The Pawn, was released. The Queen, the 4th book in the series, won a Christy Award. I was excited to hear that he has more books about Patrick Bowers in the pipeline. Checkmate is due out December 2nd from Penguin Books. He’s considering up to three additional books in the time span between Opening Moves and The Pawn. When I asked him about the character of Patrick Bowers, he said he was looking for quirks he could exploit and therefore Patrick became a “coffee snob.” He said he was surprised at the negative press he received from a scene in Opening Moves where some dogs were killed – apparently readers felt it okay to kill people, but not dogs. We laughed about the interesting quirks of our society today.

Steven is very jazzed about his first Young Adult (YA) novel that released May 27th, Blur. The sequel to Blur, Fury, was sent to the editor today (9/3/14).

He gave me a collection of interesting facts about Steven James: he studied mime in Paris, Maine; like Patrick, he loves coffee, but isn’t a snob about it; he’s been married to Liesl for 22 years (1992) and has three daughters, ages 20, 18, and 14; he’s a runner and has participated in a 31-mile trail run. Steven related he was inspired by a man 68 years old who is training for his 4th 100-mile run.

Steven recently taught at Thriller Fest with David Morrell, another of my fave authors. He has a Master’s degree in Storytelling and feels that story trumps structure as he writes – that story is all in the crafting – how to write unforgettable fiction by breaking the rules.

Even though Singularity was up for a Christy Award, Steven graciously spent time with me and left only because we both had other appointments. Hard to believe that such a nice guy writes such gory novels! You’ll want to read them all once you’ve read one.

I was given a copy of Singularity by Revell Publishing for my unbiased review.