Jim Stallings

My goal has always been to write a shelf of fiction both entertaining and enlightening...for me and the reader. Most of my writing is what I call anthropological fiction in that I'm exploring through the storytelling imagination our still primitive, mythic natures. In a way fiction allows me to do "fieldwork" in imaginary, intuited cultures without the academic abstractions of scholarship. My current list of published works are listed below; I hope to finish a few more before any Act 3 Final Exit into another performative realm.

By education I am a cultural anthropologist (Ph.D., University of Virginia) with an interest in myth, ritual and narrative; I am a long-time student of literature and was privileged to learn from James Dickey, Robert Penn Warren, Larry Heinemann and MaryEllen Beveridge among fiction teachers, and mentors like Roy Wagner, Fred Damon, David Sapir, Chris Crocker, Ed Erickson and Ed Winter in cultural anthropology.

I was a bookdoctor in fiction and a senior news editor with a major publishing company startup. I have written novels, scripts, short stories and poems. Through my editorial services company Mockingbird Press I critiqued hundreds of novels and scripts and line-edited many fictional works; I have ghosted novels, novelizations, scripts, treatments and stories. My Mockingbird Press bookdoctor clients have been nominated for literary prizes like the Pushcart Prize; one client remained on the NY Times bestseller list for nine months and inked a movie production contract. I was raised in a military family but I have lived the longest time in New England near Boston. My wife and I now treat the Southwest as a home. I'm a happy introvert who likes books, music, film, great food and leisurely walks and lively conversation.

Writing for me is a daily practice like breathing! Here's my current approach: "Writing, the act of composing, is a daily, almost religious act of catharsis and realization. I listen for the voice, wait for the image, and then go with it to the end. From there I've learned from my various writing teachers to rewrite and read aloud until the language, the vision and voice come together. I especially enjoy the sprint of short, spontaneous, Zen-like stories; the marathon of scripts and novels are almost the same thing but repeated many times over. I used to favor the hundred yard dash and the quarter mile to twenty-six miles to break through to the other side, but as times passes I've learned to love as well the slower walk in the short and long novel."