Interview with Jack Lowe, Co-Author of THE JEKYLL ISLAND CHRONICLES

It’s my pleasure to introduce Jack Lowe, co-author with Steve Nedvidek and Ed Crowell, of the gorgeously produced The Jekyll Island Chronicles! I was recently sent review copies of the first two books in the series, and I look forward to diving into them soon. Before we get to the interview, here’s what the series is about:

At the beginning of the twentieth century, one sixth of the world’s wealth vacationed in and around the tiny Georgia island of Jekyll. Captains of industry like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Morgan, and Carnegie all called the Jekyll area home. Blending elements of historical fact, clockwork technology, and Diesel-punk style, The Jekyll Island Chronicles spans an age of furious mechanical advancement while exploring the span of man’s soul—whether good or evil.

In Book Two of this alt-history adventure, Peter, Helen, and the rest of Carnegie’s “Specials” would like nothing more than to return to normalcy along with the rest of the country—especially after defeating their enemies in Book One. But the anarchists have other plans. Luigi Galleani and the Zeno cabal reach out across Europe and across the Atlantic to wreak havoc, divide the enemy, build an army, and capture plans for the world’s deadliest weapon. If they are to be stopped, the tiny group of heroes from Jekyll will need to find new resolve, new resources, and new allies—and do it all before Nikola Tesla’s most terrible creation is unleashed.

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Please welcome Jack to the blog!

The Jekyll Chronicles tackles some very big events in history and includes some real-life characters that most readers will recognize. Tell us a bit about some of the historical characters, like Ford and Tesla, that show up in the story, and how you wove their stories into the narrative.

We knew we needed powerful people, wealthy people, and big thinkers to be on the side of the good guys.  Once we settled on Jekyll Island as the “home base” of operations, and we researched which wealthy industrialists were actually living there at the time, we decided to round-out our circle of benefactors to include the biggest of the big.  Of course, Tesla was inventing and dreaming of things that far outpaced most imaginations of the day, and he would be perfect to enhance our electrically charged hero, Helen Huxley.  History tells us that Henry Ford was more than willing to drop everything to help in a fight against evil.  That, matched with his constant pursuit of new technology and his youthful exuberance served us quite well to keep our team of heroes moving forward.  And for all of our real-life characters, because history generally tells us about their significant milestone moments, we simply filled in the blanks and described what they might have been doing “in the meantime.”

I personally love alternate history, but I imagine it must be tough to try to decide how to marry real events and fantastical elements. How did you go about deciding which historical events to include? Is there going to be an overall arc to the series? And did the fantasy elements naturally evolve around the core events from history?

As you know, there is so much to history that seems larger than life.  And so many things that people have forgotten or never knew.  In fact, there is almost too much from which to choose.  Every single time we have needed a person or an event as a catalyst, research has revealed an answer.  Rarely do we bend our story just because we found cool history.  At almost every turn we have known our story direction and then found history to magnify it.  For example, in Book One we needed our enemies to give a demonstration of their ability to rain havoc onto a major city, and we needed it to happen during the summer of 1919.  And then we read about the Wingfoot Express blimp disaster over Chicago that summer.  What could be more perfect?  And we could go on with mail bombings and the Wall Street explosion – the history well never runs dry.  Of course, there are well known events that we want to align with, such as the deaths of famous people or the rise of infamous people, but for us these serve as dramatic turning points and moments of reckoning.  And of course there are things we just can’t ignore, like WWI and the onset of WWII, and the Spanish Flu.  It would be unrealistic if we didn’t acknowledge these events that changed the course of the world, so they also change the course of our characters.

As a parent myself, I was thrilled to discover that you are all dads! Please tell us more about how you met and how this project was born. Was it tough to balance your working life and still make time for your families?

The easier part for us today is that our children are all independent now.  We have been friends for over 20 years and had just been doing life together with very young families.  Like most people, our careers, marriages, and families were our priorities.  But once our kids all got into college or that season of their life, then we had a little more time, even with our other full-time jobs, to think about a crazy idea like this.  Steve had the seed of the idea and started the “what if?” thinking.  Then Ed jumped in with his knowledge of the history of the Georgia Coast, and then I was brought in to add more creative touches.  We gathered in Steve’s basement and simply turned the “what if?” questions into “how might we?”.  Once you do that you have the beginning of a plan.  And our families have been super supportive all along the way, from helping us with book signing at Comic Cons to donning cosplay for our heroes at conventions.

I understand this project is a first for all of you! Although collectively you didn’t have any experience creating comic books & graphics novels, tell us a little about how you realized your dream, from concept to publication.

As I mentioned before, turn “what if I?” into “how might I?”.  You’ve got to shift from dream state to plan state.  A key moment for us was with our partnership with the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).  We approached SCAD with the idea of our story being the basis for a masters class in sequential arts.  Their goal would be to produce for us a pitch packet, a visual proof of concept that we could take to publishers to pitch our idea.  SCAD agreed.  We met with the class several times, guiding them along the way.  They finished with the pitch packet.  A bonus for both parties is that we hired a colorist and illustrator from the class – their first jobs and our much needed artists!  We then successfully pitched a Georgia based graphic novel publisher, Top Shelf, and we profitably launched a Kickstarter campaign.  Those three elements were fundamental to our effort.  Of course, we also had to write the thing and learn how to write together.  We divide up that work nicely, and probably because of our long, deep friendship, are able to critique each other to make the work the best it can be.

The first two books in the series have already been published. How many more can readers expect? 

Expect at least one more.  In fact, we’re deep into writing Book Three right now.  Our story could go on and on, probably right up to the start of WWII.  If the first three books become wildly successful, then I see no reason we wouldn’t just keep writing!

Thank you Jack! It’s fascinating to go “behind the scenes,” and I wish you, Steve and Ed good luck with the series! And big thanks to Wunderkind PR for the review copies and facilitating this interview.

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About the author:

Photo credit: Caroline Lindsay

JACK LOWE is a student of filmmaking and themed entertainment, and a passionate storyteller with a bent toward immersive, multi-sensory experiences. He, his wife, two dogs, and two cats live in Marietta, Georgia, on the shoulder of Kennesaw Mountain.

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