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Something About Me and My Book:: After a 20-year career in new media and marketing strategy as a creative director, writer, executive producer, and even CEO, I have retired at age 43 to concentrate full time on storytelling. I’ve recently had a television pilot optioned by a production company under the Disney umbrella for development with ABC. In addition, one of my Christmas short stories, part of an unpublished collection, is in development at Paramount Pictures, with a revised draft of my script due at the end of the month. Three of my fiction works recently took first, second, an third place at Writesafe Presentathon: http://www.writesafe.com/Adcox.html.

I've written two novels:

The Widening Gyre is an epic (at least in length) fantasy about the return of the mythical King Arthur. The setting is contemporary Atlanta—think of the grand fantasy series of Robert Jordan or George R. R. Martin crossed with the contemporary urban fantasies of Charles de Lint, Jonathan Carroll, or Stephen King. Two sequels will follow.

I’ve always felt that the Arthurian legends are, well, incomplete. While King Arthur is sending his knights out to find the Holy Grail, this amazing feminine symbol of healing and power, Morgan le Fay, his shadow self or opposite number, is trying to steal the sword Excalibur, the great symbol of masculine energy. It seems to me that they’re both looking for something that’s missing in themselves. The whole thing falls apart in the end, because no one is able to bring these two archetypal artifacts together.

According to the traditional story, Arthur is destined to return some day because the world needs him. But also, I think, because he still has things of his own to resolve and learn—his relationship with his wife, for example, and with his best friend and his sister. Not to mention his son. And why should Arthur himself be the only one permitted (or doomed) to return? What about the others? What if they all came back, in the hour of our greatest need? Those are the questions I was asking myself when I started writing this book. I think I’ve come up with some pretty surprising answers.

The second novel, Blackthorne Faire, is a stand-alone fantasy set in the same basic milieu as both Gyre and the television series. Blackthorne Faire is a romantic fantasy set at a Renaissance Faire, where young love blossoms in the shadow of unexpected magic and a brewing war between the mob and the Courts of Faery. I have attached synopses of the novels, as well as a collection of Christmas stories, Raven Wakes the World.

Blackthorne Faire: A Faery Tale
By John Adcox

Welcome to Blackthorne Faire, a place of wild music and unbridled, boisterous dance! Of theatre and pageantry! Of turkey legs and drinking bouts! Of deadly duels and rapier-fast quips! Of whispered rumors of unexplained disappearances. Of mystery, intrigue, and murder.

Welcome to Blackthorne Faire, a modern Renaissance Festival where nothing is what it seems. It is a place where a lost tune rediscovered in the Hidden Book of Secret Knowledge stirs long forgotten magic... Where never-before-seen Tarot Cards foretell unexpected futures that always, always come true... And where true love is found and lost and lost again in the shadow of a coming war.

Beware, mortal, oh, beware the sounds that echo over the hills, across the bluffs, and through the winding pathways, for no one can hear the horns of Elfland and remain unchanged.

Blackthorne Faire is a romantic and sensual contemporary fantasy set in an Atlanta Renaissance Festival. Brian Johnson, a lawyer fighting depression after a painful breakup, meets his true love, Erin Winter, at the fair. He is there with friends who plan to cheer him up. He is also there on business—he is attempting to contact the owners of the fair as a part of a real estate deal. Meanwhile, Jessica Holtzman, a young actress playing the role of the fair’s fortuneteller, finds never-before-seen Tarot cards in her deck, and learns that the fortunes she tells always, always come true. When a man is found murdered, Brian learns that his client has mob connections.

Erin finds a forgotten tune is found in an old volume called The Hidden Book of Secret Knowledge, a tune that may hold the key to lost magic. In the shadow of growing mystery, Brian courts his ladylove, only to lose her to the court of Faery. For at Blackthorne Faire, a war is brewing between the mob and the courts of Faery.

With the help of his friends, Brian manages to rescue Erin, but then he himself is lost in the seductive perilous realm. Now, Erin must attempt a rescue of her own. At Blackthorne Faire, nothing is what it seems. Not even love.

The Widening Gyre By John Adcox

It is the time of humanity’s darkest hour. In the day of our greatest need, King Arthur, Queen Gwenhwyfar, Morgan le Fay, and the Knights of the Round Table have returned. But shadows from the past may destroy them before the last desperate battle even begins.

In the city of Atlanta, an eccentric university professor introduces three young men to the Secret History of the World, and a search for an ancient treasure begins. Meanwhile, a novice priestess has dreams of ancient rituals and a coming apocalypse. As she undergoes a strange ceremony, two ancient conspiracies prepare for a final conflict. And as two young people find love, a bitter rivalry is reborn.

Riots rock the world. But people all over the country experience something strange, the unexpected return of lost memories followed by an irresistible urge to gather—while others prepare for war.

The Widening Gyre presents a dangerous future that is all too believable. In fact, many of the events predicted in the book have already started to come to pass. More than a warning, The Widening Gyre offers a glimmer of hope for our own darkest hours.

The Widening Gyre combines the epic fantasy scope and sweep of George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones with the historical mysteries of The Da Vince Code. It’s a book where the lyrical mysticism of The Mists of Avalon and The Once and Future King meets the contemporary urban enchantment of Charles de Lint’s Moonheart. Adcox even mixes in the warmth of found family, the wit, and the dark fantasy that made television’s Buffy and Angel enduring favorites.

Two sequels follow The Widening Gyre: What The Thunder Said and The Last Light Flickers. Blackthorne Faire is set in the same basic milieu.

Raven Wakes the World: Three Tales for the Winter Holiday
By John Adcox

Raven Wakes the World is a collection of three novellas written for the Christmas season.

In the first story, I’ll Be Home For Christmas, a graduate student in London, Jessie Malone, is searching for an original source, the first “friend of a friend” to actually begin an urban legend. She happens into a quaint pub, where she hears a story about Sam Prescott, a lonely ghost trying to make his way home to keep his final promise at last. As Jessie investigates, she leans that Sam’s story defies the models of how urban legends spread. At last, the only answer left is the impossible one. Jessie tries to unravel the thread of story to find its beginning, but instead finds herself caught in its web. At its heart is a Christmas miracle, if Jessie’s scientist’s mind can find the faith to see it through. This story is in development at Paramount Pictures.

In Raven Wakes the World, Katie Mason, a young artist wounded by the bitter end of a relationship, travels to a frozen island off the coast of Alaska to heal. Instead, she finds herself numb, unable to think, unable to feel, unable to create. Lost in the depths of her icy winter torpor, she meets a man, a beautiful man who never seems to answer questions. Too soon, Katie finds herself waking in the midst of an Inuit myth come to life, and learns that she must face the agony she has suppressed and make a terrible sacrifice if she is to create—and love—again.

After an urban legend ghost story and a modern myth, the final tale is a screwball romantic comedy. In Make Up Test, a woman bending under the stress of office politics and holiday shopping casually dismisses the chance for a Christmas wish by grumbling, “I wish all this makeup I just bought really did all it said it would!” Soon, she finds that blush makes her flush uncontrollably, while clarifying lotion makes an incomprehensible document crystal clear. Lipstick, it turns out, makes a perfect gag. And then she tries vanishing cream and antigravity lift cream….

Website:: http://Johnadcox.com

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