Jim Stephens

I am retired from marketing medical diagnostics. I have written poetry and short-stories for over 45 years. My College was Georgia State. Those many years ago: only a small College. It is now Georgia State University and is so large I often feel it is eating downtown Atlanta several bites at a time.

Fields of Gold is my first published novel. A story of love and war built around the years before and after World War II. It is vast in scope. The characters really come alive as you read the book and stay with you long after you finish. Readers have said reading the book was akin to seeing a well produced film. The history is completely accurate but at no time gets in the way of the story. This is one novel which flows and reads easily. The topics are love, war, family, fate, duty,time, promises (both kept and broken) and the power of an ancient magic and finally the question can love really last forever? Do wishes come true?

More than half the novel is set in England during the war and many of the characters are English. The character of Joanna Barton is from an old Family seated in Kent. She believes in things beyond this life. In a love destined to be. A mythical love in a world at war.

If I have misspoken in any way in my descriptions of England or the English; I hope our friends across the pond will let me know. My wife and I have visited several times and I have really tried to get it right. Both the facts and the feelings of those tempestuous times.

The black and white cat in the photograph is ours. She is in the book as the "familiar" of a major character. She really is as described in all details. Haiku (yes really her name) may very well be a "familiar." She was in a chair next to mine during much of the writing of the book. If there are "familiars" she certainly qualified as mine. If not a familiar; at least a muse.

I am starting work on my next novel.

Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy the reading of "Fields of Gold - The Orchid and the Rose."