On Saturday week, I will be taking part in the Orlando Public Library's local authors book fair.  I'll be selling and signing copies of my books.  If you're in the area then, please come and see me!  Will post more info about this later.

The Kirkus Reviews RAVE review of my Civil War novel FORTY DAYS AND NINE MONTHS has now been posted on that publication's website.  Here it is:

In this gripping novel, Paul (Nothing is Strange with You, 2008) chronicles bloody Civil War battles fought by the 95th Pennsylvania regiment.

As the novel opens in May 1864, the 95th Pennsylvania Volunteers have dwindled from the infamous “Original Twenty-Five” to just 12. These young men, encamped in Virginia, introduce themselves in an opening sequence that relies on formulaic descriptions (“a twenty-two-year-old typesetter and aspiring journalist from Philadelphia”) but benefits from rollicking dialogue (“Oh, I’ll tell you about it soon.” “When? When we’re all dead and buried?”).Although Paul includes real-life historical figures in the story, such as General Ulysses S. Grant, he invented these dozen major characters. As the soldiers each discuss heroism and self-abnegation, they develop distinctive personalities. Their tone is often one of philosophical resignation—when “[g]ood men get killed every day,” “it ain’t always important whether you live or die,” one insists—but some soldiers are also devout religious believers, praying for God’s mercy for themselves and the Confederates. Paul effectively recreates the atmosphere of wearisome marches and gory trench warfare, and his combat scenes are matter-of-fact and graphic: There are gunshot and bayonet wounds, but also crushed testicles and teeth-torn throats—as well as an unexpected erection in a scene of uncomfortably sexualized violence. The narrative often shifts to a single character’s perspective, only to have him suddenly shot to death. Such unsentimental bluntness, however, contrasts with Paul’s overall concern for his characters’ psychological backstories; Abbot, for instance, longs to join an English theater troupe, while Greisler is terrified of fire. The novel’s finest chapter details a wounded soldier’s struggle to escape an eerie forest and rejoin the company, and it balances irony and tragedy perfectly, juxtaposing tender flashbacks of the soldier’s prewar life against the blood-soaked present. As the novel concludes with just a “quartet of survivors” remaining to parade through Philadelphia, the sadness is tempered by the prospect of new life ahead: “[Babcock] resumed walking forward—or backward—or sideways, or up and down—into what looked like the future.” Paul’s canvas may be limited in this novel, but his talent could easily sustain future works of epic historical fiction.

A brief, powerful historical novel that reflects on the beauty and brutality of life in wartime.

Pub Date:Dec. 13th, 2013

ISBN:978-1493695829

Page count:164pp

Publisher:CreateSpace

Program:Kirkus Indie

Review Posted Online:Feb. 24th, 2014

The notoriously critical Kirkus Reviews LOVES my new Civil War novel:

TITLE INFORMATION

FORTY DAYS AND NINE MONTHS

A Novel of the 95th Pennsylvania in the Overland Campaign and the Siege of Petersburg

Paul, James Jeffrey

CreateSpace (164 pp.)

$13.95 paperback, $7.99 e-book

ISBN: 978-1493695829; December 13, 2013

BOOK REVIEW

In this gripping novel, Paul (Nothing is Strange with You, 2008) chronicles bloody Civil War battles fought by the 95th Pennsylvania regiment.

As the novel opens in May 1864, the 95th Pennsylvania Volunteers have dwindled from the infamous “Original Twenty-Five” to just 12. These young men, encamped in Virginia, introduce themselves in an opening sequence that relies on formulaic descriptions (“a twenty-two-year-old typesetter and aspiring journalist from Philadelphia”) but benefits from rollicking dialogue (“Oh, I’ll tell you about it soon.” “When? When we’re all dead and buried?”). Although Paul includes real-life historical figures in the story, such as General Ulysses S. Grant, he invented these dozen major characters. As the soldiers each discuss heroism and self-abnegation, they develop distinctive personalities. Their tone is often one of philosophical resignation—when “[g]ood men get killed every day,” “it ain’t always important whether you live or die,” one insists—but some soldiers are also devout religious believers, praying for God’s mercy for themselves and the Confederates. Paul effectively recreates the atmosphere of wearisome marches and gory trench warfare, and his combat scenes are matter-of-fact and graphic: There are gunshot and bayonet wounds, but also crushed testicles and teeth-torn throats—as well as an unexpected erection in a scene of uncomfortably sexualized violence. The narrative often shifts to a single character’s perspective, only to have him suddenly shot to death. Such unsentimental bluntness, however, contrasts with Paul’s overall concern for his characters’ psychological backstories; Abbot, for instance, longs to join an English theater troupe, while Greisler is terrified of fire. The novel’s finest chapter details a wounded soldier’s struggle to escape an eerie forest and rejoin the company, and it balances irony and tragedy perfectly, juxtaposing tender flashbacks of the soldier’s prewar life against the blood-soaked present. As the novel concludes with just a “quartet of survivors” remaining to parade through Philadelphia, the sadness is tempered by the prospect of new life ahead: “[Babcock] resumed walking forward—or backward—or sideways, or up and down—into what looked like the future.” Paul’s canvas may be limited in this novel, but his talent could easily sustain future works of epic historical fiction.

