginarium’s debut. The convention also features special honored guests called Imaginators. This year’s group includes Jeffrey Reddick, screenwriter and creator of the well-loved Final Destination movie series, Dan Jolley, who has had multiple projects with Dark Horse Comics and worked on several Transformers video games, and Maurice Broaddus, author of the Knights of Breton Court urban fantasy series from Angry Robot. They spearhead a list of over 130 professional guests who will be appearing in the main programming spanning Friday to Sunday.

Dan Jolley (left) and Jeffery Reddick (right)

Maurice Broaddus

Of course, none of this can get off the ground properly without the right event site, and that’s where the Imaginarium Convention took its first main step. Before we could give the full go-ahead for Imaginarium, we had to be absolutely sure that we had the right home and I had only one place in mind: The Crowne Plaza Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky.

Location and quality of facility is paramount with any convention, to say nothing of a brand new one. The Crowne Plaza is a first class hotel and event site that hosts many excellent conventions, not the least of which is the storied WonderFest, regarded as one of the top toy and modeling conventions in the nation (and world). The Crowne Plaza is of the size that it can accommodate a convention of up to 5,000 attendees or more with ease, so there’s plenty of room to grow from year one.

The Crowne Plaza is located right by the Louisville airport, quite literally a stone’s throw away. This makes it a breeze for those who fly in. For those driving, it is directly off the I-65 interstate. It involves no downtown driving and has a huge amount of free parking available.

For guests and attendees alike, the choice of the Crowne Plaza as our site was really a no-brainer. Of course, just because you want a particular site doesn’t mean that you’ll get the timing desired.

I wanted a Fall date, something not too close to Dragon*Con though. After examining their calendar and availability, the hotel got back to us with some options. We were able to get the kind of layout we needed for the September 19-21 weekend, a time that put us a more comfortable 3 weeks away from the mega-event in Atlanta where many of our guest panelists also attend. With the desired array of room spaces and appropriate spot on the calendar, we contracted for the debut of Imaginarium.

With the right concept and venue in place, we could advance our Imaginarium journey. The next steps involved quite a few things, from seeking sponsors, to vendors, organizing for the programming and guests, and a good number of other initial tasks. We will be exploring the evolution of Imaginarium over the coming weeks, but concept and location are the start, and every great story must have a beginning! Until next time!

-Stephen

About the Author:

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Born in Denver, Colorado, Stephen Zimmer is an award-winning fantasy author and filmmaker based out of Lexington, Kentucky.

Stephen has two series being published through Seventh Star Press. One is the epic fantasy Fires in Eden Series, which was launched with Crown of Vengeance (winner of the 2010 Pluto Award for Best Novel). Book 2, Dream of Legends, was released in January of 2011. The other is the epic urban fantasy series The Rising Dawn Saga. The Rising Dawn Saga launched in spring of 2009 with The Exodus Gate (nominated for a 2009 Pluto Award). The next step was taken in June of 2010 with The Storm Guardians. Highly prolific, Stephen is adhering to a release schedule that sees a new book approximately every seven months!

As a filmmaker, Stephen has credits in fantasy and horror, including the supernatural thriller Shadows Light (feature), The Sirens (horror short film), and Swordbearer (fantasy short film). Swordbearer debuted in early 2011 and is currently being exhibited on the convention and festival circuit. Featuring a special appearance by former WWE wrestler Al Snow, the film is based upon the H. David Blalock novel Ascendant.

Comic Review: Terminator: Enemy of My Enemy #1/#2

Terminator: Enemy of My Enemy #1 (Jamal Igle cover)

Writer: Dan Jolley

Penciller: Jamal Igle

Inker: Ray Snyder

Cover Artist: Jamal Igle
Genre: Action/Adventure, Science-Fiction
Publication Date: February 19, 2014

Format: FC, 32 pages; Miniseries

Price: $3.99

UPC: 7 61568 24901 9 00111

Preview

In 1984, Kyle Reese protected Sarah Connor from a cyborg that would stop at nothing to terminate her. In 1985, Skynet targets a scientist whose discoveries threaten its future, but this time there is no resistance fighter sent back to face it! With only enemies around her, what chance does Elise Fong stand against the perfect killing machine?
* Fan-favorite writer Dan Jolley (Bloodhound, Prototype 2)!
* Supergirl artist Jamal Igle !

Terminator: Enemy of My Enemy #2Writer: Dan Jolley

Penciller: Jamal Igle

Inker: Ray Snyder

Colorist: Moose Baumann

Cover Artist: Jamal Igle
Genre: Action/Adventure, Science-Fiction
Dark Horse

Publication Date: March 19, 2014

Format: FC, 32 pages; Miniseries

Price: $3.99

UPC: 7 61568 24901 9 00211

Preview

Biotechnician Elise Fong is destined to discover a vital weapon against the Terminators, and Skynet has no intention of waiting until she does! Targeted for actions in her future, Fong’s only hope in the present is the ex-CIA operative tasked with kidnapping her. But can even CIA training stop a T-800?

To this day, Terminator 2: Judgment Day remains one of my all-favorite movies. I hadn't seen the first Terminator movie at the time its sequel hit theaters, but that didn't matter. Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg sent back in time to protect the leader of a human resistance against machines? A thirteen-year-old boy hears a premise like that and he's on board, no questions asked.

The sequels beyond that, however...sigh. Sufficed to say they've fallen well short of the mark. So maybe a different medium is needed to recapture that boyhood wonder. Enter The Terminator: Enemy of My Enemy.

Set in 1985, shortly after the events of the original Terminator film, a new T-800 has arrived from the future, only this time Skynet sends it in search of a scientist in New York City. Cosmetically different than the first Terminator, there's no sign of Arnold. There's no sign of Sarah Conner, either. This is a completely divergent storyline here, featuring a new protagonist in the form of a female super agent named Farrow Greene, tasked with delivering Dr. Elise Fong to her employers safe and sound, no questions asked. But when she runs afoul of the T-800, questions abound.

The first issue wound up being a bit underwhelming for me, in so much that I had sky-high expectations for a Terminator story. Maybe I should have lowered the expectations a bit given the lackluster productions from years past, but Dan Jolley is a heckuva writer, and while he's honed in on a ass-kicking female protagonist, this inaugural issue just fell a bit short of getting me on the bandwagon. A metric ton of action, however, kept me engaged going into the second issue.

And that's where things really heat up. Dr. Fong is holding information back from Greene, even when it seems the T-800 and other forces are at work to put her six feet under. Throw in a flash-forward that offers a new twist to the backstory on this one, further contextualizing the Termintor universe as a whole, and I'm definitely on the bandwagon to see how the third issue shapes up.

4 Sheep 

Gef Fox
http://waggingthefox.blogspot.com/