forging a nightmare by patricia a jackson

Tell me about your re-envisioning of these biblical myths and stories. For instance, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are traditionally scary but in your book, they’re funny and charming and want to help people they feel are being unfairly persecuted. Rob Wolf: You’ve put your own spin on biblical lore and mythology. You are a Black girl dressed in horse gear, and they had never seen that before.” And it wasn’t just because you were dressed in horse gear. And people would just kind of look around. “I would go to horse shows and I would be in my boots and my breaches and my show jacket, and I would go to the mall or I would go to the bank, or I would go to the jewelry store dressed in my duds, sometimes with odor of horse upon me. “I think every character is an extension of the author, and I am Michael Childs,” Jackson says. Like Childs, Jackson is an experienced equestrian. His sidekick is Anaba Raines, a Black former Marine and the eponymous Nightmare, whose transformation into a fierce and hellish horse makes her a formidable foe to angels seeking to do Michael harm. The hero is Michael Childs, a Black FBI agent who competes in jousts (at the opening of the book, he shows up at the scene of a grisly murder clad in medieval armor) and who (unbeknownst to him) descends from divinity. But underneath, it is about much more: a son grappling with his father’s abandonment, the persecution of “the other” and the revelation that maybe Hell isn’t the unremittingly evil place we thought it was. On the surface, the story is about a series of grisly murders.

Jackson puts a fresh spin on biblical characters like Gabriel and Lucifer by turning them into FBI agents, a parish priest, a homeless preacher and other seemingly ordinary folks who pursue ancient vendettas in modern day New York City.

Jackson’s debut novel Forging a Nightmareimmerses the reader in a world of menace-fallen angels and demigods whose history of alliances and resentments stretch to the beginning of time.

Forging a nightmare by patricia a jackson