Sensoria

I'll be appearing in March at CPCC's Sensoria 2012.
They asked me for a brief bio to post here and there in some of their publications. So this is what I sent them:

Bio

James Robert Smith was born in Georgia in 1957. Currently he lives in North Carolina with his wife and son and three cats. He works full time in his day job as a laborer and in the evenings as a published author. He has sold more than sixty short stories to a host of magazines and anthologies. Smith has also written for various comic book publishers, including Marvel Comics. His first novel, THE FLOCK, was published in 2006 by Five Star Books and reprinted in 2010 by Tor/Forge Books. The film option to that book was picked up by Don (TRANSFORMERS) Murphy through Warner Brothers and is making its way to the screen. His second novel, THE LIVING END was published in 2011 by Severed Press. His third novel, THE CLAN (a sequel to THE FLOCK) was also sold to Tor Books and is forthcoming later in 2012.

Upcoming novels and collections include HISSMELINA a Lovecraftian horror novel set in the mountains of North Carolina, FOUR FROM MANGROVE a collection of sword and sorcery tales, A CONFEDERACY OF HORRORS a collection of Smith’s horror stories, and THE LOST CHILD a novel of the supernatural (also set in North Carolina).

His websites can be viewed at www.jamesrobertsmith.net and www.hissmelina.com and http://tilthelasthemlockdies.blogspot.com/.

Taken in the Pisgah National Forest on a hunt for old growth forests. I got hit really hard with poison ivy on this bushwhack. Which is my fault for not wearing the legs on my convertible pants. This was in the very first block of forests ever created for the National Forest system we now know. It protected a large expanse of old growth trees on and around Mackey Mountain. Of course the hemlocks are now all dead due to the invasive hemlock wooly adelgid, but the hardwoods are still there.

Writing: What Next?

One of my favorite modern writers is Walter Mosley. Very effective at what he does, and I enjoy his work. I also enjoy his interviews. One of the best pieces of advice that he gives is to incorporate your life into your fiction as much as possible. Subtly, of course, since most writers of fiction aren't penning autobiographies (Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski excepted). One thing he said in an interview was to write every day, even if you're sick. If you're sick, make one of your characters sick. You surely damned well know what you're writing about if you do that.

Lately I've been sick a lot. The old body's wearing down, especially in my line of work as a laborer as I approach my 54th birthday. If I could possibly retire, I would. There's nothing in the world I'd like more than to write full time (and not in a notebook in a cardboard shack in the woods). For now, I have to write when I can rather than when I want to.

The past couple of years have seen me with a lot of health issues: pneumonia, surgery, etc. Now I've torn my knee and will have to have surgery within the week. That's going to put me off my feet for a few weeks of recuperation and rehabilitation. I'm not looking forward to it. However, I will try to make it as fruitful as possible by using the down time to work on my fiction. I have several projects in various stages of completion, and I need to choose one of these to try to finish while I'm not able to deliver the mail.

I'll take Mosley's advice and write while I'm sick.

In a footnote, as if all of the other stuff wasn't bad enough, I was made miserable this past week by discovering that I'm highly allergic to the special detergent that we have to use in the new Maytag washing machine! I was on fire for days with waxing and waning welts. Finally, a trip to my physician solved the mystery (I thought it was related to the recently faded poison ivy I encountered in the old growth woods above Curtis Creek). I got a shot of cortisone that gave me relief and we have to stop using the "he" detergent (high efficiency).


In the Curtis Creek old growth forest, where Andy Kunkle and I discovered giant trees, an unknown waterfall, and poison ivy. (Click to embiggen.)