Jake Ransom and the Skull King’s Shadow [Book I]

Whatever music you liked in high school is the music you like the rest of your life. I think the same applies to books. What I liked at 13, I still love today: those exciting, pulp adventures that give you a good story, a few chills, and at the same introduce you to a new world – just like Jake Ransom and the Skull King’s Shadow.

Similar to my adult novels, I love to weave real world facts into the fantastical. This novel – which centers on the ancient Mayan civilization – required months of research, including trips down to the ruins of Chichen Itza and Tulum in Mexico, and to a set of newly excavated ruins in the jungles of Belize.

I love writing Jake. He is who I was as a kid: ever curious, impatient, slightly geeky but knowing it and unable to change. But I can also understand his relationship with his older sister. Being the middle son between three brothers and three sisters, I know this relationship all too well: the arguments, the resentments, but ultimately a deep and unshakable bond of family.

While I certainly enjoy a bit of magic and strange science (which you’ll see in this story), I also love the Everyman Hero. A character with no super powers, no James Bond gadgets…who must survive by his wits alone against all odds, against all challenges. And that’s Jake in a nutshell.

In future installments, Jake and Kady will continue to piece together clues to their parents’ fate, crossing from one end of the world to another, exploring lost cultures and facing new threats from the mysterious Skull King.

During my research, I discovered the Mayas were the first to use the cocoa bean to make chocolate. And they also used the sap of the chicle tree to make chewing gum. Even Wrigley used this sap to make their original chewing gum in the 1890s.

In this story, science and magic blend into a world of prehistoric creatures, ancient peoples, and a mysterious lost civilization that has left behind bits of strange technology. But to tell you anymore would ruin some wonderful surprises!

The story here is more linear, but is otherwise not much different. I don’t think it serves to write down to kids. I think a well-told tale will appeal to any age.

I believe we are not far off from this possibility (if we’re not already there). The new frontier of neurology is the exploration of the brain with more and more sophisticated electrodes, some so small that they can be inserted into individual neurons. Already neurologists have inserted silicon chips into the brains of quadriplegic patients that allow them to manipulate computers to move a cursor, to surf the Internet by their thoughts alone. So how long will it be until we learn to harness the brain’s full potential and scarier, how long until we learn to control that in another person?

Rain Man-like talent still baffles scientists and has challenged our conception of human mental abilities. What set me on the course to write this book is a quote by Temple Grandin: “If by some magic, autism had been eradicated from the face of the earth, then men would still be socializing in front of a wood fire at the entrance to a cave.” It is her contention (one advocated by many historians and anthropologists) that pivotal advancements in human history have come about because of those rare individuals born with savant talents, whose unique way of looking at life have altered the course of mankind. So it made me wonder, what if someone gained control of that power?

Human experimentation has often been cloaked in the “greater good,” where the “ends justify the means.” All nations, including the United States, have participated in human experimentation, including involuntary experimentation. Are experiments going on today with children? In some corners of the world, I don’t doubt that they are. Especially with disenfranchised children – the poor, the mentally ill, the disabled. Do other nations perhaps turn a blind eye to such experiments? I don’t doubt that, too, especially in today’s climate where the mantra seems to be growing that the ends justify ANY means.