Blending strategy, creativity, and storytelling, Jim Simon examines how technology shapes what it means to be human.
What happens when the discipline of corporate strategy meets the imagination of fiction? For E.J. (Jim) Simon, the answer lies in stories that probe the limits of technology, identity, and human connection.
Before exploring the digital afterlife in fiction, Jim built a career as a corporate CEO and as a consultant navigating boardrooms, high-stakes deals, and strategy for JP Morgan Chase, McKinsey & Co., Citibank, and Lehman Brothers. His leadership in mergers, acquisitions, and branding showcases a rare combination of sharp analytical skill and deep human insight.
Over time, Jim realized that every great leader, like every great novelist, is a storyteller. That insight guided him into a second career, blending business perspective with imagination. Today, as a best-selling author, he explores the intersection of strategy, human connection, and innovation through his acclaimed Michael Nicholas series. Across five thrillers, Death Never Sleeps, Death Logs In, Death Logs Out, Death in the Cloud, and Death in the Kremlin, Jim creates immersive worlds rich with corporate intrigue, ethical dilemmas, and the strategic insight from his executive background.
At the heart of his novels is a provocative question: How far can technology go in preserving the human mind beyond life itself?
In his debut, Death Never Sleeps, a financial executive named Michael Nicholas discovers that his murdered brother, Alex, may not be entirely gone due to specialized software Alex created before his death. As Michael is drawn into Alex’s shadowy world of organized crime, he faces choices that blur the lines between right and wrong, human and digital.
As the series continues, the story widens in scope and stakes. In Death Logs In, Michael collaborates with Alex’s virtual presence to confront conspiracies and threats from powerful corporations. Death Logs Out takes the brothers’ story global, as they face a network seeking to exploit Alex’s digital existence for profit.
By Death in the Cloud, the stakes escalate: a missing airliner, nuclear codes, and an AI capable of saving or destroying humanity. The newest installment, Death in the Kremlin, brings the series full circle, as Vladimir Putin seeks digital immortality through the same technology that keeps Alex alive.
Building on these themes, Jim reflects on creativity, leadership, and the questions technology poses about what it truly means to be human.
Storytelling & Creativity
Story Blue Brilliance: What inspired you to explore the connection between technology, identity, and mortality in your novels?
Jim Simon: I was inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. In it, the onboard computer HAL refuses to be shut down, saying, “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” and takes control of the spacecraft. That moment — when artificial intelligence becomes self-aware — fascinated me. HAL had achieved consciousness, and that idea has stuck with me ever since.
SBB: You’ve led companies and advised global organizations. How has that business experience shaped your storytelling and approach to character development?
JS: My business background taught me to communicate with clarity. In my writing, I cut to the essence of the plot and characters — no wasted words or unnecessary description. In today’s fast-paced world, readers have short attention spans, so I focus on delivering a clear, engaging story.
SBB: Your stories explore human choices in a digitally transformed world. What have they taught you about communication and decision-making?
JS: I’m currently writing a new novel set in 1981, and it’s an incredible challenge. We forget how new technology — the internet, mobile phones, laptops — really is. When writing scenes of communication, I instinctively think about texts or cell phone calls, then remember they didn’t exist then. It’s a reminder of how profoundly the digital world has changed how we connect.
SBB: How has your understanding of human behavior in business shaped the way you write your characters?
JS: The behavior of business leaders and underworld figures often overlaps — both can be driven by self-interest. The stakes differ, but the motives can be surprisingly similar. Still, there are heroes in both worlds.
Leadership & Communication
SBB: From your experience leading global organizations and writing fiction, what qualities define a brilliant communicator today?
JS: A great communicator knows their audience and can “read the room.” That doesn’t mean telling people what they want to hear — it means understanding their perspective, so your message resonates. There are differences, however. When readers pick up a book or when an employee listens to a leader, they have certain expectations. When writing fiction, the element of surprise, the unexpected, is usually a good thing. In business, not so much — consistency and clarity are key.
“A great communicator knows their audience and can ‘read the room.’ That doesn’t mean telling people what they want to hear — it means understanding their perspective, so your message resonates.”
Jim Simon
SBB: How do you balance the analytical mindset of business with the imaginative freedom of writing fiction?
JS: After a career in business, there was nothing more refreshing than sitting down with my computer and creating a story, a whole world of my own creation with few outside pressures, to make people be what I want them to be and do exactly what I want them to do. In other words, a fiction author gets to play god. The only tempering factors to this total power to create are not embarrassing myself in the process, and ensuring that the stories make sense in terms of how people and situations work so that, despite being fiction, they make sense. Oddly enough, in a way, fiction has to make more sense than non-fiction, or reality.
SBB: With technology evolving rapidly, how can leaders stay human-centered while embracing innovation?
JS: There’s no substitute for face-to-face time. You can’t stay human-centered if you’re always behind a screen. At the same time, leaders need at least a basic fluency in new technologies and social media to stay aware of emerging trends.
“There’s no substitute for face-to-face time. You can’t stay human-centered if you’re always behind a screen.”
Jim Simon
Innovation & Technology
SBB: When you think about the future, what role do you see AI playing in shaping human intuition and decision-making?
JS: I believe that AI will be a great asset to support decision-making. It can provide an analytical framework and a unique or different or simply another perspective. The danger, however, is allowing it make decisions or even to be the primary decionmaking vote without the conscious intervention or balance of the human perspective, including non-algorithm human intuition.
SBB: How might the rise of AI in storytelling change the kinds of stories we value or choose to tell?
JS: I think it will make it more critical that writers tap their emotional, often illogical and intuitive feelings when they write and reach down deep into their souls for the beauty and the darkness that we all possess.
SBB: If storytelling becomes co-created with AI, how do we preserve the human soul in the narrative?
JS: I have tested AI in various ways (although I have never used it in any of my actual writing), and it is amazing. So much so that it’s frightening. I have seen it take less than a minute to summarize a complex book or to create a biography that I might have struggled with for hours. We can’t change what AI produces – only the narrative that we ourselves write or create. We have to be better and reach down deeper for true meaning in our narratives.
“We can’t change what AI produces – only the narrative that we ourselves write or create.”
Jim Simon
Legacy
SBB: Do the decisions you’ve made as an executive connect to the stories you choose to tell as a novelist?
JS: My novels draw from real experiences in my business career and some of the characters are based, however loosely or quite closely, on the people I encountered during those times. Some of them, like Michael Nicholas’s secretary, Karen DiNardo, were great human beings. Others — less admirable ones — I occasionally “kill off” in fiction.
SBB: Looking across both your business and writing careers, what impact do you hope your work leaves behind?
JS: I hope my stories will bring about a greater awareness of the potential, the challenges and the dangers of technology, of the fragility of life, and the need to think about what, if anything, comes after. Also, I hope readers will think more about the complexity of personalities and how the line between good and bad characters is often blurred and not black and white. Some of the most colorful, but honest and compassionate characters in the book, are underworld figures. Mostly, however, I write to simply entertain, offering readers an escape from the pressures of everyday life.
Through his work and a brilliant communication style, Jim Simon reminds us that imagination and intellect are not separate forces, but rather they enhance one another. From the boardroom to the page, his work explores how technology and humanity collide, challenging us, inspiring us, and ultimately connecting us in ways that are profoundly human.
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