It isn’t often that I find myself curious about a series that hasn’t quite become an enjoyable read – yet, this is *exactly!* what happened with the Gray Widow Trilogy! I was truly captured by Janey & the background of her character – from how she was able to use her ‘augmented gift’ for teleportation and to seek out an answer towards what was driving her to seek vigilante vengeance in the guise of protecting certain people in certain untoward circumstances.
I felt a bit conflicted by what I was reading – as on one hand, I truly did appreciate the lead character to a certain extent, but there were elements of the story I simply felt pushed me too far outside what I could appreciate to read. However, having said that – inside my review I shared these reflections which speak to the heart of why I felt conflicted as a reader:
Jolley captures your attention with Janey Sinclair, as he may or may not realise he crafted an emotional character who had a passionate self-motivating mission to right the wrongs of society; however, some of the avenues of where the narrative passed in and out of this lead prospective had me a bit confounded, in the same manner I oft-times felt muddled down by the sub-plots on The X-Files. The core of the story was telling enough for my interest; but sometimes, when you throw in wenches to the established wheel, I find my mind drifting and thus, I had hoped Jolley might have tightened the focus a small bit to establish the fuller story surrounding Janey prior to exploring tentacles of an evolving plot; wherein it might be warranted further in the trilogy.
Why did Janey Sinclair want to be the Gray Widow? And, what does that future have to do with her connection to The Astounding Alexander!? Sighs. Questions I fear will remain unanswered and a character I had to depart from reading about because the shift of focus was simply not my cuppa in the end.
-quoted from my review of Gray Widow’s Walk
I contacted the publicist for the blog tour (Stephen Zimmer) and asked if he knew if Mr Jolley might entertain a follow-up conversation on the book, the series and Janey Sinclair. He responded positively that the author would enjoy doing that, and the results are this conversation! As you will see, I was walking the line between asking a few questions towards a hint of a spoiler whilst trying to keep my curiosity reined in to where the author could happily disclose a few extra bits towards what inspired him to write Janey’s story!
I hope you will enjoy reading where the convo took us & perhaps, help you decide if this is a series you’d be interested in reading. For me personally, I was thankful to know more about the background towards how technology & character motivation were key components of Janey’s story!
“The only thing in this world you can truly control is yourself.”
Janey Sinclair’s ability to teleport has always been a mystery to her. She tried for years to ignore it, but when tragedy shatters her life, Janey’s anger consumes her. She hones her fighting skills, steals a prototype suit of military body armor, and takes to the streets of Atlanta, venting her rage as the masked vigilante dubbed “the Gray Widow” by the press.
But Janey’s power, and her willingness to use it, plunges her into a conflict on a much grander scale than she had anticipated.
Soon she encounters Simon Grove, a bloodthirsty runaway with a shapeshifting ability gone horribly wrong…
Garrison Vessler, an ex-FBI agent and current private defense contractor, who holds some of the answers Janey’s been searching for…
And Tim Kapoor, the first person in years with a chance of breaking through Janey’s emotional shell—if she’ll let him.
But as Janey’s vigilantism gains worldwide attention, and her showdown with Simon Grove draws ever closer, the reason for her augmented abilities—hers and all the others like her—begins to reveal itself. Because, high above the Earth, other eyes are watching. And they have far-reaching plans…
Gray Widow’s Walk is book one of the Gray Widow Trilogy,
to be followed by Gray Widow’s Web and Gray Widow’s War.
What kind of research did you put into the creation of Janey’s Gray Widow suit and how did you react when you first saw the cover art in which the suit would be revealled to readers?
(inspired by this note of mine on behalf of the cover art design)
The tech of the suit for the Gray Widow is truly
what caught my attention – that is one seriously creatively designed suit for a superhero, isn’t it? I could see how stealth & flexible the material was meant to jolt her through her actions but it’s just seriously a kickin’ wicked outfit! I also presumed she had some martial arts in her background given the weapons of choice in her hands!
