J.C. Hutchins to Release “Personal Effects: Dark Art”

Summer 2009 will see the major release of the new supernatural thriller, “Personal Effects: Dark Art” from J.C. Hutchins, the mastermind behind the highly successful “7th Son Trilogy.”

Produced by entertainment company Smith & Tinker and published by St. Martin’s Press, “Dark Art” combines the narrative experience of a traditional prose novel with an Alternate Reality Game. Clues in the novel — and items that come with the novel, such as ID and business cards, faxes and photos — will propel readers into an online experience where they become a “protagonist by proxy” and learn more about the novel’s story/universe. Readers will also discover plot points online that the book’s protagonists may never see.

This new book series is the brain-child of Jordan Weisman, one of the fathers of the Alternate Reality Game storytelling genre. In 2001, Jordan worked with Steven Spielberg to promote his film A.I. using this viral storytelling technique, and has since created many ARGs such as “I Love Bees” for the release of “Halo 2,” and more recently contributed to 42 Entertainment’s (the company that he founded in 2003) ARGs for “Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero” and “The Dark Knight” film. Weisman is a living legend in the gaming community.

About J.C. Hutchins:
J.C. Hutchins has written for The Palm Beach Post, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Lexington Herald-Leader (Ky.), and Wizard: The Comics Magazine.

Specializing in features and entertainment reporting, Hutchins has interviewed comic book industry icons such as Alan Moore, Will Eisner, Warren Ellis, Kevin Smith, Mark Waid and Neil Gaiman. During a 2001 controversy sparked by B.C., a popular newspaper comic strip, one critic considered Hutchins’ feature on the topic “the single best piece of journalism generated by the controversy.”

J.C. Hutchins left the journalism business in 2002 to write his 7th Son thriller trilogy. 7th Son is the most popular podcast novel series in history, and has featured cameos by science fiction/horror icons Nathan Fillion, George Romero, Richard Hatch, Alan Dean Foster, Kevin J. Anderson and others. In March 2007, the novel was featured in The New York Times.