In a word: WRITE
In a few words: DREAM, THINK, CREATE, WRITE, SUFFER REWRITES, TRY TO FIND PUBLISHERS OR BUYERS, MARKET, AND OTHER MISCELLANEOUS TASKS
Jim has written many things during his lifetime. As a teenager, he tried writing fiction – novels and short stories. None were very good, and he gave up on that to complete his education.
During his professional working career, his writings included many technical papers and presentations.
His first published book was a technical reference The Dictionary for Human Factors / Ergonomics, dealing with the technical field he worked in. Human factors (or ergonomics) is a scientific and engineering field which studies and attempts to optimize the human-equipment interface to make using the equipment safer and more efficient.
When that career was complete, he returned to writing fiction.
Knowing that it was difficult to break into Hollywood, especially if you’re not located there, his first major effort was writing works for the screen. He wrote three TV pilots, a feature, and some other short scripts. The feature made the quarter finals of one contest, but he had no success selling that or the others.
He gave that up and turned to copywriting. He didn’t enjoy that, though, and quickly began writing novels and other forms of fictional prose.
Before Covid, he had contracts with a reputable publisher for two of his manuscripts. Unfortunately, the publisher didn’t survive Covid in a responsible condition.
One of those manuscripts was about two high school students recruited by a US intelligence agency for their paranormal skills. Things don’t always work out the way the agency wanted, though. The other was a scifi-love story involving a crew stranded aboard a damaged vehicle in space. With the odds of them making it back home alive essentially zero, they try to survive and find a way. He’s trying to find another publisher for both of those. He’s also now trying to find a publisher for his latest manuscript about a boy and his horse named Prince who wants to race.
His latest publication is Sara and the Lonely Horse, an inspirational children’s picture book where something miraculous occurs after a young girl and a horse meet. It was released by the European Publisher Clavis in the spring of 2023 in the Dutch language. Clavis publishes quality books world-wide, and they did a great job producing Sara. The English edition was published recently. An image of the front cover of that book is below.
He has thought about self-publishing, but decided it was better to have a more established publisher behind the works, even though it’s more difficult and takes longer to get the work out.