A PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM
JAMES:
"Thank you for visiting my website. As you will see, it has not
been an easy journey. But it has certainly been exhilarating! Once, on
one of my many trips behind the old Iron Curtain, a dear
Christian woman in a wheelchair -- a survivor of Nazi atrocities
-- called me to her side after we had arrived with needed
supplies. She radiated warmth and joy, and I will never forget
how she thanked us for coming and asked if she could impart a
blessing as a sign of her love and appreciation. I replied, "Of
course, it would be an honor." That's when she placed her hand
on my shoulder and said, "I wish for you many tribulations."
I remember thinking to myself,
"That is your blessing?"
But she was right: it is in hardship that we rise...that we call
on God and that core of inner strength within to get us
through whatever challenges we are facing. Hence, over the years, I have learned to embrace hardship. I'm not saying that I like it, but I have learned to
embrace it because it has taught me to dig deep and aim high. So it goes with writing. You, the
reader, deserve my very best, and each time I begin a new story
and face the demands a new story presents,
I feel a lump in my throat that signals my nervousness of
meeting your expectations. I know I can't please everyone. I do,
however, promise to give you my very best as I call on my
years of experience and ability to craft a story worthy of your
time and devotion. I hope you enjoy your visit, and that you
will keep in touch via Facebook and Twitter." |
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ADELAIDE: JAMES HOUSTON
TURNER'S DEPARTMENT THIRTEEN
"TOO UGLY TOUR" ACROSS AMERICA A HUGE SUCCESS!
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"This tour was one huge mountaintop
experience," says James. "For one thing, 2011 was my landmark
20th anniversary of beating cancer! Few people thought
I would live eighteen months, so reaching twenty years was
fantastic! My celebration year
started with Qantas Airways hosting me at the prestigious G'day
USA black tie gala in Hollywood. From there it just got better.
Next up: The Identity Factor
(Comfort
Publishing)
came out in eBook format in March to some pretty stunning
reviews. This was followed by several exhilarating months of
writing to finish a new thriller (due out later this year),
which was followed in September by my USA book tour for the
first in my Aleksandr Talanov thriller series,
Department Thirteen,
which is based on (1) the actual KGB assassination and sabotage
unit of the same name; (2) my years as a smuggler behind the old
Iron Curtain; and (3) the actual KGB agent who leaked word out
of Moscow that I was on a KGB watchlist. The book had a
spectacular launch at the University of Houston - Clear Lake
(where I earned my Master's Degree), preceded by a glamorous
reception hosted by the Honorable Nana Booker AM, Australia's
Honorary Consul for the State of Texas, at her elegant
Booker-Lowe Australian Aboriginal art gallery, in Houston. The
book then hit bestseller status and went on to win the coveted
USA Book News "Best Thriller of 2011" award. Wow! Does it get
any better than that? Funny you should ask, because -- yes --
it
does."
To read more, click
HERE. |
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LOS ANGELES:
DEPARTMENT THIRTEEN
NAMED "BEST THRILLER OF 2011" BY USA BOOK NEWS
USA Book News is
the premier online magazine and review website for publishing
houses like Simon & Schuster, Random House, St. Martin's Press,
Penguin, Harper Collins, McGraw-Hill, and hundreds of
independent houses. News
of the award reached Turner in Philadelphia, where he was
promoting both Department Thirteen
and his acclaimed international thriller, The Identity Factor. "If I could have done
cartwheels without landing myself in the hospital, I would
have," he says. "The award is a sweet victory for the many years
of writing it's taken me to get to this point." James has
a series of novels planned for Department Thirteen's hero,
Aleksandr Talanov, who has
been described as "Bond meets Bourne". The next Talanov thriller, also to be published by Comfort
Publishing, is slated for a September 2012 release. "It takes Talanov in a completely new direction," he
reveals. "My goal with each book is to tumble readers in
surprising and fresh new directions that keep them guessing
until the very end."
