Hey, I Have A Book Out Today

Also, I ramble about writing

Mine Is A Long Lonesome Grave, my book from Oni with Chris Shehan, is out today. It’s folk horror meets crime, so if you liked, uh, Harrow and/or Dead Body Road, this is the book for you.

We’re advertising it as a revenge story but it’s not, exactly. It’s sort of the inverse.

Daily Dead has an interview with me, a summary of the book and some preview pages, so that’s the place to go.

Dig it:

https://dailydead.com/qa-writer-justin-jordan-discusses-the-folk-magic-and-looming-dread-of-new-comic-book-series-mine-is-a-long-lonesome-grave/

Completely unrelated to that, I was thinking about a thing I’m working on, and now I’m going to inflict those thoughts on you. There are spoilers for a book I haven’t written yet, so…be aware, I guess?

The One Moment

I'm working on a book that's about....well, basically, for the last thirty odd years, every day, some one on Earth gets your basic flying brick powerset - invulnerability, flight, vast strength - for twenty four hours.

Only twenty four hours. The process is totally random, so the powers go to anyone. One issue is about a toddler having them.

So it's a series of vignettes about what we do and don't do with power. But because I'm me, some of what's going on in the background is how this changes society.

Not as much as you'd think. But one thing that everyone has been dreading is someone getting the powers who is both evil and prepared. Essentially, the worst case scenario is 'what if a school shooter got Superman's basic powerset'.

There's a contingency for this, called Threshold. Which is...

S

P

O

I

L

E

R

S

...for a book I have yet to write...

...nuking them. And the problem is they have no idea if this will actually work.

So naturally, what the series is building to is the worst case scenario happening - it's Johnny Bates in London time - and Threshold is crossed.

It doesn't work.

And The Monster, what the person with the power murdering thousands ends up called, is PISSED.

But that is not the moment I am writing for. Although it's a good one.

Earlier in the series, there's a vignette called Reflected Glory, which is about a kid with a strained relationship with their elder sibling, and the kid is obsessed with being a superhero. Hoping every day to get the Power.

Naturally, their mopey elder sibling gets it, and it's a heart warming tale of bonding.

So after the Threshold has been crossed, and The Monster is rampaged, things are bad. But then they pick something up on radar.

Something moving faster and faster - way faster than anything has ever been recorded moving through the atmosphere other than the person with the powerset.

So fast the air is burning. You can see where this is going. Crossing the threshold has split the power, somehow. Someone else has it as well as the Monster. Someone on their way. The Kid crashes into the Monster, hitting them so hard they end up several states away.

Final panel of that issue is The Kid, standing there, ready, saying "Pick on someone your own size"

THAT is the one moment.

The reason I'm writing the thing. The emotional crux of the whole thing. I know it won't be as cool or as awesome as it is in my head, because it never is, but it's the true north of the story.