Adventure Thrillers Gods of IMAGO by Greg Belliveau

It has been ten years since Christopher Dante, the last storyteller, defeated the Ghul in the abandoned subway tunnels under Cogstin, and now he has vanished without a trace. There are rumors and whispers of a new evil emerging, ancient, dark, beyond the Black Mountains, a Horned God who rules the skeleton people of the north. Welcome to GODS OF IMAGO, book two in the stunning IMAGO Series. GODS OF IMAGO is Science Fiction/Dystopia thriller at its absolute best, blending amazing world-building with thought provoking, artful prose in an unforgettable, page-turning experience that will haunt the reader long after the last sentence.

Greg Belliveau recently spent some time with The Big Thrill discussing his latest thriller, GODS OF IMAGO.

Can you pinpoint a moment or incident that sparked the idea for this book?
I wanted to go big from the the last novel, really stretch my imaginative/thriller muscles and really just go for it! I read deeply about a whaling community, the turned it on its head. Boom! Let the world building thriller ride begin!

Greg Belliveau

A novel is such a major undertaking; there’s the writing of it, of course, then you’re spending months and months revising, polishing, and then promoting it. How did you know this was the book you wanted to spend the next couple of years on?
Well, when you give birth to a son or daughter, you don’t ask “how long do I want to spend with this pup.” Everything from the conception (whether a one night stand or a planned scheduled thing…) to the long gestation period as you watch the pages swell, your brain swell, the hopes and dreams and fantasies…. and even the terror of the whole damn thing! And then the moment of birth (the long-for box of author copies… )… Good god! you would kill and murder and defy the whole damn world as you hold that precious thing in your hand…. I guess that would be my response. =)

Were there any particular books, movies, or songs that were knocking around in your head while you were writing this one?
All things Cormac McCarthy. Every book China Mieville ever wrote. Of course Melville, and a whole lot of research.

When you first created your protagonist for this book, did you see an empty space in crime lit that you wanted to fill? What can you share about the inspiration for that character?
The world starts with a scene. A young woman tracking… who? Why? And then it exploded into a living thing of murder and mayhem.

In addition to a great read, what do you hope readers will take away from this story?
A great read, a profound and moving experience, and maybe, just maybe something even hopeful.

What can you share about what you’re working on next?
Imagine Civil War, Andersonville Prison, Frankenstein gothic, and an unbelievable twist you never saw coming… Blood Clan

Actually, now a pilot (co-written by me and another good dude) in the hands of AGBO Productions =)

Greg Belliveau is an award-winning novelist and author of the Science Fiction Dystopian novel Gods of IMAGO (Rogue Phoenix Press, 2023) and IMAGO (RPP, 2019), as well as Go Down To Silence (Multnomah Publishing: a Division of Penguin Random house, 2001) which was a Christy Award Finalist for Best First Novel; and a collection of creative nonfiction entitled Seeds: Mediations on Grace in a World with Teeth (Crosslink Publishing, 2017). He is currently working on the TV series Go Down To Silence based on the novel of the same name. He is a Christopher Isherwood grant recipient and teaches Writing at Antioch University and Capital University.

To learn more about the author and his work, please visit his website.