Post contributed by Catherine Lowe
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with bestselling author Marie D. Jones and talk to her about her upcoming shared world series BLACK MARIAH, which follows the stories of people in different parts of the world from the US to South Africa as they navigate the global elite’s efforts to establish a New World Order. BLACK MARIAH is series of ten novellas, told by the voices of award-winning and bestselling authors, storytellers, and producers. The first episode drops July 9, 2021 with new episodes every other Friday. Follow along with the story at www.BlackMariahSeries.com.
Hi Marie! Thank you for taking the time to chat with me today. I want to start this Q&A by asking you to give readers a more detailed overview of what they can expect from BLACK MARIAH.
BLACK MARIAH is a “real-time” episodic story that presents a particular scenario, in this case a mysterious chemical attack on several towns and cities, and how different characters from all over the world react to that scenario as it plays out. We see these characters trying to survive and find safety, make sense of the attacks, and how they come to learn the shocking truth behind the attacks. They all come from different perspectives, which makes for a truly realistic and expansive reading experience, because each episode is a mystery and a puzzle within a much larger one that is written by people who know their locations and how their characters would respond. If I were to try to write all these myself, I would have no idea of the lifestyle, beliefs, and dynamics of someone in another country. It is much more believable and realistic to bring in other writers who are from these countries.
The series is divided into three seasons, and we have ten episodes per season, just like a television show, so readers can read along one episode at a time or wait until the end of the season and binge-read all ten episodes. The episodes will be released in eBook format.
This allows readers to experience the same story scenario as played out by different authors, all best-selling and well-known, and to also get the global overview of the events. We have authors from different parts of the United States, Ireland, South Africa, Nicaragua, Germany, Singapore… each with their own characters and storylines, but all operate within the structure I as the creator provide for them.
I think readers will be hooked from the first episode and absolutely blown away by these incredible stories and characters. It is world-building on steroids! This takes the episodic series to a whole new level and a whole new playing field because instead of just following one set of characters throughout the series, you get to follow eight sets and become invested in so many more characters and situations than just one singular storyline might provide. There are so many more characters to fall in love with, or hate, to root for, or want to see brought down. This series is about an underground revolution that arises to fight the coming New World Order, and you get a front row seat to see how many of the players in this revolution came to be involved.
We all love binge-watching series on Netflix or cable, and this is a series on paper that operates in much the same way, and we hope will have the same result of hooking readers so they cannot help but come back for more.
What originally inspired you to write BLACK MARIAH?
It’s such a long story, so I’ll try to condense it. I began writing BLACK MARIAH over thirty years ago as a deadly pandemic screenplay with forced vaccines that were killing people. Yep, I was way ahead of my time with the virus stuff, and shortly after that, several novels and films came out with the virus angle, and it broke my heart. So, I set BLACK MARIAH aside until 2013, when I had signed with my manager, Italia Gandolfo, and she loved what I had done with the novel of BLACK MARIAH, which was unfinished, and got me a deal with a publisher. A year later, that deal fell through, along with other attempts to change it and do other things with it, and it was going to be published by my manager’s company, but that fell through, and my heart just kept getting broken, because this was one of my babies, my “magnum opus,” and was incredibly important to me.
When I started the novel version of it became a story about a chemtrail attack instead of a virus. When my son was born, back in 2001, after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, I was on the phone outside with him in my arms when several small planes flew overhead, dropping a fine white mist down onto us. We both had severe allergic reactions, and I found out later many of my neighbors did as well. At the time, I knew about chemtrails, but passed it off as agricultural over-spraying, as I lived in an agriculture belt. But years later, when I went back to the story, I turned that experience into the plotline, and it became the story of a woman in a rural town that is wiped off the map by a chemical attack of unknown origins. She is babysitting a little girl when it happens, and the story is their journey of survival and her finding someone named “Crow” over the ham radio who leads them to safety and tells them the truth of what is happening.
