Dale Sykora
Creative Executive, Talan Creator
Dale spent a 28 year career in the Navy as a submarine nuclear-qualified officer. His tours included command of USS DALLAS (SSN-700), Commodore of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Military Legislative Assistant to Senator John Warner (R) of Virginia, Nuclear Propulsion Examining Board member, Submarine Deputy of the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey, and instructor at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk. Following his Navy career, Dale last worked as a defense contractor supporting Naval Sea Systems Command’s Naval Systems Engineering & Logistics Directorate for Serco North America, along with other work, including serving as an unmanned systems expert.
Dale began writing short stories in elementary school and has been writing ever since. His favorite television shows as a kid were Star Trek and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, thus it was natural that he would find himself commanding a submarine someday. It was only a matter of time until he combined his passion for submarines and writing.
Offspring of a career Air Force pilot and a farmer’s daughter, he was raised with an emphasis on national service and country horse sense. Dale's background brought a unique blend of experiences to bear on the project. His nuclear training, as well as his Electrical Engineering degree from Southern Methodist University and Master's degree in National Security Affairs from the Naval War College, provided the foundations behind the detailed military and Navy organizations portrayed in the script. The men he served with also served as inspiration for the dedication and morals the characters in “Talan: The Journeyman" portray.
For his background in movies and television, Dale, in cooperation with his co-writer and Production Executive Brian Williams, wrote the screenplay “CIFTED: Hammeris Storm,” a Navy Seal action-adventure. While they had Matthew McConaughey, Halle Berry, and Gary Oldman interested in the heroes and the villain of the movie, they shelved the project when Tony Scott jumped off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in LA two weeks before Dale was to assist him on the Drug Sub movie Tony was in pre-Production on at the time. They were supposed to develop “CIFTED: Hammeris Storm" with Tony after the Drug Sub movie, but they recognized the movie just wasn’t God’s Will at the time and transitioned back to working on Talan.
As for his background in fantasy, Dale read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit as a freshman in high school, and that experience inspired him to write The Star Path Saga, a 550 page novel upon which the movie and series are based. Aside from the novel, he generated a copying machine paper box full of background, history, and Prophecy that underlie the entire project.
