The Interview - H. Melvin James

Unique among authors, I have an enormous wealth of varied experience and diverse education and I do indeed draw on that vast well. 

I’ve harvested grain across the Great Plains from the Red River to the Canadian border, decoded top secret electronic signals in the Arctic Circle, accomplished major projects on Air Force One and many other strategic and classified aircraft, built petrochemical equipment for the Middle East, driven transport trucks in Texas, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, picked lemons in California, picked cotton in Oklahoma, and built computers in Colorado and Kansas. 

I have skills and certifications to weld steel, fly airplanes, overhaul diesel engines, paint automobiles, program computers, operate heavy construction machinery, and design and build houses. 

I have degrees in engineering, business administration, and years of technical training. I have lead work crews of hundreds of employees in various industries, managed hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts and operating budgets and served as my town’s mayor for twenty years.    

I have traveled the world, west to Japan, north to the Aleutian Islands, south to the Rio Grande, east to Greece and Israel, and to a score of other nations in between., across Europe from Spain to Montenegro and Hungary, and from Ireland to Italy.      

Each of my four grandparents participated in the famous 1893 Cherokee Strip Land Run of Oklahoma and each came from a different ethnic background of European immigrants. My first novel, an epic classic literary fiction, “Tares among the Wheat,” drew on the diverse and rich cultures of my ancestry and their experiences as well as my own. My latest novel is roughly based on my own experience in the secretive and complex world of international intelligence operations.  
 

I somewhat identify with each of my chief protagonists. A character cannot be authentic unless the author defines that character with authenticity. That requires the author to give the characters some of the personality of the author as well as traits the author knows well from others the author has known.  Those traits include the vague characteristic of "attitude" as well as more defined elements such as approach to problem solving, temperament, wit, affection, and so forth. 

Epic, adventure, mystery, romance, intrigue, mysticism, history, tragedy, and triumph.   

I am apt to cut multiple paragraphs or pages from a novel in progress, even going back several pages into completed manuscript. I might place those cut sections at the end of the manuscript in process, and later revised the writing and pull it back into another part of the storyline.  But I doubt that is unusual for an author. 

Since my storylines cover significant periods of time and many characters, I create a detailed time line that includes the ages of the primary characters, in each year, and any significant historical events in that timeline. I also make a list of the characters' names, relationships, nicknames, titles, and occupations.

I am much involved and particular with the cover design. I create rough artwork for my novel covers and my publisher's artists recreate the same scene in more artistic style, perspective, and detail.  For my third book, "Death in Tomorrow's Shadow," I created the cover myself after the publisher's artists failed on two attempts to depict the scene and mood that I wanted.  

My wife and I belong to a book club, but we don't attend regularly. The book club chooses a novel for each month, and that is what we read. We were occupied over the holidays, with travel and family, and the book club went on break for the holidays. I have not been reading any novels since before Thanksgiving. Since then, I proof-read my latest novel, Death in Tomorrow's Shadow" to approve it for print.  

My publisher offered to promote my novels to the motion picture industry but there was a significant cost for that promotion. Until an influential person from the TV or motion picture industry happens to notice one of my novels as a source, which they certainly are, my stories will not be portrayed on any viewing screen.     

     My mother was a poet and a storyteller. She invented impromptu stories to fit the occasion, usually to entertain children, from toddlers to late teenage. She retold stories that originated from the Old World of her ancestors, including legends, family experiences, and stories of superstitions. Perhaps that childhood experience inspired me to be a storyteller, but I put that inspiration aside until I retired from industry.  
     As a practical young man, I completed college degrees in engineering and business administration. I then spent a career engaged in technology and management in the aerospace and defense industry. I did not respond to my urge to write literary fiction until I retired from industry and found discretionary time and peace of mind.  
 

My first epic novel, 1,258 pages comprising two volumes, required five years to write.  I wrote from my experience and from tales of my ancestors, but I was careful to research the facts, dates, locations, and reports of each event cited. The novel is literary fiction, set in the year 1970 with extensive framed stories from 1880 to 1970.  The actual dramatic events of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were monumental and essential for the backdrop of the relative storylines.  Research required much of my time. I had retired from my career in the aerospace and defense industry before I began to write my first novel. At the same time, I was maintaining my 185-acre ranch, raising a herd of 50 head of beef cattle, engaging in many other hobbies, and leading our small town as elected trustee and mayor, a position I held for more than twenty years.       

I write whenever I can find the time and I have my laptop available, which is mostly at home.  I began writing long-hand but that resulted in too much crossing out of phrases, sentences,  and paragraphs, crowding alternative words in the margins, and circling parts of writings and connecting arrows and notes to move here or there, as well as indications to insert new paragraphs.  

My wife and I enjoy world travel, especially visiting historical and ancient historical sites. In our travels, attending events, and family gatherings, I take photographs and once back home, she creates paintings of favorite scenes and family member activities.  

We love to observe the performing arts, including dance, music, stage theater, and cinema. We garden, for flowers and vegetables. On our ranch, I engage in automotive mechanics, maintaining three trucks, a farm tractor, and various other machines and implements. I also enjoy woodworking and home improvement projects on the energy efficient home that I personally designed, using my engineering skills. 

My working career included various experiences, from common labor jobs to highly technical and classified aerospace/defense projects. The people I engaged with during that career provide unique and genuine traits and personalities for my novels' characters. My vast experience contributes authenticity to fictional characters and their situations as well. 

Each of my grandparents participated in the Indian Territory’s celebrated Cherokee Outlet Land Run of 1893. They were the sons and
daughters of immigrants from first to twelfth-generation Americans, including Irish, German, Czech, Dutch, and English. They participated in America’s history, from the Revolutionary War. through the great westward expansion, and up to current times. Their rich and colorful cultures, customs, and superstitions are the legacy from which I create characters, plots, and story lines.
 

Cherished tales of my relatives’ experiences during the dramatic eras of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially from the perspective of the southern Great Plains, keenly contributed to my writing. Glimpses of the momentous events of the era, timelines of my first epic novel, World War I, the influenza epidemic of 1918, oil booms, the decadent Roaring Twenties, the doom of the Dirty Thirties, and the horrific Dust Bowl, are woven into the pages of this intriguing tale.