Driftwood

Fast facts

Title

Driftwood

Authors

Devin Halden, Adam Jones

Genre

Mystery / adventure

Published

June 1, 2026

Publisher

StoryOsophy

Formats

Kindle, paperback, hardcover

Hardcover ISBN

979-8822968271

Paperback ISBN

979-8822968288

Kindle ISBN

979-8318840968

Available

Worldwide, all major retailers

Synopsis

Three lengths, ready to quote

One line

A gold bar found in a Louisiana river ties back to a failed 1997 Minneapolis bank heist — and sets off a three-day treasure hunt that tears a Cajun town apart.

Short — 60 words

When a waitress diving in a Louisiana river surfaces with a gold bar from the notorious 1997 Mariner Bank and Trust heist, the quiet town of Bayou Courbé becomes a gold rush. A retired FBI agent reopens the case that ruined him. A Minnesota crime family comes looking. Within three days, nobody's life is what it was.

Full

The tranquil Cajun town of Bayou Courbé is thrust into a whirlwind of suspense and danger when a waitress discovers a gold bar while diving in a Louisiana river. But this isn't ordinary treasure — it's a relic from the notorious 1997 Mariner Bank and Trust heist in Minneapolis, a failed robbery that suddenly seems less like a failure. The revelation ignites a frantic gold rush, transforming a quiet town into a hotbed of intrigue and greed.

Kira Devereaux, the diver who finds the bar, searches for the rest of the missing treasure as tourists descend on the town, invading its waters and riling up the gators. Roger McKenna, the FBI agent who ran the '97 investigation, comes out of retirement to reopen the case that cost him his career and his family. He wants answers to questions that have plagued him for decades.

Within three days the entire town is swept into events beyond its control. A humble crabber, a drifting teen, a dangerous Minnesota crime family, and local law enforcement all become embroiled in the chaos Kira's discovery has caused.

Driftwood is an intricately plotted, character-driven adventure about identity and reinvention, filled with humor and suspense and grounded in the present tense — a mystery that surprises not once but again and again.

The authors

Devin Halden & Adam Jones

Devin Halden — full bio

Devin Halden is an author, animator, and storyteller who has spent his career in independent media and narrative design. As lead writer and animator at Pixovi Animation Studio, he works across animated films, series, and commercials. His interest in how stories actually work led him to team up with Adam Jones to co-host the weekly StoryOsophy podcast and design Story Blūprint, a digital workspace built to help writers map complex, non-linear plots.

Devin's creative roots run deep in the indie filmmaking scene. In 2005 he founded the Solstice Film Festival in Minnesota, a venture Variety praised for its daring programming and one that pioneered early online VOD streaming. He later launched the Pixovi Movie Network to introduce Social Cinema, letting film lovers worldwide watch and chat together in virtual theaters. He has worked alongside major studios including Warner Bros. and DreamWorks, consistently advocating for distribution models that keep creative control and IP rights with the storytellers. With Driftwood, Devin again collaborates with Adam Jones, bringing decades of world-building and cinematic experience to the page.

Adam Jones — full bio

Adam Jones is a screenwriter, director, producer, actor, and novelist originally from West Virginia. He began writing at three years old on a typewriter without a ribbon, and started directing at ten, when his father brought home a video camera. He began acting on stage in his teens and has since appeared in over thirty plays, twenty short films — among them "Rubbish Man" — and feature films including "Empty Rooms," "Cross Eyed," and "Cry Havoc." His television work includes History's "Hatfields & McCoys" and AMC's "The American West."

Jones attended Bard College, earning two BAs in writing and acting and serving as head sound designer for theater and dance performances for two years. After graduating he worked as technical director and production manager for the Schoolhouse Theatre in New York, overseeing all elements of production across two full Equity seasons. While living in New York City he worked on independent films in a variety of departments, honing his craft as a director and his voice as a storyteller. He also worked in the scenic department on more than twenty studio films — including "Unfaithful," "The Stepford Wives," "The Interpreter," "War of the Worlds," "Doubt," "Date Night," and "The Departed" — and on over 130 episodes of television, among them "The Sopranos" and 60 episodes of "Saturday Night Live."

His feature directorial debut, "Cross Eyed," took several awards on the festival circuit, including Audience Choice and the Grand Jury Award. He has written screenplays, teleplays, and stage plays, and developed concepts for television series and video games. Jones co-hosts the StoryOsophy podcast and works as a freelance story consultant, offering development services to writers and production companies.

Background

How Driftwood got written

Devin Halden and Adam Jones met in 2006. Devin, who founded and programmed the Solstice Film Festival in Minnesota, had screened hundreds of submissions that year without finding much that met his standard — until Adam's feature "Cross Eyed," which Adam had written, directed, and starred in. Adam drove from New York City, where he was living at the time, to St. Paul for the festival. He found Devin at the opening night party, mid-conversation with guests, and introduced himself. Devin's response was to quote one of Adam's own lines from the film back at him: "Did you know these things are heavy?" — a line Adam's character delivers about a fire hydrant he has stolen and installed in his New York apartment.

They became friends and collaborators. Adam later spent several months living in Devin's downtown Minneapolis condo, where the two wrote several scripts together. The last time they were in the same room was in Santa Monica in 2010, where Devin was speaking on a panel about film financing and distribution. In the sixteen years since, they have continued to collaborate across roughly eleven hundred miles without once being in the same place — including the ten years it took to write Driftwood.

Driftwood began as something else. After two decades of telling other people's stories on other people's schedules — and of writing every scene against what a production could afford — the two decided to write a spec screenplay with the guardrails off. No budget math. No cutting a sequence because it couldn't be shot for the money. They wrote the best version of the story they could and worried about nothing else. Freed of that ceiling, the story kept growing: the screenplay became a twelve-episode series, and the series became a two-book novel sequence, so it could reach readers now.

Interviews

Topics we can speak to

• Twenty years of writing about stolen things — from a fire hydrant in a New York apartment to $150 million in gold nobody can move
• Meeting through a film festival in 2006, and what happens to a creative partnership when the two people stop being in the same room
• Writing a novel together over ten years and eleven hundred miles — how the collaboration actually worked
• The reverse adaptation: screenplay first, then a series, then novels, and what each format could do that the others couldn't
• Leaving work-for-hire behind after twenty years to write something you own
• Writing with the guardrails off — what changes when you stop asking whether a scene can be afforded
• Writing a Minneapolis crime in a Louisiana setting, and researching both
• Present-tense, real-time narration in a mystery, and why it's rarely done

Both authors are available together or separately, remotely or in their local markets.

Assets

Downloads

• One-page press kit — PDF
• Cover art — high resolution JPG
• Sample chapters — available on request
• Author photographs — available on request
• Press release — available on request
• Print-resolution artwork — available on request

Review copies, interview scheduling, and anything not listed here: use the contact details below and we'll send them the same day.

Contact

Interview and review requests

Devin Halden & Adam Jones
press@storyosophy.com
Phone available on request

Review copies available on request in ebook, paperback, or hardcover.