INTRODUCTION

Hi – I’m Dan Jolley, and this is my first novel, Redeemer’s Law.

I wrote this book twelve years ago, at the tender age of twenty-five. At that point, I had been writing professionally, off and on, for six years, but everything I had done was in the field of comic books. After a comics deal went particularly sour, I decided to develop something all on my own – no editors, no co-writers, no artists – and over the space of a year, writing primarily on Saturdays, Redeemer’s Law took shape. It’s a genre-blending piece that could be described as a “contemporary pulp action sci-fi horror superhero story.”

I sent the book to a few agents, all of whom came back with words to the effect of, “Yeah, this is pretty good, but I don’t know anybody looking for this kind of thing.” Eventually I got discouraged, shelved the manuscript, and made my way back into the comics industry.

A couple of years went by and, in addition to the comics work, I co-wrote a couple of licensed-property novels. A few more years passed, and a project that was originally pitched as a comic morphed into a deal to write a series of original Young Adult novels. So, by summer of 2008, I had scripted about 150 comic books, co-written two novels, written three more solo, and done film novelizations for both Iron Man and Transformers 2.

The summer of 2008 was also what could be called “the Summer of Super-Heroes.” Hancock, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy 2, and most significantly, The Dark Knight all hit theatres, and more than ever before, the country seemed to be appreciating stories about good guys with special powers and/or weird suits who fought bad guys with special powers and/or weird suits. It seemed like the right time to dust off Redeemer’s Law.

That proved to be easier said than done, though. I had lost every electronic version of it, and literally had to dig around in my attic until I found a printed copy. Then my sister achieved some sort of minor sainthood by scanning it into an OCR program for me, all 500+ pages, one at a time.

In the process of cleaning it up I made a very small number of changes here and there – I replaced a painfully dated computer game with World of Warcraft, for example – but, those few minor alterations aside, this is what I wrote in 1995 and 1996.

My literary agent is currently looking into possibilities for the book, but while he does that, I’ve decided to revise it. I think Redeemer’s Law holds up pretty well; I still like it a great deal. But I’d also like to think I’ve learned a few things between way back then and now, and I’d like to apply them to the book. So I’m going to put up a chapter here each week, and include “margin notes” of a sort, detailing what I like and don’t like about the story, along with changes I plan to make to it. And if any of you would like to offer suggestions – things you’d like to see more of, things you’d like to see excised, any mistakes I might not have caught – please feel free to post them.

So. This is my first novel…and maybe my latest one, too.

One additional note, to address the "Adult Content" disclaimer that precedes this blog: a great deal of my recent work has been aimed at either teens or children. Redeemer's Law is not. The book contains vulgar language, a great deal of violence and gore, and a smattering of sex. If it were a movie, it would most assuredly be rated R.