Jay Eales was born among the dying embers of the Swinging Sixties, in a rural Northamptonshire town where the Co-op was (and remains) King, and almost every family was in thrall to the boot and shoe industry (May it Rest In Peace). Fast forward three and a bit decades and Jay switched teams, moving to Leicester, chasing love, a new career path and the twenty-first century.
In 2000, Jay and his partner created the Factor Fiction publishing imprint for comics and prose writing projects, and published a number of anthologies on behalf of the Foundation for the Study of Infant Death. The Girly Comic and Violent! anthologies published many up and coming and professional comic creators over the next decade. They were twice shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award as well as being nominated for the Comic Creators Guild and National Comics Awards.
Between 2002 and 2004, Jay was the News Features Editor for Borderline – The Comics Magazine, recipient of the 2004 National Comics Award for Best Magazine/Website About Comics. From 2006 to 2011, he was part of the organising committee for Britain’s longest running comic convention: Caption. He is currently the Graphic Novel Reviews Editor for the British Fantasy Society and regularly appears at conventions discussing the comics medium where he lectures and leads workshops on this much misunderstood art form.
Jay’s curated Burning With Optimism’s Flames – a collection of dark and surreal fantasies on the theme of identity, by fourteen authors from the UK and US, including two Leicester writers. His pulp novella The Five Faces of Fear, featuring masked Mexican wrestlers and time travel was published as an ebook in November 2013 by Manleigh Books/Obverse Books. He adapted his own short story ‘Imaginary Kingdom’ for the comics anthology Zombre, illustrated by Polish artist Krzysztof Ostrowski and published by Borderline Press in November 2013. His first novel progresses in fits and starts.
Publications
Doctor Who charity anthologies:
Perfect Timing 2, co-edited with Helen Fayle, 1999 (proceeds to FSID)
Walking in Eternity, Editor/contributor, Factor Fiction, 2000 (proceeds to FSID)
Walk A Mile In My Shoes, Missing Pieces [Edited by Mark Phippen & Shaun Lyon] (2001)
Shelf Life, co-edited with Adrian Middleton & David A McIntee, 2008 (proceeds to British Heart Foundation)
Eye of Orion? and Walk a Mile in My Shoes [Reprint], A Second Target for Tommy, Obverse Books (2018)
Comics/comics-related:
The Girly Comic #1-21, Publisher/contributor, Factor Fiction, 2001-2010
Violent! #1-20, Publisher/editor/contributor from #6 on, Factor Fiction, 1999-2014
Borderline – The Comics Magazine #1-20, News Features Editor, MediaHall, 2002-2004
Service Not Included, comic strip with Peet Clack, American Splendor DVD, 2004
See a Penny, Pick It Up…, comic strip with Graeme Neil Reid, Negative Burn #6, Desperado Press/Image Comics, 2006
Outlaw Wu, comic strip with Toby Ford, The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga, Constable & Robinson, 2006
Made Men, comic strip with Charley Spencer, Robots, Accent UK, 2008
Last Suppers, comic strip, Predators, Accent UK, 2011
The Girly Comic Book Volume 1, Publisher/contributor, Factor Fiction, 2008 hardback, 2012 paperback
The Girly Comic Book Volume 2, Publisher/contributor, Factor Fiction, August 2012 paperback
Imaginary Kingdom comics adaptation with Krzysztof Ostrowski, Zombre, Borderline Press, November 2013
Short stories:
Spare Change, Murky Depths #12 2010 (Nominated for BSFA Award for Best Short Story of 2010)
Mightier than the Sword, Faction Paradox: A Romance in Twelve Parts, Obverse Books, 2011
Imaginary Kingdom, Alt-Zombie, Hersham Horror, 2012
Nine Tenths, Terror Scribes, Doghorn Publishing, 2012
Faction Paradox: Burning With Optimism’s Flames, Editor, Obverse Books, August 2012
Born Among Briars, More Tales of the City, Obverse Books, 2013
The Five Faces of Fear (The Periodic Adventures of Señor 105 #8), Manleigh Books/Obverse Books, November 2013
Zeitgeist, Terror Tales Volume 2, #1, Rainfall Books, June 2014
The Revenant, The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes 3, Alchemy Press 2014
Little Victories, Amadeus (ebook short story)
Death of the Author, The Perennial Miss Wildthyme, Obverse Books 2015
Nine Tenths, Kitchen Sink Gothic, Parallel Universe Publications 2015
Between Love and Hat, You Left Your Biscuit Behind, Fox Spirit Press (2016)
Made Me Do It, Final Masquerade, Lycan Valley Press (Canada) (2016)
Everything’s Coming Up Roses, A Treasury of Brenda and Effie, Obverse Books (2017).
Buried on Sunday, Stranger Tales of the City, Obverse Books (2018).
The Enemy of My Enemy is My Enemy, The Book of the Enemy, Obverse Books (2018)
Brex-what? and The Word, Bollocks to Brexit: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction (2019)
The Other Side, Forgotten Lives, Obverse Books (2020)
Borrowed Time, Forgotten Lives 2, Obverse Books (2022)
The Other Side & Borrowed Time (reprinted), Forgotten Lives Omnibus HC, Obverse Books (2023)
Who Needs Enemies, Forgotten Lives 3, Obverse Books (2023)