Shadow of the Soul Blade

Hi, my name is Jay Roland. I’m a new author in the Dark Epic Fantasy genre. Let me tell you a little about myself. I was born in Flint, Michigan, in the ’80s and grew up on a healthy diet of Star Wars, Star Trek, Labyrinth, Ladyhawke, Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja, Beast Master, and many other fantasy/science fiction movies and TV shows. My educational credentials are nearly as long as my favorite fantasy movie list, having attended four elementary schools, four middle schools, and two high schools before randomly landing an IT support job in 1999 (thanks, Terry) and leaving school only to get my GED in 2003 (I was supposed to graduate in 2000).

While I probably should have been doing homework and paying closer attention to my chores, I spent most of my time in high school hanging out with my friends, playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (that’s what made it cool. It was “Advanced” ;), and Magic: The Gathering. Or I was on the marching band field playing the tenor sax, or in theater practice. Well, that was Monday through Friday. My weekends were reserved for the Renaissance Festival or wandering through the backwoods of Corunna, Durand (or other lesser-known areas of Shiawassee County), and hanging out around bonfires where my friends and I would howl at the moon or whatever. Well, there was that one time we opted out of the bonfire and broke into a golf course, took the flags from the holes, gave each other piggyback rides, and jousted.

Now, if you’re reading this thinking, “Didn’t I see you at Grand Valley State University campus around 2004?” You’re not imagining things. I was there, but let me tell you a secret. You can hang out on a college campus and not pay them any money. You can even walk into a class with a friend and sit there watching the teacher talk and not give them a dime. Let me tell you how that started. In 2004, after my first marriage crashed and burned like the Hindenburg, I met a girl named Nyssa. I lived in Flint, and she lived in Macomb. Soon after, she moved to Grand Rapids to attend GVSU. She wanted a roommate, and I wanted to move to Grand Rapids. So I moved in with her in August 2004, and we started dating in December that same year. But that same summer, she took me to the GVUS Renaissance Festival, where I met the members of the GVSU sword fighting club, John, Jarred, and the rest of the team. I started going to their training sessions because I’d been training with swords since my first day at the Renaissance Festival. There I met people who also attended the GVSU gaming club and Ways of the Earth, an alternative spirituality group. Long story short, I joined all the clubs, attended all the functions, and had the time of my life. In fact, I even started a group called Iron Tempest Gaming Group. Myself, Abby, Nink, Ricky, Jon, Connie, and Matt all worked together on a project to make a game that would compete with any other RPG out there. Unfortunately, the project lost steam, but it was a great time with great people. A few years later, Nyssa and I moved back to southeast Michigan and got married.

Starting in 2007, I got back into IT and over the course of the last 16 years, worked my way up the corporate IT ladder, starting with working at a helpdesk for a company called CareTech Solutions. After years of dedication and hard work, I’ve recently been promoted to the Director of IT Service Management.

While I have had a successful career in IT, I have always had a passion for writing and storytelling. In 2017, when I was considering finishing development of the Darkthorne RPG, I started thinking of stories and scenes that would/could occur in the Darkthorne Chronicles setting. When I got these flashes, I would just jot them down and go about my day. Over time, I decided I had enough material that I could weave these stories into a singular tale.

For context, I have continued roleplaying every system that you can think of, and also the Darkthorne setting. I have around a thousand pages of material for everything from the magic setting down to the number of bakers that live in the city of Ganos in Southern Aestaria. There’s very little that I don’t know about the world of Ashana.

So I sat down and plotted out the age of the story, and overarching theme and plot. After that, I weaved in the individual scenes. To clarify, when I say “Scene”, it’s a paragraph of action or summary of dialogue that would occur between two people. When I started this project, I had about a dozen such paragraphs that I wanted to weave into a singular story. But that still left plenty of questions to answer and writing to do.

Now, after years of writing and revising, I have finally finished my first novel, “The Darkthorne Chronicles: Shadow of the Soul Blade.” It’s been a long and challenging journey, but it’s a labor of love that I am proud to share with the world. I hope readers will find it to be an immersive and engaging adventure that takes them to a fantastical world of magic, monsters, and epic battles.

So now this is me. I’m a husband to an amazing wife. I spend my days working as an IT leader. I spend my nights taking kids to Karate, or picking someone up from after-school activities, and my weekend mornings at the soccer fields. (if I’m honest, my wife does most of that, most of the time, but occasionally, she lets me help out.) While my weekend nights are spent playing D&D with my older girls, or teaching the twins the finer points of fencing and sword play. When I can, I find time to write, and do my best to balance everything out.