In writing out my own author biography, I had to think long and hard about exactly how to approach the telling of my history.
First off, Ellison James is a pen name I use for my writing of a more "adult" nature. I use this pen name for writing fantasy, paranormal, romance, or anything that may contain open door sex scenes. I do this because, while I enjoy writing in other genres as well. Imagine the surprise on a young teenager's face when they read a story by an author they are familiar with, and discover that it goes into much greater detail in those "mushy" scenes. Imagine the surprise on their parent's face when they discover what their child is reading.
I began writing in Junior High School, really. I always enjoyed writing, playing with words, and creating elaborate stories. Those stories were an escape from my lowly existence, in a poor family. I soon discovered that others enjoyed my stories. Of course, the stories evolved into dirty limericks and classic poems reworded for sexual, or comical purposes. I didn't much care if people were laughing with me or at me - the attention just felt good. The defining moment for me (as far as writing goes) was when I was able to take a creative writing class while in high school. I wrote a short piece of speculative fiction offering an alternative explanation to the history of Adam and Eve. The teacher said she simply could not approve of such blashpemous writing, and how dare I think that I could rewrite history to suit my liking. You know what they say: "Any publicity is good publicity." and that teacher just set me on my way to write stories of the fantastic.
There were spans of time, years even, when I wrote little or nothing between the age of eighteen and, oh, say, thirty-five. That was a busy time, filled with career and family. Nevertheless, there was still some writing going on. I must have started twenty novels during that time, but just never followed through. I would get bored with the subject, or my characters would leave me for better stories.
After what seemed an eternity, my attempts at ghost stories and trying to write like Dean Koontz and David Morrell (at the same time) finally drove my writing style into a new world - the world of the paranormal fantasy. Now I enjoy writing stories filled with elements of mystery, science fiction, romance, and speculation, using characters that have their own paranormal abilities, but still live in the real, mortal world.
