Fiction

bloodysunscape

Love & Other
Terminal Diseases

The thirteen short stories in this recently completed collection vary in tone and time period, as well as in the age and gender of their protagonists. But what they have in common is that they are all about love. Too much. Too little. Love's permutations, complications, substitutions and -- above all -- the way it sometimes lays waste the psyche. You’ll want to buy the book when it comes out in 2009. Meanwhile, several stories can be read at:

 

Wounded By History

A young Russian history professor back in the seventies. Sexual intrigue. Campus politics. All leading to.... But why give away the rest of the story? Read it for yourself!

Here's what fellow writers are saying about this exciting new novel, scheduled until recently for publication in 2008, and now looking for a publisher:

"Swift, profound, and engaging, Wounded by History gives us a vivid portrait of American academia and its "casualties" in the 1970s. Jim Story's novel is laced with humor and a heartfelt passion that resonate all the more deeply for their sharp satirical edge. This fine debut novel satisfies on all levels."
— Ben Fountain, Pen/Hemingway Award Winner and winner of the Whiting Prize

"A vise and a twisting road.... Is it possible to experience those two sensations simultaneously? It is if you read Story's book which both grips and takes you to unexpected places."
— Karen Swenson, National Poetry Series author of Our Lady Of Bangkok

"Like all great reads, Jim Story’s debut novel Wounded by History is, in fact, many works at once: a hard-eyed look at an academic Tower whose Ivory consists of needle-sharp tusks; the ribald, Rothian confessional of a protagonist whose loneliness and libido wage a tag-team battle with experience and common sense; a compendium of vividly-drawn, engaging characters whose words and actions often surprise, in piquant yet plausible ways; an unblinking account of the long, dark night of one man’s soul; and, finally, a searching meditation on the meanings of history, love, inspiration, purpose and survival. Moving and amusing, thought-provoking and boldly sincere, this concerted, concise History seems poised to make some of its own."
— Paul McComas, author of the novels Planet of the Dates and Unplugged

"James Story’s splendid novella, Wounded by History, startles the reader with its surprises and ingenious disclosures almost as often as it startles the fiction’s brave, if somewhat naïve hero, Edgar Holmes, passionate teacher of Russian history. In this remarkable work of comic irony and its world of 1974 American academic politics, Holmes identifies with an early Russian revolutionary Kartashev, who, though "wounded by history," still tried "to shine a little light" on the "deepest recesses of the human soul." Holmes, too, is wounded by the history of his own life, and must, like a hero, execute a rescue, but not of the two distressed women in his life he cannot help (and who cannot help him). Story’s 21st Century hero finally realizes he must rescue himself from himself or succumb to his wounds and become a victim."
— Philip Miller, prize-winning poet and editor/publisher of The Same

entwined

Illustrations from paintings by E. Minton.