N. Barrington rocker-turned-author embraces his dark side

Jeremy Wagner guesses he has a “dark seed.”

As a kid, he was drawn to the horror novels of Stephen King. And when Wagner was in his teens and 20s, his love of the dark side served him well as a rocker in the band Broken Hope, whose heavy-metal lyrics aimed to shock.

Now, the North Barrington resident is putting his passion for “scary things” to a different use as the author of the debut novel “The Armageddon Chord” (kNight Romance Publishing), an apocalyptic tale dubbed “hardcore horror” by Publisher's Weekly.

“It's just part of my DNA,” Wagner says. “It's part of my expression. I express dark tales. I just do what comes naturally.”

His interest dates back to his childhood in a quiet part of Wisconsin, where his family had a black-and-white TV with just three channels. So he'd often head outdoors, pretending he was someone else, like a knight encountering unknown creatures in the woods.

Wagner also began writing his own scary tales about whatever frightened him at the time.

“I had such an imagination, and I credit not having a TV with 100 channels and being stimulated by easy media,” he says.

When he was 12, Wagner got his first guitar, and a passion for music followed. A fan of hard rock and heavy metal, he decided he wanted to be a guitarist.

“The show ‘Headbangers Ball' on MTV got me sucked into that,” he says. “Music changed my life.”

At 16, Wagner moved to the suburbs to live with his father and attended Warren Township High School in Gurnee. He continued practicing guitar and studying music theory, and he and a few friends formed a band called Broken Hope. They were signed to a record label upon high school graduation.

Wagner recalls his first tour of North America, playing in 40-some states over 50 days. Pulling in a few hundred dollars a gig, the band traveled in a small cargo van with only an AM radio, no air conditioning and a mattress thrown in the back.

Eventually, the band's star rose. For the next decade, they lived the rock lifestyle, touring the world and writing and recording five albums.

“Being in Broken Hope put me on the map on an international level,” he says.

In writing lyrics, Wagner focused on pushing the envelope, touching on horror-based and shocking content, like death and cannibalism.

“The stuff just comes to me,” he says. “I try to do something no one else has.”

Once, a lady asked him why he wrote such over-the-top lyrics. “You're one of the nicest dudes I've ever met,” she told him, confused.

Though Wagner is a happy, positive guy, his wife, Kym Foglia, says he also happens to have “an innate curiosity for horror.” And he finds inspiration in everything.

“He's always got ideas; he's always writing things down,” she says.

Eventually, writing lyrics turned into writing short stories. His band broke up in 2000, but he continued to write. After finishing his first novel, which he calls “a big, giant mess,” Wagner began really studying the craft.

“I saw that I needed a lot of work,” he says.

He came up with an idea for an adventure story featuring a guitar player. That turned into the base of the recently released heavy metal thriller “The Armageddon Chord,” a story about an ancient and evil song written in hieroglyphics that's discovered in a secret pyramid beneath the Egyptian sands. Once transcribed, the song has the power to unleash the apocalypse.

The theme of the book — which Publisher's Weekly described as “highly entertaining” — is the struggle between good and evil.

Research for the novel was no small chore. Wagner had to learn about everything from Egyptian history and ancient religion to the lifestyles of top corporate CEOs. The research and first draft took nearly a year, with plenty of moments of uncertainty about how it would all come together.

“Somehow, I was able to pull it off,” Wagner says.

These days, aside from his characters, the traveling rock-star lifestyle is behind him. Now Wagner's married and a stepdad to two teens. He loves to stay at home — home being a 10,000-square-foot estate with two pools, a movie theater and a recording studio — and write full-time. He doesn't miss the grueling life on the road.

“I paid my dues,” he says. “I like my comfy life now.”