To read more, click
HERE. |
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JAMES CREDITED BY BOOKSELLING GIANT
BARNES & NOBLE AS BEING THE FIRST AUTHOR TO USE A VIDEO
TRAILER TO PROMOTE A NOVEL
Explains James: "Called
'Undercover,' which I wrote and produced for my first
QANTAS tour to the US back in 2000, it was way too long --
seven minutes -- but was my first effort to innovatively capture
the attention of readers. For Department Thirteen and my 2011
promotional tour, I took it to the next level and organized a
photo shoot with some good mates here in Adelaide. We took over
a pub one Saturday morning and spent nearly three hours
recreating a scene from the book, as well as shooting a
promotional photo for tour sponsor, Chopin vodka. THANK YOU Jon
Whelan (who has become the promotional 'face' of Talanov),
Rachel Rouse, Connor O'Rourke, ACE photographers 'Flash!' (who
took the accompanying Talanov action photo) and 'Bong,' as well
as 'The Highway'. I couldn't have done this without you."
You can watch the two-minute Department
Thirteen book trailer by
clicking
HERE. |
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JAMES INTERVIEWED BY
THE GLAMOROUS
ARTIST
INTERVIEWS MAGAZINE ABOUT HIS 2011 USA BOOK TOUR AND
WHY HE CALLS IT HIS "TOO UGLY TOUR".
James spoke candidly
with publisher Marisa Darnel about his twenty
years as a struggling writer, his triumphant battle against
cancer, his time
spent as a smuggler behind the old Iron Curtain and how these
varied experiences helped influence his writing because of the
impact they had on him personally. "We seldom learn life's
lessons when the going is easy," he says. "It's in struggle and
hardship that we're especially teachable."
One experience in particular was James being turned down for a
customer service job in Adelaide because he was too ugly,
referring to the facial scars from his cancer operation. "At the
time it was a kick in the guts, because my writing was going
nowhere and we needed money, and I was thinking of quitting. But
that rejection was actually a blessing in disguise, because it
motivated me to keep writing. So I decided to turn that
experience into a platform and speak in schools about not
letting the hard knocks of life defeat you. Kids today get hit
with all kinds of similar judgments: you're too fat, too poor,
too dumb, too...whatever. If we believe that stuff, we'll be
defeated in life much more easily. Don't fall into that trap!"
To read the emotionally-moving interview, click
HERE. |
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JERUSALEM: THE IDENTITY FACTOR
RECEIVES POWERFUL ENDORSEMENT
Esteemed internationally as a man of peace,
Jerusalem’s
Rabbi
David Rosen praised James for the way
he balanced religious and political sensitivities with
unrelenting suspense in his international thriller, The
Identity Factor (Comfort Publishing, 2011).
“I knew I was walking a
tightrope when I wrote The Identity Factor,” says
Turner of his novel, which not only addresses current
Arab/Israeli tensions in the Middle East, but challenges the
traditional view about the origin of Genesis.
"My novel [also]
postulates how a terrorist like bin Laden could escape the
clutches of the US military time and again. It raises the bar of
possibilities from fiction to fact in light of repeated claims
that he actually had help in Washington." To read more,
click
HERE.
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HOLLYWOOD: WHO BETTER TO KNOW A VILLAIN
THAN THE MASTER VILLAIN HIMSELF?
"I
love a great villain," says famous TV bad guy, Abu Fayed, from
Season 6 of the hit television series, 24. "Great villains
demand great heroes and The Identity Factor has both."
Abu
Fayed
was played by the accomplished actor,
Adoni Maropis, who was flawless in his
role as the villain everyone loved to hate. Entertainment
Weekly had this to say: “It takes a hell of a guy to rattle
our unflappable hero [Jack
Bauer]. Enter Abu Fayed, who proves his
prowess by torturing Bauer while coordinating multiple terrorist
plots."
To read more, click
HERE. |
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LOS ANGELES: JAMES HOUSTON TURNER
HOSTED AT THE
G'DAY USA BLACK TIE GALA TO CELEBRATE HIS TWENTY YEAR
ANNIVERSARY OF BEATING CANCER.
"It's especially rewarding," he says,
"because doctors didn't think I'd live 18 months. The first
sound I remember was the metronome of the heart monitor when I
came out from the anesthetic of my eleven-hour operation. The
first sight I saw was my wife, Wendy. She was standing beside
me, holding my hand. We still hold hands."
