People Want to Know

What do they want to know? Well, from me they want to know what makes me tick. During autograph sessions I'm asked questions, like: What are you working on? Where do you get your ideas? How long have you been writing? Did you just one day decide to start writing?
When you get to my answer for the first question, at the end of this post, hang onto your hat!
The answer to the last question: No. From one of my farthest back memories I have wanted to share my imagination, and that's what a lot of it is: Imagination. Sure, with my characters I will cast and describe people I know, people I've met, and people I've just seen in the distance, and for things that happen in my fiction I quite often will describe a live scene I've witnessed, but most of the time it's pure imagination.
In my fiction, that is.
In my memoirs Dying to Live it's all true. For many of the people I mention I use only their first names. For the five men who threw up the original four walls and the rafters of my new house in one day I give their full name as I thank them. My best friends also got their full name, and the four young boys who became men who served during Vietnam, along with me, also got their full names. Those four were Army, two Marine Corp, and air force, and served in-country. Another good friend (army) was killed. May he be now at peace.

The answer to the third question is much of my life, but I didn't really start actually trying to write until my four years in the navy. There I kept a very vague and short journal. However, my mind was filling with the material that now fills my memoirs.
The above photograph (and the cover for my memoirs) is a view from my front step. It illustrates that I live somewhat as a homesteader, and also shows the four most important events in my life. Three of those events, the 1955 tornado, the skydive/parachute jump, and my most meaningful romance, all have one chapter. The submarine represents my navy experience, which includes several chapters.

Dying to Live (the life & times of Jimmy Nelson)

(my memoirs) (58,400 words)

 My true account of growing up on a storybook farm, experiencing a killer tornado, surviving teenage confusion, an adventurous four-year ride on a submarine, a skydive, not maturing into your regular adult, discovering the world is not a bowl of cherries, a crash to the bottom, and, finally, accepting that the only person responsible for me, is me. But first I had to descend into the deep depths of the emotional chasm.

 Chapters

Prologue

Many Beginnings

ICU Diary

Many Beginnings Continued

Hell’s Island

Company 311

Tornado

Class A School

First Duty

Skydive!

USS Carbonero

Julia’s Story

Yokosuka

Travels & Philosophies

USS Archerfish

Test of Will Power

Sydney

The Bottom

Home Again

The fiction: Waiting to Die (most recent short story)

Dying to Live is my only nonfiction. However, a second one is in the works...if I ever get time to work on it....
The other nine books are fiction. Seven novels and two books of short stories. At this time I'm 32,000 words into my eighth novel but taking a breather.
To answer the second question I've decided to take the novels one at a time and describe how I got the idea and any other event that came about at the same time. They will appear on my blog as I finish them. Daughters (the heartbreak of human trafficking) likely will be first.
Then probably Winter in July (nuclear war drama) (the doomsday clock is ticking; it will reach midnight.)
After that The Bellwether (the mother of all disasters) (environmental and economic drama)
Experiments (medical mystery drama) (pharmacological research gone berserk)
Callipygia (the Utopian world of Callipygia...just a legend?) (A story of two women) (rated very, very, strong R) (Callipygia is a place, or maybe just a state of mind, for if you go there, and partake, you will become changed...forever.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel (one theory of reincarnation) (how reincarnation might relate to the death penalty) (includes also a fictional look at the foster care system)
Boat Sailors (Vietnam War action by fleet submarines)
And the eighth novel which yet does not have a title and likely is several months away. It will include the Illuminati, another name for The New World Order, or the 'Shadow' government, which conspiracy  theorists contend are the real people in charge: The bankers and top CEO's. So far in the novel there's been an abduction, a sacrifice, a deception, and many, many, people have died. But, if the conspiracy theorists are correct, these are very bad people, so innocent people will die. We will see where internet research and my imagination takes me.
Finally, the answer to the first question, the one where people ask me what I'm working on, is a little harder to answer. So, often I just hedge around answering. But now, with the Illuminati, I ask "Have you heard of the Illuminati?" and then I list the similar entities. Nobody has heard of them. I've been "aware" of them for years, but have never researched them. What I'm getting to, if people haven't heard of these groups, "why" haven't they? The end goal of the Illuminati is extermination of 85% of the earth's population, so it would seem pretty important to have at least heard of them. The remaining 15% would be used as slaves to care for the so-called elite, the Illuminati. But if almost nobody has heard of these evil people, it would seem to me--and with today's technology--that the planned extermination in the new millennium of the world's population, will/would go much more efficiently then the attempt in the 1940's by madman Hitler.
The other day I asked a friend, "What do you think of the fiscal cliff?" "The what?" he answered.
He had not even heard of it. This irony/sarcasm is not directed at my friend, but, come on, people: Stop living in a bubble!
Then there are my two books of 13 short stories each.
Strange & Weird Stories (the unknown...as close as beside you)
A Collection of Short Contemporary Stories (stories about people just like you)
I haven't decided how to approach announcing them on my blog. We will see.

Thanks for reading

Contact

nelsonjamesw@hotmail.com                          email

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004GW465S   Author page at Amazon

http://morningshinestories.com                        Website

http://morninginapril.blogspot.com                   Blog

https://www.facebook.com/#!/                        Facebook

http://subron7.hubpages.com/                          HubPages

Feel free to contact me. (Response is not guaranteed) (The world is full of psychos and wackos)

A reminder for when you go to Amazon to read digital books, mine and many other authors: Amazon has a free APP download that allows you to read your book on any electronic device, including PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.

Another reminder, any of my books can be "borrowed" any time, also for free.

Occasionally I list one of my books as free for a  day, sometimes more than a day. Look for those announcements on my blog, HubPages, Twitter, and Facebook.

Last week Amazon informed me that my memoirs had appeared "for free" elsewhere on the web. Consequently I can't include on KDP until I can find that thievin' website and ask them to remove. Don't know how that happened.

Anyway I had it listed for free this coming Saturday and Sunday (12-15 & 16.) So, if you want, take a look for free, or, pay just $0.99.