Q & A with The Arrival Creator Jason Michael Primrose

From the mind behind the epic sci-fi series Lost Children of Andromeda comes The Arrival, the origin story of this expansive universe, now live on StoryCo!

This gripping story follows Allister Adams, the protagonist of the Lost Children of Andromeda series, as he embarks on a harrowing journey that reveals the origins of his extraordinary abilities amidst the dawn of an apocalyptic event. As a catastrophic superstorm descends upon the unsuspecting town of Cumberland Falls, Allister and his father, Patrick, are thrust into a desperate struggle for survival. With the storm raging around them and the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, The Arrival explores the pivotal moments that shape Allister’s destiny and the future of the world.

In bringing The Arrival to life on StoryCo, Jason Michael Primrose has transformed his story into a dynamic, multimedia experience that pushes the boundaries of what creators have been able to achieve on our platform. Leveraging innovative platform features like camera shake and animated backgrounds, Primrose has infused the narrative with a sense of motion and depth that draws readers deeper into Allister's journey. The result is a visually stunning and immersive epic that captures the intensity and stakes of the story in a way Jason’s fans have never seen before.

As part of this exciting launch, we had the opportunity to sit down with Jason for an in-depth interview where he discusses his long and winding path in working as an independent creator, the creative process behind adapting The Arrival for StoryCo and the unique challenges and opportunities that come with this new medium.

You can find the full interview below to accompany your consumption of the first of four chapters of The Arrival, now live at Story.co/stories/arrival!

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StoryCo: Let’s start with your background and journey into comics. Can you talk about your early foray into comics as a kid, maybe some of your early influences, and then your path into actually making your first comics yourself?

Jason Michael Primrose: Okay, so...it was interesting because I have always been a big fan of comics, but I didn't get into comics until after I saw the X -Men 92 series. So after watching that, I started to collect the collectible cards that they had, all the additions, the 92, Flare, the 97. And then from there, I was always reading comics. I was always drawing comics. I actually used to draw a ton and just kind of decided to focus on writing. I didn't think my drawing skills were competitive enough.

So when I thought about how I could introduce Lost Children to the world in other ways, comics came to mind a few times before I actually jumped into it. I think I was a little resistant because I felt like being a comic writer wasn't actually true to the type of creative that I am. But then I realized that the combination of art and literature and character development and that whole kind of cinematic experience actually is true to my nature. It's how I write and this is just a different format. So that's how I decided to turn what was once the prologue of my novel, 2050Z: Time and Salvation, The Arrival, into the comic book origin story for Allister Adams called The Arrival.

StoryCo: For people who are new to the LCOA universe, can you provide an introduction to this world you’ve created? Where did you come up with the idea, how many iterations/installments of the project have there been, how long have you been working on it, etc.?

Jason Michael Primrose: Lost Children of Andromeda started with Dragon Wars, a testament to my original drawing skills and my original storytelling craft. Dragon Wars was originally a story about a young boy who had discovered a dragon planet which humans discover and enslave the dragons. From eight years old to like 22, I expanded the universe into 8 handwritten novels.

Fast forward ten years later, I’m living in LA and I start writing it again in another kind of another era. I started rewriting the original book, Dragon Wars, into a one titled Gem Search. I ended up publishing it in 2016 as The Andromeda Project inside of the Cluster Chronicles series. You can't find it anywhere. It's out of print. I started writing the next book immediately. It was called Zosma, and I decided to change the series name to Lost Children of Andromeda. That was in 2017. That’s a story I’m in the process of rewriting to align with 205Z.

I started writing 205Z: Time and Salvation in 2019. This story became the most powerful version of Dragon Wars, Gem Search, and The Andromeda Project (and replaces all of them as well.) It’s the first official novel in the Lost Children of Andromeda series. I really focused on the unique elements of the story and the characters, working with top editors from Penguin Random House, folks that had worked with New York Times bestsellers, and really crafted this perfect start to the series. When I was writing that book, I decided to add a prologue. I love prologues. This prologue became how Allister witnesses the beginning of the end of the world. That's how the arrival originally came to life. But I wanted to make it visual. I wanted to expand it beyond prose. The Arrival became it’s own single issue comic in 2023. It allowed me to really broaden the perspective and give a lot more context into what happens in the series overall.

All that took 30 years, essentially. Lost Children of Andromeda still follows that same boy — curious, lots of power, not sure what to do with it, and includes his partners in crime, a mix of aliens and humans.

StoryCo: What draws you to experimenting in different mediums to bring to life the same storytelling universe?

Jason Michael Primrose: I would say it starts from being an independent creator and thinking about: what is the thing that will pull people into the broader universe? And so I had originally tried to turn The Arrival into a podcast where I would basically create this fully sound-designed experience and then use that as a hook to bring people into the story, possibly even record more episodes. In 2021, I did look into recording the entire novel 2050Z as an audio book, so I had voiceover artists do all the voices for The Arrival as a prologue. So I always had this big vision of walking into this kind of curated space and you would sit down, you'd put on my headphones and close your eyes, and you would be transported into this world. It would be like an audio film, basically. So I envisioned bringing the launch of that to life in that fashion but I was missing the visual element and I hadn't really decided that I was going to dive into comics.