In around 2016, I won a story contest for the “first six chapters” with BLACK MARIAH and was told by the publisher that the story should have won, but they didn’t publish conspiracy thrillers, but he had such high praise it motivated me to continue to pursue doing something with it. Italia and I continued to find other ways to get this project out there, but it never gelled or deviated too far from my original story. Years went by and I got distracted with other projects, but it always haunted me, begging to be written.
Then, last year as world events began to mirror so much of the story, I had a phone conversation with Italia telling her I was going to self-publish it, and she said, “Wait a second, I have an idea.” When Italia says that, you know something big is cooking, and sure enough, it was. She introduced me to Lindy Ryan, owner of Black Spot Books, which is a part of my manager’s company, Vesuvian Media Group. She told Lindy about BLACK MARIAH, and we talked. Well, as often happens, you realize something never worked before because it wasn’t meant to until now…and that timing is everything. Lindy had this awesome idea to do an episodic series with other writes brought in to create a shared universe. I had never thought of that, but she did, and we hit it off like gangbusters. From that first phone conversation, BLACK MARIAH unfolded with incredible speed and ease…as if it were meant to be this way.
And I know in my bones it was.
By the way, the name was one I had chosen over thirty years ago after reading about old paddy wagons called “Black Mariahs” that police drove prisoners to jails in. I thought it had great symbolism…
BLACK MARIAH will be published in an episodic format featuring stories written by authors around the world—why do you think having these different worldly perspectives is important?
While I love reading a novel and following one lead character and diving into their perspective, having the chance to do this with a number of characters in a number of locations around the world allows for different interpretations of the subject matter. We start with a chemical attack, and nobody knows who or what is behind it. The entire series progresses as all our characters in their various countries or cities try to survive, then uncover who is behind the attacks and what is to come.
The experience of my two lead characters, who both live in Indiana, will be much different from the experiences of our writers living in other countries such as Nicaragua or Germany or even in the U.S. such as Alaska. Our characters are all so different, and our storylines within the set structure are, too, so you get such a rich and expansive reading experience with multiple perspectives.
Each of the episodes is an entire novel unfolding alongside, and often intersecting with, the other novels that make up the “mega-monster” series that is BLACK MARIAH. It is so cool! It is so important, too, because of the subject matter, which is the coming globalization and the darker side of that, including depopulation, and we show the struggles of people coming to grips with this, and finding ways to rise up and fight back, or as we say, “defy and persist.”
Are there any aspects to BLACK MARIAH that mirror real-life issues taking place around the world today?
The entire series is based on real-life issues and dives into some conspiracy theory stuff that ends up coming true as the stories progress. This story was originally written as a warning of what was coming, and what was already bubbling under the surface as world events indicated a slippery slope downward into a one-world governing body according to the United Nations Agenda 21 and 2030 campaigns, and the end of individual freedoms. But it also gets into things like forced vaccines, chips that control our minds, digital wallets that control how we spend our money, a global agenda to depopulate the planet run by the rich and elite, the use of toxins in chemtrails and vaccines and other conspiracy-minded ideas, all presented in a way that it could be happening in your own town…and maybe already is.
The New World Order and Great Reset discussed in many of the episodes, and the Agenda 27, based on the United Nations Agenda 21 and 2030 sustainability plans, are a big part of our storyline and how the push for global, centralized control is something we must fight against to retain our individual rights and freedoms. It is not a conspiracy anymore. It’s happening all around us and BLACK MARIAH peers into the near future to see where we might be heading.
What does the future look like for the BLACK MARIAH series?
I have a feeling this will be a huge success and set the stage for more seasons if readers demand that from us, but also for future plans I have to explore other “global events” in the same way. The series is being actively pitched to Hollywood as a potential live action series and is perfect for it, as we have already created the intellectual property in such detail. My hope is that we franchise this into a TV series, graphic novel series, books, and other formats. And I would love nothing more than to continue into other seasons with this amazing group of writers I have been so blessed and honored to bring on board BLACK MARIAH.
