61Reading and writing I love. First there was poetry, then nonfiction and letters-to-the-editor, finally my real love: Fiction: Stories about people responding and reacting to real life situations.
I also love nature, gardening, photography, women (understanding them and loving them, that is) and learning new things. But there isn't time enough in a day to do everything necessary and also learn new things. Maybe there isn't time enough even in a life.
So that's why I love to write. It's relaxing. As soon as my characters are on the screen and mostly developed they take over and do what they want. All I do is pound the keys and try to keep up.
Thanks to the suggestion by a fellow hubber I have decided to add to my profile and list my books and where one can find them. First, here is the biography I put in all books.
James W. Nelson was born in a little farmhouse on the prairie in eastern North Dakota in 1944. Some doctors made house calls back in those days. He remembers kerosene lamps, bathing in a large galvanized tub, and their phone number was a long ring followed by four short ones, and everybody in the neighborhood could rubberneck. (Imagine that today!)
James has been telling stories most of his life. Some of his first memories happened during recess in a one-room country schoolhouse near Walcott, ND. His little friends, eyes wide, would gather round and listen to his every hastily-imagined word. It was a beginning. Fascinated by the world beginning to open, he remembers listening to the teacher read to all twelve kids in the eight grades.
He was living in that same house on the land originally homesteaded by his great grandfather, when a savage tornado hit in 1955 and destroyed everything. They rebuilt and his family remained until the early nineteen-seventies when diversified farming began changing to industrial agribusiness (not necessarily a “good” thing.) He spent four years in the US Navy during the Vietnam War (USS Carbonero and USS Archerfish.)
After the navy he worked many jobs and finally has settled on a few acres exactly two and one half miles straight west of the original farmstead, ironically likely the very spot where the 1955 tornado first struck, which sometimes gives him a spooky feeling.
The Bellwether (The Mother of all Disasters)
My very first novel has become my most recently self-published book. Thirty-five years ago, at 1000 typed pages, it was a behemoth. Then it was reworked and rewritten twice more on a manual typewriter, then twice more on a brand new electric one, then it sat on typing paper—while I worked on other projects on my brand new Smith-Corona which was still a typewriter but with a screen where I could actually make corrections without Whiteout—until March, 2011, when I finally typed it into my laptop, and condensed it to under 800 pages. It has been edited a minimum of 6 times since March. But what a job.
Winter in July (The end of the world…?) (The doomsday clock is ticking. It will reach midnight.) A novel about the possibility of nuclear war. During research and writing the first draft I sometimes experienced nightmares that went on night after night, which I then incorporated into the story.
Experiments (Pharmacological research gone berserk) My stint under lock and key, which became a medical mystery drama.
Callipygia (The utopian world of Callipygia…just a legend…?) A romance between two young women. (I rate it a very strong R.)
Daughters (The heartbreak of human trafficking)
Boat Sailors (Vietnam War action by fleet submarines)
The Light at the End of the Tunnel (One theory of reincarnation) (also capital punishment and the foster care system) (This novel first appeared right here at Hubpages as a 3-part 2000-word short story.)
In the meantime 26 short stories have appeared in two categories and two books.
Strange & Weird Stories (The unknown: as close as beside you)
A Collection of Short Contemporary Stories (Featuring the novella “Into Tilovia”)
And my memoirs:
Dying to Live (The life and times of Jimmy Nelson)
To go directly to my author page at Amazon, showing all books, prices, excerpts, Etc, go to http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004GW465S
Or, for a signed copy of any, please visit my website http://dramabooksbyjameswnelson.com
or my author page at Author's Den:
http://www.authorsden.com/jameswnelson
Many of my days I spend selling books out of the trunk of my car. Not kidding. I go to small coffee shops, large grocery stores, small town celebrations, etc., to offer autograph sessions, regularly. Any questions or personal comments, or if you’d like to see a lengthier synopsis/character description, please feel free to contact me. On request I will send in attachment a sample chapter/scene from any book of your choosing, or, from the short story books, I'll send a whole short story.
nelsonjim1@live.com
My blog:
http://dramabooksbyjameswnelson.com