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James Boyle

Goodreads Author

Born

in Cherry Point, N.C., The United States

Website

http://www.jamesboyleauthor.com

Twitter

jimmemnon

Genre

Fiction, Mystery, Suspense

Influences

Stephen King, Peter Straub, Carlos Castenada, Edgar Allan Poe ...more

Member Since

May 2009

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Like all of us, James is a product of his environment.

He was raised in a religious/spiritual family and that spirituality pervades much of his work. He even attended a Catholic Seminary for a year before deciding the priesthood was not for him.

His father worked for the phone company as James was growing up, which was much like growing up in a military family. The company transferred his father every couple of years. By the time he graduated from high school, he’d moved twenty times. He attended nine different schools in five cities and three states. Needless to say, he had no lifelong childhood friends.

James lived in North Dakota until he was eight, then in Washington and Oregon. He finds the landscape of the Pacific Northwest has done Like all of us, James is a product of his environment.

He was raised in a religious/spiritual family and that spirituality pervades much of his work. He even attended a Catholic Seminary for a year before deciding the priesthood was not for him.

His father worked for the phone company as James was growing up, which was much like growing up in a military family. The company transferred his father every couple of years. By the time he graduated from high school, he’d moved twenty times. He attended nine different schools in five cities and three states. Needless to say, he had no lifelong childhood friends.

James lived in North Dakota until he was eight, then in Washington and Oregon. He finds the landscape of the Pacific Northwest has done more to influence him than nearly everything else. Its vast forests, rugged mountains, seascapes and sparse population inspire recollections of what the pioneers first fell in love with a century and a half ago. From his house, he can hike fifteen minutes and spend the entire day without seeing another human being. And the possibility exists that he could see sasquatch.

One of his goals is to build a fiction landscape of the Pacific Northwest, much like Stephen King has done with Maine. A landscape of dark possibilities.

When James was a child living in Bismark, North Dakota, his parents took him to Fort Abraham Lincoln, the fort Gen. Custer left on his last, fateful campaign and the Knife River Village, the restored ruins of a Mandan village. Now forty years later, the memories have faded, but not the memory of the impression the visits made on a small boy. Years later, he read Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. After that James devoured everything he could find about Native American history and culture. He came to have a deep sympathy for the Native peoples’ doomed resistance to the white culture and admiration for their cultural connection to the natural world around them. The dominant culture seeks to change and subjugate a nature it sees as an enemy; the Natives sought to live within the natural world as one part of a dynamic whole.

Perhaps there is a lesson in there for us now.

In 1977, when James was seventeen and a senior in high school, he was diagnosed with a severe case of scoliosis and underwent surgery that fused most of his lumber spine and installed a steel rod. After six months in a body cast and six more in a brace he continued on to college. The condition has limited some of his options. Skiing and skydiving are not good ideas, nor is playing football, but he adjusted. Now, thirty-five years after the surgery, his body is beginning to break down a bit. So if he seems bent and twisted, you know why.

In July, 2012, James was hospitalized with acute pancreatitus. In the course of treatment, a CT scan revealed a large tumor on his left kidney. Six weeks after having his gall bladder removed, James had his left kidney and its tumor removed. Laboratory tests, however, revealed the tumor to not be kidney cancer, but lymphoma. Six weeks later, James started chemotherapy (on Thanksgiving Day). As of April, 2013, he is in full remission and working on rebuilding his strength.

While undergoing treatment, he wrote the rough draft of Deception Island.

Though retired now on disability, James worked for years in the restaurant industry as a cook and as a manager. He enjoys reading, playing an occasional video game, taking exploratory hikes along the beach or river and fishing. He is happily single. (it’s so much less complicated.) ...more

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Popular Answered Questions

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

James Boyle Read. Read everything you can get your hands on. Read every day. Read the classics. Read the best contemporary fiction. Read history and biography. Re…moreRead. Read everything you can get your hands on. Read every day. Read the classics. Read the best contemporary fiction. Read history and biography. Read cookbooks and trashy pulp novels. Read everything. Other than the act of writing itself, reading is the most effective training in the craft out there.

Back in the days of apprenticeships, a young man didn’t go to work with a master carpenter and expect to immediately start cranking out award-winning furniture. In fact, they probably didn’t make much of anything the first couple of years. What he did was watch the master at work and learn the fundamentals of the craft from him. He learned how to select the proper wood, how to cure it, shape and join it, and how to apply the proper finish. Only after years of study and practicing the fundamentals did he begin to try his own projects.

Writing is no different. Before we can expect to produce quality work, we need to study the fundamentals of the craft under a master. Fortunately for us, we don’t need to seek out a master in some grimy workshop somewhere and beg to be taken on as an apprentice. We have all the masters we could possibly want, just waiting for us at the local library.

We need to read to learn the craft of writing. We need to read to keep improving our skills. But we don’t read like our dear Aunt Edna reads her cozy mysteries. We read like writers. Which means that though we immerse ourselves and enjoy the story, we also pay close attention to the techniques and devices the author uses to tell it.

Why did the author choose to begin the work where and when she did? Why end it that way? How did the author create suspense? How did they evoke the characters? What did she do to make you care about what happens?

Those are just some of the things we can learn from reading. There are many, many others. So writers need to read all the time. Basically, whenever you aren’t physically writing something you should be reading. It will do you good.

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What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

James Boyle My life has actually been pretty boring mystery-wise. However, about ten years ago my brother's best friend disappeared off the face of the earth. He …moreMy life has actually been pretty boring mystery-wise. However, about ten years ago my brother's best friend disappeared off the face of the earth. He was facing some prison time and had liquidated much of his personal possessions, so the theory is he disappeared himself. Still, no one--friends or family--have heard from him since. Still a complete mystery.(less)

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James Boyle’s books

Average rating: 3.98 · 45 ratings · 21 reviews · 8 distinct works

	Ni'il, the Awakening 3.68 avg rating — 28 ratings — published 2008 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Deception Island 4.38 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2015 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	To Hemlock Run 4.33 avg rating — 3 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Ni'il: The War Within: Book Two of the Ni'il 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2009 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Game of Shadows 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Menhir+Seven Stories it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2012	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Opposite of Echo 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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James Boyle's Blog

How To Make An Author Love You (more)

Pre-order the book.
Early sales make a difference, sometimes encouraging stores to order more and publishers to increase print runs. After all, it is a business to them. They want sales.

Request the book from your local library.
Patron requests highly influence library purchases).

Request the book from your local bookstore.
(Again, if people start special ordering the book, the owner will give serious Read more of this blog post »

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Published on July 04, 2015 13:02 • Tags: amazon, goodreads, publicity, word-of-mouth

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Series by James Boyle

Ni'il Trilogy (3 books)
by

James Boyle (Goodreads Author)

3.79 avg rating — 34 ratings

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
WACKY READING CHA...: COVER - ANIMALS	17	24	Aug 18, 2014 06:00AM
WACKY READING CHA...: * Challenge Help	80	90	Nov 17, 2019 04:17PM

James’s Quotes

“A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things.”
― N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain

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