Jolley responds: I knew I wanted the suit to be composed of something along the lines of Kevlar. It’s just body armor – it doesn’t grant Janey super-strength or let her fly or anything like that – but I wanted it to be the best possible body armor, so I decided to invent a fictional material that would be like Kevlar taken to its logical extremes. I consulted an industrial engineer on the composition, and that’s how “Vylar” was born; the engineer advised me about the whole “composed of millions of tiny octagons, woven into a cloth with monofilament wire threaded through holes drilled by a precision machine press” bit.
Then, when it came time to commission the cover, I approached a long-time collaborator of mine in the comic book field, John Nadeau. John started out as an engineering student before migrating over to art, and he’s got a fantastic, precise way of approaching his subject matter. I gave him the description of the suit from the book, and he did some research on real-world body armor and came up with a hybrid. I couldn’t have been more pleased when I saw the result.
I’m not the only one, either. Dee Volpe from Cosplay Collective approached me at a show a few weeks ago and wanted to know if we could collaborate on creating a Gray Widow costume. So we might be seeing an actual Gray Widow model at some of the appearances I’ll be making in the near future. Definitely look for something at DragonCon.
I was not surprised when you explained how you researched the realistic methods to create Janey’s suit, because your research is blessedly etched into the story itself! It was such a nifty component to Janey’s character – as although the suit itself isn’t super-humanly powered it does enable Janey to use her super-human gift in such a way as to manipulate how she is observed whilst she’s in one of her action sequences. The suit itself is acting like a ‘second skin’ and thus granting her ambiguity (at least for now).
Janey Sinclair is a complex character in many ways, as she entreats into a self-directed path of retribution for which we’re in the dark about for half the story. What did you want readers to takeaway from her bold choice to be the Gray Widow even if some of her actions might be questionable?
Jolley responds: One of the central ideas of the story is, “The only thing in this world you can truly control is yourself.” Janey desperately wants to prevent the kinds of cruelties and injustices she’s faced from happening to other people. She knows she can’t directly change what’s in people’s hearts, but what she can change is the actions she takes. That’s why she appoints herself Atlanta’s protector. She wants to find unfairness and cruelty as it’s being committed, and put a stop to it, using a very behaviorist, direct-conditioning approach. As she says in the book, the one thing she can promise criminals is pain. Lasting, agonizing pain that accompanies each criminal act. She’s not going to let anything or anyone stop her. If what she’s decided to do makes life better for other people, then great, that’s mission accomplished. But the most important aspect of her crusade, if you will, is that she doesn’t let herself get derailed from it, under any circumstances.
I had a feeling there was a deeply rooted reason within Janey to act & respond the way she is towards crime protection. I also felt she might be singularly focused to a fault – to where even if there was a solid reason for her to stop taking the position she’s placed herself in, she might not listen to reason in that regard. She’s determined to accomplish what she set out to do – that much is quite clear even in the beginning chapters – but to what after effect, I am unsure. It almost seems that her own well-being isn’t as critical to her as everyone she feels is her job to protect.
Shadow and Light are key elements throughout the story – how did you purport to keep Janey comfortable in both daylight and darkness, without her revealling anything to the outside world about the truer origins of her nature? What did you envision as a reason behind her adaptability?
Jolley responds: Well, I don’t want to give anything away here for people who haven’t read the book yet, but there is a concrete reason for Janey’s abilities being what they are. She doesn’t realize it yet, but she’s been essentially designed for a specific purpose, the full extent of which will be revealed in Book 2.
Ooh dear – I had a feeling this might be too close to a spoiler to get a response I was hoping to receive! I understand why you hesitated to answer it directly – sadly, I won’t be reading the sequel. However, perhaps my readers will read this series and have something wicked to look forward too!
Can you expound on the type of teleportation Janey embodies to transport herself as if in a blink of a nanosecond? What inspired this aspect of her person?
Jolley responds: I don’t go into it in detail, at least not in the first book, but I think of every one of the abilities people develop in the Gray Widow books as being offshoots of telekinesis. Sometimes they control objects in the world; sometimes they control their own bodies; sometimes they control certain aspects of other people. But it all comes from the concept of telekinesis, and that’s something I think of as an aspect of the human brain that just hasn’t been fully understood or developed yet. And the factor that “augments” people in these books awakens that characteristic of human physiology.