Now I'm actually just merging all the things that I've already done. It's just… they've never all been combined, the visuals with the sound, the motion, the voiceover talent, the music, the sound effects. So yeah, it's really fascinating that I probably wouldn't have even considered doing this if I hadn't already done all of those things before.

StoryCo: As an independent creator, you’ve also had experience with crowdfunding. Can you talk a little bit about that experience and why you chose to go that route?

Jason Michael Primrose: When I did my first crowdfunding campaign in 2018 for Zosma, I think I raised like $32K or something, which was crazy to me at the time to publish that book. Then when I did the crowdfunding campaign in 2021 for 2050Z, I went even bigger and I felt more confident about what it was I was offering to the spec fiction fan community. The 2018 crowdfunding campaign was about me. It was about, I waited all my life to write this book and come support me and blah, blah, blah. It was very much friends and family.

2050Z, the crowdfunding campaign was like, I figured it out. What I'm about to give you is phenomenal. It's not even about me. Even if you don't like me, I'm telling you the story is incredible. Like you're going to want to be involved. And this is your only chance you'll get to support me at the beginning of this journey.

I think that when you're going around crowdfunding with your community, that’s the way to go about it-like being really confident in what you're creating and knowing that the value that you're bringing to the community is so powerful and high, then it's like, people can choose whether they want to support you or not.

StoryCo: What drew you to creating The Arrival on StoryCo?

I think it was the idea of my story being a continuous evolution. As the Co/Creates are completed, the experience actually changes and transforms. This idea that The Arrival could come onto the platform as one thing and end up something completely different, even in the context of actually producing it the exact way that it was created, which is as the original comic and all the original script and everything, but then that there were these other elements that could be done where you're taking characters on side quests and all this other stuff.

And that to me is why I believe technology and literature, that intersection is so important. Because I feel like I came here to transform the reading experience. Don't know why, but that is something I've been saying for a long time. So this feels part of that. It feels like it's aligned with that.

StoryCo: You say here as in here on Earth.

Jason Michael Primrose: Here in this lifetime.

StoryCo: What part of the platform has been most exciting for you to use to bring your story to life in this new format?

Jason Michael Primrose: Hmm, well, I like the animation. I think the movement is really cool. I’ll stick to the original thing that blew me away, which is the ability to take the layers and create crazy depth within a panel, an image where you can actually look like you're looking off into the distance inside of the story. I still think that that is my number one favorite feature.

And for people who aren't technological, you know, this might go over their heads, but to be able to export scripts in a particular format and then be able to import them into the platform and have the platform identify, recognize and associate those dialogue and caption and description points with the images-it's just crazy. I think that that combination of being able to impact all of the elements of a page or a panel kind of in one place, including separating layers to give it depth, including being able to add voiceover and record it right there on the spot, including being able to add sound effects just right where it says sound effects, you know, I think that that's something I don't think I ever imagined would be possible and accessible for a creator like myself at this point.

StoryCo: What are you looking forward to as The Arrival launches and it goes out there into the universe in this new format?

Jason Michael Primrose: I think there's a mix. I feel like StoryCo brings to life that vision of being able to champion community members to actually be part of your story, which is more so than just having them, you know, consume it or engage with it. So that to me is a really, really important element of the platform-that the community gets to participate. It does this thing where you're being recognized or championed for your imagination or creativity, no matter what level you're at in it. And I think it's inspiration for us to live more creative and imaginative lives, which can, yeah, sure, it's nice to get lost in a book, but it's not as fun to get lost in a book if I feel like I'm never gonna be good enough to write one and I want to.

So I think there's an element of bringing people into their own micro-creative environment and nurturing them through it in a way that may kickstart or jumpstart somebody else's creative journey that otherwise may have just sat on the sidelines, this whole time wishing they could have scored a sci -fi comic or a film, you know?

StoryCo: Final question. You mentioned that you're here on earth to merge technology with storytelling. How did you find that mission? What does that mean to you and where do you see a future of storytelling shaped by technology heading?

Jason Michael Primrose: Sorry, I have to destroy your question. I wouldn't say I'm on earth to merge technology and literature. I am on earth to transform the literary experience. But I also think that more of my calling is to awaken potential in creatives.

So like, I feel like I'm very much a creative nurturer and a champion of creatives and someone who can help unlock and awaken the greatest creative potential an individual has to offer. And you can do that using technology, right? Because even looking at all the elements that we're starting to bring in together, you're amplifying everybody's individual creative contributions into this larger than life thing that will stick with you. It's almost like because you've attacked multiple senses with this experience, you're going to get more resonance from people.

I did a book club for 2050Z and I had invited all these people, friends of mine during the pandemic to help me workshop the novel. We started getting into the story and we were mirroring the experience of these characters and their potential, which is what we call power in the story and the experience of these friends of mine and realizing that we all have potential and they were all creative and maybe they had just at some point been led to believe that they were not meant to be or could not be. And so that journey was an awakening for all of us into our creative power. And I noticed that whenever I was collaborating with the composers or singers or artists or graphic artists, I was always kind of pushing them beyond where they had been before and in the process pushing myself beyond my own creative limits.

I would say I discovered the ability to awaken evolutionaries during, you know, that 2050Z era. I think deep down, I always knew that this was more than a story about characters that were trying to stop the end of the world and end up back in their homeland of the Andromeda galaxy. I think it's just like a metaphor for all of us trying to find out what our true creative potential is and show it to the world.