Foreword
So how did we get here? Funny you should ask, because I just so happen to have an answer all ready to go.
In the late seventies, within the space of about two years, I was introduced to two worlds that reshaped my world. To start with, we had the seminal one that every modern geek would talk about, the release of Star Wars in May of ‘77. The first I remember hearing of it, I was walking with my family on the boardwalk in Wildwood three months after the movie came out. I overheard my dad ask my mom if she was going to take me to see it. I also remember thinking it was “an army movie”, the star referred to in the title being white stars painted on olive green jeeps. Since I can still clearly remember the image I had in my head, the aforementioned jeep in a field, I’m guessing there’s some overlap with an HBO commercial for Patton I had seen. The rest of the memory is fleeting. But I never forgot that moment.
A couple of weeks later, I finally got to see Star Wars and to say that I was taken with it would be an understatement. Being an obsessional personality, I was quickly consumed by it, even signing one of my first grade class assignments as R2-D2. Mrs. Risser was pissed. Not my fault she didn’t have a sense of humor.
Then two years later, my third grade teacher read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to my class. Thank you Mrs. Peterson for a lifelong gift. This was followed later that year by an animated TV adaptation done by Peanuts animation great Bill Melendez. My VHS copy of that was worn to the bone.
I was entranced by these stories and the worlds they presented. Again, being an obsessional personality, they formed many of my sensibilities about what entertainment should be. I’m not going to get into their artistic merits, which are considerable and in my opinion beyond debate. I’m here to talk about entertainment; captivating an audience with imagination and emotion. That’s what those stories did for me.
That’s what I’ve tried to do with these books.
From that time on, it seems like there was always something new to discover, something new to see. Close Encounters came out only a couple of months after Star Wars and suddenly aliens were real. Superman The Movie hit the following Christmas and brought us to Krypton, a frozen crystalline world. In ‘79 we had Alien and in a flash space was horrifying.
And it didn’t stop there: The Black Hole, Empire, Flash Gordon, Raiders, Heavy Metal, Dragonslayer, Time Bandits, Tron, Blade Runner, The Dark Crystal, Star Trek II, E.T., Poltergeist, The Thing, Krull, Videodrome, Gremlins, The Last Starfighter, Ghostbusters, 2010, Dune, The Terminator, The Goonies, Back to the Future, Howard the D...I should quit while I’m ahead. And that’s not even including TV shows: Battlestar, The Phoenix, Automan, Star Blazers, Manimal, V, Amazing Stories, He-Man and The Transformers. You get the picture.
Like I said, there was always something new to discover. And I consumed them all.
Most of these had great concepts presented in a fresh way. The characters were engaging and dealt with their very human emotions. I didn’t understand it then, but they spoke to me and were more deeply informing my sensibilities of a good story. Even with the lame ones, there was almost always a positive takeaway.
The combination formed what I think could best be described as my Amblin sensibilities. That is, a combination of high adventure, discovery and characters that while not always as rounded as they should be are at least relatable and fun to be around.
That’s what I’ve tried to capture with these books.
In 2010 I hit a dry spell. The prequel trilogy was over, so was The Matrix. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy was already close to its ten year anniversary and the MCU was still more than a year away from really being a thing. I was looking for a great read that, for me, hit the above marks. But I kept coming up empty, whether it was novels, short stories or comics, nothing was grabbing me the way I wanted. As far as I was concerned, I wanted something that didn’t exist. Only one thing to do in that situation: write it myself.
This also came at a time where a good friend (thank you Tony Caputo, a great guy and even better reporter) leant me the audiobook to the Dan Brown novel The Lost Symbol. I didn’t love the book, but a line that was continually repeated in the narrative, “As above, so below,” caught my attention as I was driving to work at one in the morning. I remembered it as a tagline to the Hawkworld limited comic series from 1989. It had meant nothing to me back then, but now it struck a chord, bringing me back to an idea I had for an unrealized comic book series some ten years prior. This series would have revolved around a small cabal policing the bounds between realities. Unfortunately, I had no idea where to go with it at the time.
So I put it away for awhile. Until that line, “As above, so below,” triggered an idea for making the whole thing work; what became the initial catalyst anyway. What it gave me was a generic story of the big bad guy from a higher level of creation trying to lord over all universes (or realities, if you prefer) by forcing them to conform to his will and what his sense of existence should be. That’s where the, “As above, so below,” came in. So we would have our little band of people in open battle against a space Hitler and...I’m already bored.