A collection
of G'day USA photos is available at:
http://jameshoustonturner.blogspot.com/2011/01/cool-dude-writer-goes-to-gday-usa.html. |
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HOLLYWOOD: JAMES HOUSTON TURNER'S
"MYSTERY INSIDE A PUZZLE" THRILLER, THE IDENTITY FACTOR,
ADAPTED FOR FILM
"The best
writing comes from massive rewriting,"
says James about journalist Bob Larson, with whom he worked as a
journalist at the famed
Union Rescue
Mission in Los Angeles. "And that is
exactly how the script version of The Identity Factor
has played out. There was lots of chopping and condensing, and
it was hard to eliminate favorite scenes and characters, but the
results have been genuinely spectacular.
"I also had
to get to know my characters better than I did in the book.
That's because nuance in film is visual, and I needed to
communicate that nuance into the script so that a director can
then make those characters come alive on the screen. Film
producer Kristin Overn (who directs the
PAGE
International Screenwriting Awards), collaborated with me on the
script and pushed my abilities to new heights. I won't lie to
you (even though I write fiction, which of course is telling
lies for a living) -- the adaptation process was a struggle. |
"Kristin
likens it to being in quicksand. You fight to get through this
sticky, suffocating quagmire, and at times you feel like it will
engulf you. Long hours tick by and sometime turn into days of
stalemate. But finally you fit the pieces of the puzzle together
and push your way through to the other side. Then you do it all
over again. In truth, the struggle enabled me to grow as a
writer. So I learned to love the quicksand. It definitely pushed
my envelope.
"And what a trip it was! At times I soared, at times I cursed.
My fellow writers will know what I'm talking about. What I had
to learn was not to be too 'precious' with what I'd written ...
not to 'own' it so much that I failed to see ways to improve it
... to do it better, especially for the sake of the film. It
wasn't easy. But it was certainly worth it. And exhilarating." |
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WASHINGTON, DC: JAMES A FEATURED
SPEAKER AT NAFSA CONVENTION.
Speaking about his life as a smuggler and
courier behind the old Iron Curtain and how these experiences
inspired him to write espionage thrillers,
James addressed an exclusive breakfast crowd at the annual NAFSA
convention in Washington, D.C. "As an American living in
Adelaide, James was a natural," says Denise von Wald, Chief
Executive of
Study Adelaide. "We did an Oprah
Winfrey style of interview, as well as furnished guests with
complimentary copies of James's thriller,
The Identity Factor."
According to the
NAFSA website,
the National Association of Foreign Student Advisors was founded
in 1948 to promote the professional development of American
college and university officials responsible for assisting and
advising the 25,000 foreign students who had come to study in
the United States after World War II. Over the years, NAFSA has
grown into an international organization of educational
advisors. "We were in Washington to showcase Adelaide as
an educational destination," says Ms von Wald, "and with James
being a dual American-Australian citizen who has traveled and
researched his novels both here and abroad, we wanted him to
speak about some of his experiences, as well as share why he
chooses to call Adelaide home."
This was followed over the course of two afternoons with sellout
wine tasting events featuring Australia's award-winning Jacob's
Creek wine. The previous year's guest speaker was astronaut Andy
Thomas. |
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JAMES HOUSTON
TURNER FEATURED IN HIS DELTA TAU DELTA FRATERNITY
MAGAZINE, RAINBOW
James has been featured several
times in
Rainbow magazine,
including the feature, "Books by Brothers," and the "Global Delts" issue, where he was quoted on the cover as saying, "Like
the view of Earth from space, the view of America from afar is
spectacular."
Other
featured Delts included bestselling authors Richard North
Patterson and Forrest Gump's Winston Groom, along with actors
Drew Carey, Matthew McConaughey, Will Ferrell, David Schwimmer,
James Marsden, Academy Award winning screenwriter Stephen Gaghan
("Traffic"), and football legends John Elway and Gene
Washington.
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www.jameshoustonturner.com
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