PRESS RELEASE
May 2010
Vampires Cause Havoc in the Week before Kingsburg’s Swedish Festival.
If you’re a resident of Kingsburg you might want to be careful as you prepare for The Swedish Festival. You might not be aware, but you are under attack and that the quiet streets of Kingsburg are plagued by vampires. In the new vampire novel Dance on Fire, originally, James Garcia Jr. created a fictitious city which mirrored Kingsburg, but ultimately, he came to realize that there was no rule that said that he couldn’t use his home town. His love for Kingsburg shines in every word he writes about his hometown and by setting the action in the week leading up to The Swedish Festival the novel is filled with the urgency to not only save the town, but to protect all the visitor’s that are due to arrive.
James describes The Swedish Festival as, “A time to celebrate the town’s Swedish heritage. After all of these years it has not gone “corporate”. It is still the town coming together to throw a large “back yard” event, as it were, almost like some giant block party. We open our town and welcome everyone in, yet we do not lose our down-home flavor.”
When asked why his protagonist, Nathaniel, was drawn to Kingsburg James said, “He would imagine that Nathaniel found Kingsburg and appreciated the quiet after having just left the Los Angeles area…with its large vampire colonies (something we do not discover until the sequel). He may not have intended to stay for very long, but circumstances dictated it. Eventually, blaming himself for Vincent’s interest in the Lopez family, he could not abandon them and felt the need to stand up for them. It was his caring for them that finally caused him to realize that he needed to finish Vincent, or die trying.”
James has said of his novel, “I would love to say that my novel is some great Orwellian commentary; however, it was simply the story in my head. When I first began “Dance on Fire” I was driven by the horror. It was originally an R-rated novel. Subsequently, I became a Christian and began to think that I had to abandon the project and write for God instead. Eventually, my Christian walk led me to come to a middle ground that embraced both of my loves: the one which revealed God’s kingdom and the one which liked excitement, intrigue and the thrill of the chase.”
If you’re visiting The Swedish Festival this week then make sure you read Dance on Fire first so you can get to the very heart of Kingsburg.
About Dance on Fire
Two Kingsburg police officers have been butchered in an attack as ferocious as it is mystifying. Now two Kingsburg detectives and their families are being drawn into a battle that threatens to destroy them and those around them. In a marriage of horror and Christian themes of good conquering evil and redemption, Dance on Fire is the fictional account of characters drawn into the fire by supernatural forces.
About the author
James Garcia Jr. was born in Hanford, California in 1969. In the mid 1970’s James Sr. began a Law Enforcement career just up the road with the Kingsburg Police Department, taking the family there. It was not until junior high school; however, that anything of significance occurred. Discovering authors Stephen King and Michael Slade, as well as hard rock music, began to form a spark of creativity within his adolescent mind. He began to play guitar and pen song lyrics, but soon found himself confined in that tight medium, desiring to do longer works.
After graduation he moved on to the local community college where he met his wife. By this time he had written a handful of short stories, a couple of novellas and had begun writing the novel that would become, “Dance on Fire”.
Career changes, building a family, and the busyness of life impeded his writing at this point. It wasn’t until he came to the realization near his fortieth birthday that he did not want to go to the grave with any regrets he plunged headlong into the dust-covered novel in earnest and not only completed it after twenty years, but started and completed its sequel in eight months.
James and his wife, Aida, and their two sons make their home in Kingsburg, where he is an Administrative Supervisor for Sun-Maid Growers of California.
