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My Books
"I am 12 years old when they pour the dirt over Angelo."
We follow Nino as he tries to come to terms with the terrible truth about his grandfather.
With the help of his uncle Sal, a drunk homebody, and a young Paolo, a recent immigrant from Italy who brings with him an eerie connection to Nino's grandfather, Nino struggles to make his way through the labyrinth of memories that pour from his head, not all of them seemingly his own.
A Delicate Child is a powerful look into the unknown connections that shape an individual and the triggers that bring those connections into the light, in the end exposing the hidden relationships that, for better or worse, exist just beneath the surface of accepted realities.
"This author is most assuredly a unique voice who is well on his way to becoming an established, significant American author." - Amazon Hall of Fame Top 100 Reviewer Grady Harp
"How does a 12 year old obtain a pint of whiskey? He makes friends with the junior high school alcoholic."
Nino is an atypical child growing up in a conventional New Jersey suburb in the 1960s. By the age of 12 he carries a bottle of whisky in his backpack and spends his days studying boys from a distance. His only rule: Look but don't touch. Then, in a way peculiar to being adolescent, he falls into a routine of mild detachment that never quite feels right; it often feels good, but it never feels right.
Now, at age 20, and long settled in his ways, Nino is approached in the university library by a winsome looker named Aki. He suddenly finds himself looking for a place that isn't on any map, and wanting to go there.
Not knowing what to do, he turns to his best friends, Teddy and Eddie, for help. Thus embarking on a breathless joyride of the senses that, in the end, drops Nino off at his destination.
Compelling, sexually charged, and awash in anxious uncertainty, The Story of Teddy and Eddie follows Nino as he makes the terrifying choices no one should ever have to make, illuminating the indelible impact of childhood and memory on decisions so close to the heart.
"Few authors can handle same sex stories as well as James as those who have had the pleasure of reading SYNCOPATED RHYTHM will witness. But fine as that story is, it's a novella. Now in a full-length novel he proves that he can interplay gay characters with aplomb and make his story so universally relevant that the reader can simply sit back and enjoy the entertainment. And in his novel there is entertainment aplenty!" - Amazon Hall of Fame Top 100 Reviewer Grady Harp
"It takes my keen eye no time at all to discern that Clifford is prettier than Claudia."
It begins simply enough: Twenty-year-old Charles, a young dreamer and oddball traveler, arrives at the door of a cozy pizza shop owned by Clifford and Claudia. Clifford and Claudia are an unusual couple who share their home with Claudia's eccentric and outspoken elderly mother, Clara-Belle, who apparently owes her longevity to a lifestyle of cigarettes and whisky as well as their son, Cliffy, who likes to take out his aggressions on the family dog. For better or worse, Charles quickly becomes a part of the family dynamic.
One day, while buying a loaf of bread, Charles meets a disarmingly attractive young man he calls Mr. Chips, who shows him a thing or two about love and life, taking Charles along on a breathless voyage of the heart right up to the moment a senseless act brings the journey to a bewildering and harrowing halt.
Charles enters a world where reality becomes a slippery demon as he confronts broken connections, a fabricated childhood, improbable snowfalls, a disappearing adversary, and one unforgettable trip on the uptown local in his extraordinary struggle to reclaim what has been taken from him.
Savagely funny and somewhat cruel, Clifford and Claudia rips away the veneer of social niceties to expose the vulnerabilities that fuel the over-the top characters in this remarkable story of a young man's coming of age during his desperate days of life with Clifford and Claudia.
"The language is so appropriately raw when needed and so fragile in other passages...James' gifts as a writer are extraordinary." - Amazon Hall of Fame Top 100 Reviewer Grady Harp
"I don't count the days. There are too many of them."
Our narrator, who remains unnamed, grows up gay in the 1960s and 1970s. He spends most of his time alone as a child, not interested in school or church or playing with the other children. A harrowing move from New Jersey to a jerkwater town in Pennsylvania only serves to drive him deeper into isolation. There a rare local murder, a deadly motorcycle crash, and a doomed crush on a boy in high school mark his time in the sleepy town.
He begins to adapt to his solitary life of empty relationships and pointless jobs by reaching out to the contemporary art world and making ephemeral connections he does not fully grasp, but is convinced will link him to a better world.
"The fact that each work is a painting is not what makes it interesting. What makes it interesting is that each painting elicits its own breath."
After an unexpected job transfer, he finds himself living in the middle of Tokyo, alone, illiterate, and utterly stunned by his new surroundings. There he wanders into a local bar where he meets a disarmingly attractive young bartender he calls My Foolish Thing. My Foolish Thing pours him drinks and draws pictures on napkins in a genuine effort to get to know him. He replies with an impassioned attempt to complete the connection, but it isn't clear to him what, if anything, will happen.
Syncopated Rhythm is an honest and sobering account of living in a world meant for other people, and the truly heroic hopes that make that possible.
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