Not everyone who develops an augmentation has one that links to their environment or personality, but I think Janey’s did. She’s supremely introverted, and every time she’s let herself love someone, that person has been ripped away. She feels most at home by herself, and hates the very thought of being in the spotlight. So her ability to teleport from one patch of darkness to another – an ability that basically shorts out in direct light – was an outgrowth of her desire to avoid attention. That leads into why she decides to keep her identity hidden, once she starts acting as the Gray Widow. It’s not so much that she wants to stay anonymous so that no one tries to get at her through the people she loves. It’s that she simply doesn’t want anyone to know who she is.
Now, this doesn’t surprise me as it was a working-theory of my own! I’m quite familiar with aspects of parapsychological research wherein you will readily find instances of telekinesis! I wasn’t sure if this was the route you were taking or not, so finding out I was on the right track is wicked awesome! Yes, I agree with you – there are abilities within us that are not yet discovered or utilised to their full capacity. It’s one reason Science Fiction & the #SpecFic realms are such a joy to read!
Oh! Now that is interesting – direct light will affect her teleportations…. hmm… something else I was toying with pondering as I read those scenes. You only give so much in this first novel to explain her back-story it encourages theories and contemplation!
What do you feel is Janey’s worst weakness and best strength?
Jolley responds: I wouldn’t call her short-sighted, but Janey does tend to focus on problems that are right in front of her. She’s never been one to try to piece together far-flung connections or conspiracies. She’s much more likely to see an issue that she can directly affect, and go affect the living hell out of it. That serves her well in her role as Atlanta’s guardian, but once she realizes that she and the other augments are part of a much larger tapestry, she’s going to have to step out of her comfort zone to try to address it.
As far as her greatest strength…one of my beta readers described her as having a “force-of-nature” personality. Janey’s not a zealot; she understands that, if you’re given new facts, sometimes even your most deeply-held beliefs have to be modified. But she stops just short of zealotry. Once Janey Sinclair has decided on a course of action, it’ll take something on the order of an act of God to stop her.
I still foresee this being one of her worst weaknesses – the inability to deviant from a select course of action. It would be curious to see if the others who are gifted in the same way she is can do what she does or if their gifts are across a broader spectrum of what can be done.
Why were there three story-lines within the folds of the novel itself? Your key focus was on Janey (the Gray Widow); Simon (the worst villain ever) and Scott (the remote viewing prodigy) – all of whom had cross-secting paths overlapping each other. What inspired the shift off of Janey directly to encompass a wider sub-plot that spidered out of her own self-directed vigilante motivations?
Jolley responds: The Gray Widow Trilogy focuses on Janey, but she’s not the only character in it. There are other characters who matter as much, or almost as much, to the story as she does, and they deserve to have their stories told. I guess if I had written Janey’s story in first-person, it would have centered on her alone, but as every writer knows, the story picks the medium, and I knew from the very beginning that this would be third-person. It’s a huge, sprawling narrative, a narrative that’s only going to get bigger as the trilogy progresses, and I had to delve into multiple plotlines for everything to make sense.
Besides, half the fun is weaving what appear to be unrelated events together and watching them create a whole.
See?! I think this was my biggest issue whilst I read the story – I felt it was more approachable as a first-person narrative focused through the heart of Janey Sinclair’s journey. Although, I do agree – each writer has to make that choice themselves, not only for direction of narrative but how they believe their characters are best suited to be written. I simply couldn’t get invested in the third-person approach, but that doesn’t mean others would face the same difficulties I would.
I appreciate your willingness to talk to me about the story and how you approached writing the series whilst giving my readers a bit more of a background on what they can find inside ‘Gray Widow’s Walk’ overall. I loved reading your responses and learning a bit more about the character I was so curious about even if I cannot continue reading her stories.
Converse via: #GrayWidowsWalk + #GrayWidowTrilogy thStar
This Author Interview was courtesy of:
via
I had originally intended to run this guest author feature closer to when my review ran for “Gray Widow’s Walk” (see Review) however, time slipped away from me, and it’s running now! I do encourage you to click-through the tour banner to find other stops on the blog tour!
as I am a proud tour hostess for:
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