Treasure & Drums of Jur

TREASURE OF JUR and DRUMS OF JUR by Tom Johnson are now available in paperback from Fading Shadows fadingshadows40@gmail.com at $12.00 each.

How the Jur series came about: Back around 1965, while I was stationed in France with the Army MPs, I was the squad leader and worked the desk while my units were on patrol keeping the Post secure. On slow nights, and nothing was of interest on the AFRN (Armed Forces Radio Network) I practiced creating fictional characters and plots, and found that I was pretty good at it. I also enjoyed it. However, I didn’t follow through until after a tour in the jungles of Vietnam in 1970. Although there were plenty of animals in South East Asia, my mind could imagine dinosaurs and ancient civilizations. Upon return to the US, I remembered one of those plots I had created in France five years previously. It was at this point that I felt the need to write a novel. I had plotted out three novels, actually, and set to work, a chapter a day. I wrote two of the novels, hired a typist to put the first one into manuscript format, and started sending it out to publishers while finishing the second novel. I didn’t have an agent, I was an amateur without a name, and my story was rejected. Discouraged, I set the two manuscripts in a drawer. That’s where they stayed until 2002.

Basically, the story begins with two young people, Odette Aimee St. Claire, a French archeologist in Africa searching for ancient ruins when she falls through a time portal. Aaron Jameson, a disgruntled former American Green Beret hears of her disappearance and goes in search of the young girl, and also falls into the time portal. They end up in the Jurassic Period of prehistoric Earth, where they must survive against savage beasts and animals. When the original concept didn’t sell, my friend James Reasoner suggested I should drop the Green Beret, and set the story beginning after the Wall Street crash of 1929. We did, and James went over the manuscript and corrected a lot of my early mistakes, making the first novel read much better. When NBI picked up the novel, I immediately retyped the second manuscript, making the corrections James had suggested, and sent it off to NBI. They liked it also (thanks to their head editor, K.G. McAbee), and asked for more. I had decided to end the series with the second novel, bringing Odette St. Claire and Aaron Jameson home. So I had to send someone else back to the land of Jur for the third novel. Enter Jack Richards and Mai Ling. The third and fourth novels featured them. I still wasn’t done.

The fifth novel featured Tibby, or Desree as the jungle creatures knew her, the young daughter of Jack and Mai Ling. Though her parents are still in the story. The sixth and final story also features Tibby, Jack & Mai Ling, and Jurak, the son of Aaron & Odette, who has returned to Jur with a Hollywood film crew.

Behind the scenes are the Ancient Ones, who had built the time portals, and to learn who they were the reader must read “Pangaea: Eden’s Planet”, which takes place 60 million years before the Jurassic and dinosaurs. With the release of the last two Jur novels, “Treasure of Jur” and “Drums of Jur”, the series now comes to a close, 48 years after I originally conceived the characters and plot back in France on those slow lonely nights. All of the novels are available in print and electronic format. For further information visit my Blog at http://www.JurNovels.blogspot.com/