JAMES HOUSTON TURNER

According to the bio on his website: A native of Kansas, his first professional writing assignment was for the Dr Pepper soft drink company in Dallas, Texas. He then self-published book of free verse poetry, The Earth of Your Soul (1979), about his formative years as a geek in eastern Kansas. Some of his melancholy poems can still be heard there on late-night radio. After earning his master’s degree at the University of Houston – Clear Lake, he considered an academic career. Says James, “I remember one of my professors asking if that was what I really wanted to do. He saw my passion for history and the world and said he thought I’d be happier writing fiction than treatises for other academics. He was right. I just didn’t recognize it at the time.”

James then explored another of his loves — cooking — and authored a potato cookbook, The Spud Book (St. Martins Press, New York), which saw him become “Spudman,” one of America’s first television cooks on a coast-to-coast tour sponsored by French’s Foods, where he cooked with Regis Philbin, Pat Boone and “The Skipper” from Gilligan’s Island, Alan Hale, Jr. He then worked for five years as a photojournalist in Los Angeles, where he interviewed numerous inner-city residents of the famed Union Rescue Mission. Over 130 of his stories were published in its magazine, Lifeline. During this time, he also attended two National Prayer Breakfasts with the President of the United States and members of Congress, yet at other times found himself so poor he had to live on jars of peanut butter given to him by a church.

James finally began writing fiction as a result of his smuggling and courier activities behind the old Iron Curtain. “It was pretty high-octane stuff for a guy with an active imagination,” he says. “I’ve organized transports of hundreds of thousands of pounds of medical supplies, driven vehicles with secret compartments, interviewed death camp and gulag survivors, been shadowed by the KGB, organized secret midnight meetings with informants, located hidden mountain bunkers, and investigated legends of forgotten tunnels buried beneath the cobblestones and bricks of some of Central Europe’s most venerable cathedrals. But I lacked the discipline to convert those ideas and experiences into a completed manuscript. When the going got tough, I simply moved on to something else.”