Premium Post: THING, TAI Character Backgrounds

Sam Dixon's Gulf War experience, James' family's home in Atlanta before moving to Edington, the foreign languages Amber can speak, and more

One of the benefits of a premium subscription is you get exclusive content other readers don’t. This is an adaptation of a 2017 MailChimp newsletter that included back-story for characters from The Thing in the Woods, now with updates for characters introduced in The Atlanta Incursion. I’ll give you the back-story for protagonist James Daly and his family for free, but for information about the other characters, sign up for a premium subscription.

So let’s get started…

*Before they moved to Edington, James Daly’s family lived on Channing Drive in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta and protagonist James and his younger sister Karen both attended North Atlanta High School. There’s an apartment complex on Channing Drive I seriously considered when I moved to Atlanta, and I noticed some nice but not particularly large houses all around. James' father wanted a bigger house to reflect his new position at his law firm (a position he would soon lose owing to the Great Recession), and this would explain why. North Atlanta High School is well-known for its theater and arts programs, which Karen would have active participated in. The schools in Edington simply don’t have those things, which is why Karen (and also Amber) do non-school community theater instead.

*Both James' parents grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina and met at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. James' father James Sr. was older, in law school at the time, while his mother Andrea was an undergraduate. They both worked in Charlotte, NC, soon after graduation and marriage, moving to Atlanta when James was very, very young and before Karen was born. Andrea worked in the corporate office of what was then NationsBank (now Bank of America) in Charlotte before the children came. When James Sr. lost his job she got a part-time job at an Edington bookstore to help support the family.