A brief, powerful historical novel that reflects on the beauty and brutality of life in wartime.

Play About Alex Haley and the ROOTS Hoax

As researchers have shown over the past several decades, Alex Haley's ROOTS was largely a shameful hoax.

I have just finished a play about that hoax called EPIC STORIES.  It is set in 1976-77 and concerns a young black journalist who loves the book and what it represents who realizes, to his horror, that the story is a hoax.

If anyone would like to read this play with a view toward publicizing and possibly promoting it, I would be glad to send you an electronic copy.

For over two decades, I have been planning and working on a novel about the American Civil War, specifically about the war's most terrible series of battles--the 40-day Overland Campaign of May and June 1864 and the nine-month siege of PETERSBURG that followed it.  Countless novels have been written about the Civil War, and a few have touched on parts of this story, but no one, as far as I know, has ever written a novel about the whole thing.

I finished it recently and had submitted a query to a publisher, but was frantic to get it out in time for the sesquicentennial of the events it depicts next spring and summer.  So I published it via Amazon Create Space.  It is available in paperback in the US, the UK, and Europe, and will soon be available in Kindle format.

Here is the UK link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Forty-Days-Nine-Months-Pennsylvania/dp/1493695827/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387159903&sr=8-1&keywords=Forty+days+and+nine+months

The description:

In the early days of the Civil War, a group of very different young men gathered in Philadelphia to become members of the 95th Pennsylvania Volunteers--one of those very special units of fighting men called the Zouaves. Twenty five members of that group recognized that they shared a special bond, and called themselves the Original Twenty Five. Now it is May of 1864. The war that would be over soon is now in its fourth year, and the Original Twenty Five is now down to twelve. They are moving South yet again, under a new commander with a new strategy for finally ending this endless war. But to end the war, these surviving friends must endure a forty-day orgy of slaughter that History's greatest butchers could not have conceived--and nine endless months of a new type of warfare that carries with it mind-numbing boredom, the constant threat of sudden death, their all-consuming fears and dreams--and the madness growing within them all . . . An epic in the oldest, truest sense of the word, this is an unflinching look at outward butchery and inward suffering--and the hard-won compassion that sustains, even in defeat.

After over two decades of work, my Civil War novel, FORTY DAYS AND NINE MONTHS:  A NOVEL OF THE 95TH PENNSYLVANIA IN THE OVERLAND CAMPAIGN AND THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG, a Civil War novel unlike any other, has been published!  It is available in paperback (and soon in Kindle) from Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Forty-Days-Nine-Months-Pennsylvania/dp/1493695827/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1386966848&sr=8-2&keywords=Forty+days+and+nine+months.

In 2005, my one-act play about Jack the Ripper and his last victim, the young Irish prostitute Mary Kelly, MILLER'S COURT, was premiered by Actors Scene Unseen of Charlotte, North Carolina, and released as an audio CD.

It is still available as an audio CD and an audio download from all the major outlets.

The text has also just been published in paperback (finally!).  It is available in paperback and Kindle from all of the Amazon outlets.

Here is the Amazon-US link to the book:

http://www.amazon.com/MILLERS-COURT-RIpper-Victim-ebook/dp/B00F1XYQEC/ref=sr_1_46?ie=UTF8&qid=1382466474&sr=8-46&keywords=james+jeffrey+paul

And the Amazon-US link to the audio version:

http://www.amazon.com/Original-Radio-Drama-Millers-Court/dp/B000CA8JLU/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1382466871&sr=1-1&keywords=miller%27s+court

Here is the Amazon-UK text link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/MILLERS-COURT-RIpper-Victim-Tragedy/dp/1492308722/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382466934&sr=8-1&keywords=miller%27s+court

And the Amazon-UK audio link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/An-Original-Radio-Drama-Millers/dp/B002ETXV5Q/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1382466968&sr=8-8&keywords=miller%27s+court

Buy and read and listen and spread the word, please!