Author Overview: Christopher J. Priest

Christopher J. Priest is the most criminally overlooked author of our time.  He's best known for his work in comics, where he thrives in writing characters who have covered all the angles and are five moves ahead of everyone else.  He wrote the definitive run of Black Panther - much of the movie depended on his version, and it could have benefited from his skilled plotting.  More recently he's worked on Deathstroke.

Some writers struggle with writing smart characters, especially superhumanly smart ones: Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Sherlock Holmes.  The author doesn't have to be as smart, but they have to be able to fake it.  Priest writes the smartest characters, and there's a level of research evident that he put in the work.

Priest has done a little (far too little) prose work, which gives him even more room to show his stuff.

2005 saw the three part series Green Lantern: Sleepers which I haven't been able to pick up yet.

He began publishing prose work in 2014.  Thankfully he includes the name James Priest in these titles on Amazon - pulling prose novels out of an author's comic work can be a nightmare.

In 2014 he published Zion: A Love Story, which is probably more crime than romance.

2015 saw the beginning of 1999.  The idea is to have several interwoven stories in the style of comics and pulp fiction, published in ongoing installments.  Unfortunately, this came out in the era where it was more profitable to sell novels a chapter at a time on Kindle Unlimited, since you got paid by the title, not by the page.  I don't think that's what Priest was trying to do here, but I think the nondescript title and the fact that it was divided into chapters might have kept this from getting the attention it deserved.  Unfortunately, the series ended in 2016.

2015 also saw his crime noir novel Dual: A Love Story, with a prequel 50Seven Seconds.  I've read the prequel, and while there's not much love so far, it's shaping up to be one of the best crime pieces I've seen.

Priest has a lot else going on.  He continues to write comics.  He made music as Hollis Stone in the 80s (including a punk jam with Larry Hama!) and is an ordained Baptist minister.  The world needs more prose fiction from him - 1999 and Dual have $0.99 entry points and are currently free on Kindle Unlimited.  Let's give the man some sales so he has a reason to come back.