James was raised in the suburbs of Chicago. His parents, however, were raised in the deep South. Frequent trips to the "old country" (Mississippi) created a case of near terminal cultural dissonance in the lad. After all, it's hard to be a credible suburban high school hippie when your dad has a "George Wallace for President" bumper sticker. James was a smart kid, but didn't like the other smart kids so much and was prone to falling in with bad crowds - certain members of which are still his friends thirty years later.
Speaking of bad crowds... he started playing bass in junior high. A forgettable career in a number of forgettable rock and blues combos throughout the 70's and 80's prepared him well for the rejection and humiliation he would receive as a writer.
He's moved on, but continues to fantasize that Neil Young is going to call him up after having seen playing at a bar in Ottumwa, Iowa in 1975 and beg him to play on his next record.
James has been involved with the same wonderful woman for nearly 30 years. For some strange reason, they moved to Miami not long after they met. He and his wife love the multicultural banana republic aspect of the place... even though everyone is pretty much an asshole.
(Miami. We're not shooting at you, we're shooting with you.)
They've survived hurricanes Andrew (ouch), Wilma, Katrina, Rita, Irene and tropical storms, waves and depressions beyond count or reason, and became the parents of a son in 1997.
Why does he write? Probably just some overactive neurons out for a brief drive-by spasm of mid-life creativity. He's reached that age where one tends to look back. No regrets, no whining. No memory.
His work has never appeared in The New Yorker, The Fairfield Review or the Pork Belly Quarterly. He has never edited an ezine, izine or sometimes yzine.
James is the founder of the Scatire momement, an important post-premodern style of writing that involves a lot of naughty words and obvious wisecracks.
This style favors the bizarre tangent over the direct path to anywhere. Detachable penises, forehead vaginas, Cuban housewives with automatic weapons, testicle-munching dogs, the ever-lovable Dick Cheney: all have their place within the moist, heaving bosom of his work.
Hopefully, they'll remain there.
subtropic's Genres: fiction, unpublishable, humor, weird, speculative, oddball, offbeat, outsider, obscene, flash, adventure, horror, scatology, scatire, no-redeeming-social-valu, cheap shots, gratuitous violence.
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