Back to the drawing board. I was still happy with the core concept and the other characters (Ridley, Cozy and the crew), but I needed a worthwhile story. That meant I needed a villain who was compelling. Using a moustache twisting dude or some ice cold chick in leather hell bent on grinding everything under their collective heel just wasn’t going to cut it. After all, as far as I’m concerned, who would want to be in charge of everything? Did you ever notice in these stories, those antagonists have no great motive for what they do? They simply want to rule. Why? What do you get out of it? Most do it out of the love of conquest. But what about when that part is all over? Remember General Zod in Superman II? He was bored to death after taking the White House. What was Sauron going to do after covering the lands in darkness? Sell candles? What’s the point? Ruling...it’s one headache after another. I couldn’t relate to it.
I went in the exact opposite direction, which brought me to Larondis, a gentle being of intense conviction and devotion who seeks to undo a great wrong, no matter how much violence he’s forced to unleash. This is his story as much as it is the main character’s: Ridley. There are even parallels between the two.
What can I say about Ridley? I named him after one of my all time favorite filmmakers, Ridley Scott. And the poor kid, I decided I was going to put him through the emotional wringer before we even meet him, leaving him broken after what I felt was the worst thing a young man could be expected to endure. You’ll understand how within the first few chapters. But I didn’t want him to be some brooding mope, he had to be likable. After all, if we’re going to follow him for a whole novel (such was the original plan), we need to like hanging out with this guy.
Ultimately, though not consciously, he became an amalgam of Marty McFly, when he’s over his head in adventure, John McClane when he surprisingly rises to the adventure, Alex Rogan, when he’s being affable, sweet and devoted to his “family”, and Bruce Campbell when he’s being a blustering ass as things go sideways on him. Those Bruce Campbell moments are generally my favorites. What’s more fun than taking the piss out of your protagonist?
As the lives of Larondis and Ridley wove together, and I began to understand their wants and needs, the story started to come to light. It also became much bigger and less episodic than my original comic book series intention. As my brother Matt pointed out, you have to go where the characters and the story take you. Ultimately, as an author, you’re working in service to them, not the other way around. So when the necessities and the thrice damned intricacies of the plot dictated steering in directions I wasn’t prepared to go...I had to go. In the end, those detours lead to uncharted territory and made the story better, truer to itself and the characters. You have to let go and allow it to exist on it’s own terms, wrangling here and there to keep stray plot points from getting away or nipping the occasional continuity issue in the bud.
In the end it led to these three books. Yes, all three books are written. I could drop all three today if I chose. So why wait until all three were done to release the first?
Well, most of that goes back to what I already talked about with following where the story takes you. I was halfway through my first draft of Shadows when I realized there was too much here as far as plot and character growth, not to mention so much I wanted to explore. It seemed foolish to cram it into a single book. As much as I wanted to avoid the cliché of a trilogy, the structure felt right, and that’s what I settled on.
Once I started working on the second book, Rending the Heavens, deeper structures began to fall in place. That meant more of the intricacies I talked about above, more rules for the way the tech and nature in the story operate. And I had to make sure all of them stayed consistent throughout or I might not be able to finish the story in a fashion I found acceptable. I was not going to retcon things just to get to the ending. Either the logic is there or it’s not, so it was important to me to keep it consistent and in my control from beginning to end. I’ve seen too many long-running series fall prey to the retconning issue and I always felt for the authors when they found themselves painted into those corners.
I juggled these the best I could while digging deep into the main characters, bringing many of them to painful crossroads with deep emotional impact. But it’s not all doom and gloom. While the stakes everyone is playing for are incredibly high, the sense of a spirited adventure in exotic worlds is never far away. Again, you see my Amblin sensibilities coming through.
In the end I hope I’ve given you many new things to discover, and more importantly, to enjoy.
Michael Spina
Green, NJ
3/25/20
P.S. As one of my all time favorites, Lieutenant Columbo, would say, “Just one more thing…” There’s going to be typos. Don’t be hatin’. I have been and always shall be the worst typist. Like ever. My apologies right off the bat. Just send me an email, and I’ll make the correction.