Goodreads asked Jay Sandlin:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Jay Sandlin When I was in the second grade we were assigned to write stories about halloween. Every other kid wrote a paragraph or two about trick or treating or candy.

I wrote a two and a half page treatment about being teleported to a haunted graveyard and transformed into a bloodthirsty creature of the night by a cult of ghouls.

I always knew I was different.

While others were playing kickball or some other form of sports, I was hiding under the playground equipment reading Shadows of the Empire or another Scifi novel. I began printing my own books before I was ten.(see photo) I would have benefitted from spellcheck then.

Then I stopped writing for years. I never produced a single word in high school, college, or into my adult life. I fell into a monotony of trying to be “normal”. I wanted to be succesful in business and started my own insurance and financial services company when I was 24.

I have been successful but still felt the undeniable pull towards writing. I ignored the message from The Outsiders and did not “stay gold”. In June of 2016, I read a book on vacation about superheroes in the common world and decided I could mix my passion of history with the idea of superheroes being inserted into world events.

I began to write on the way back from that very trip and came up with the basic idea of Atlas, Okinawa Dragon, and the Reich facing off at Pearl Harbor.

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