He's a geek.
An amateur wine snob.
A former college DJ.
An emerging screenwriter.
And a full-service publishing consultant with over twenty years of experience at major houses.

Jim Spivey was born and raised in Oklahoma, spent his high school years in New Mexico, and is a graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Oregon. A lifelong fan and student of sequential art and visual storytelling, he discovered (at a young age, fortunately) he couldn’t draw to save his life and instead developed a talent and passion for the written word, a focus that has shaped his creative and professional endeavors ever since and has earned him numerous accolades.

His first job out of college was with Portland-based comics publisher Dark Horse Comics, and he continued his career in comics and graphic novels when he later moved to New York City to join the editorial staff of DC Comics. While at DC, Jim edited such titles as Hawkman, Damage, Primal Force, and Deathstroke the Terminator and co-edited the Harvey Award–nominated collection Manhunter: The Special Edition, and he was privileged to work with and learn from Archie Goodwin and Martin Pasko, two of the comic industry’s leading editor/writers. After several years at DC in a variety of editorial roles, Jim joined Warner Books, later Hachette Book Group, working in both their production & manufacturing and managing editorial departments.

In addition to helping others develop and craft their stories, Jim has written a number of screenplays and comic scripts. His screenplays have won several contest accolades, including his feature-length spec adaptation of the indie graphic novel Baker Street, which was a quarterfinalist in the 2005/2006 AAA Screenplay contest, and he’s written on commission for producer David K. Zuckerman. Most recently, his TV pilot Guns of Perdition has received over a dozen contest accolades, including being named a finalist in the 2022 Screencraft Action & Adventure competition, a Top 10 Finalist in the 2022 Table Read My Screenplay genre competition, the Action/Adventure Category Winner in the Spring 2023 ISA Fast Track Fellowship, and is in the top 1 percent of projects on Coverfly’s Red List. On the comics side, his first publish was a backup feature in Dark Horse Presents #45 (1990); later works include several stories for Rugrats Comic Adventures magazine.

In 2015, Jim left NYC behind to return to the Pacific Northwest and set up shop as Working Vacation Studios. When not crafting his latest script or working hard for his book publishing clients, Jim enjoys kickboxing to work out the kinks, guilty pleasure movies and TV shows that allow him to turn off his brain, and teaching friends how to play his favorite board games.

Jim's full CV, with recommendations, is available on LinkedIn.
(Please note that Jim only accepts connections from people and organizations he knows.)