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Episode 110A – Jim Christina – The Return
23 minutes Posted Jun 9, 2022 at 7:51 pm.
] Stephen: Jim, I want to welcome you to discovered wordsmiths today. How are you doing? How’s your weather out there?
] Jim: We are cold and snowy. And when I got up this morning, I got up about three and it was like, oh, 34 degrees. And when I looked out [00:01:00] at my phone right now, it’s 26 degrees and we’re getting snow. And my golden even came running back in saying, oh,
] Stephen: Tell everybody a little bit about where you’re at. So they know what we’re talking about. It’s mid April, as we’re talking
] Jim: about, I am in star, Idaho. I have 15 miles Northwest of boy. We were in, in treasure valley in ADA county. And if you’re a Republican, you’ll love it here. It’s a stronghold. If you’re a Democrat, you’ll probably hate it here because it’s a Republican stronghold, but it doesn’t matter to me.
] Stephen: Before we talk about your book. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Some of the things you like to do, and a little bit about gym.
] Jim: I am. I’m a product of an air force family. I grew up in Delmore, California. My father was an instructor at the air force academy. He also was a fighter pilot created during world war II and not world war II and the Korean war Ana Nam patrol [00:02:00] bomber pilot in world war II.
] grade. And I just had a brain fart. What’s his name? Anyway, their hero blew them or their heroes are always like six foot tall, wide shoulder, narrow hip square jaw. Never get dirty, never have to go potty.
] Stephen: a which I told you, then it’s supernatural Western. That, that got me. That’s
] Jim: my, my wife and [00:04:00] I are just really love as supernatural. So we’re like ghost hunters, personify.
] superstition mountains and, or excuse me, and the Tribune mountains, it’s a canyon, but it’s, you have to write a Ridge line to get in. And on either side, once you get in there’s, especially with caves on both sides. And this guy has taken over one of these caves, that’s his layer.
] He had no idea that this guy was in him. He had no idea. He was even in an Arizona. He comes back. And the second part of the book is called the return.
] at the time Landry parish.
] Stephen: Okay. Nice. So did you always plan on writing a long series or did it just start [00:08:00] growing as you
] Jim: were writing? Just kept going. It just kept going and it, and each book game its own standalone with references back to the story, or if you want to do it that way, or you don’t have to read the stories before the two books that came after the return.
] and he takes off and he winds up on the Mississippi river on a river boat, in a rope blocker.
] go ahead. And then the one after that is Jefferson, we won’t get into Jefferson, the bandwidth story.
] Stephen: This is a series, but they’re loosely based together. It’s not necessarily the same characters.
] Jim: similar, not even related to the hunter. Sherry’s the last year. We’re all totally standalone. As a matter of fact, Jonah Bluelight drunk. It was a dream and I’ve never remembered my dreams, but this particular one I did from start to finish. My dream told the whole story. All I had to do was write.
] Stephen: Nice. Yeah. I don’t get too many dreams. I remember myself either. So that’s nice. I know a lot of people say, write them all down. I don’t get that.
] Jim: Yeah. I don’t either. Don’t really, but I did this time.
] Stephen: So what made you choose? I know you said you’re in the [00:11:00] supernatural and stuff. That was your interest. What made you choose.
] Jim: the Western genre, I’ve always been a kid growing up in, I was born in 49. So like a kid growing up in the fifties, we had all of those great westerns there really Rogers showed gene Autry, the rifleman, lone, the lone ranger, and, and then all of the great Warner brothers Western that were on fifties.
] Stephen: That’s hilarious.
] Jim: Oh yeah. On the Western channel. They’re on every day. Yeah. I I, and then when I went to college, I finished college when I [00:12:00] was in the military and I did my senior thesis on a Western expansion, 18 48 90. So I got to go to Arizona and I got to dig around in Arizona a little bit.
] time, you had water bladders. You never know when you’re going to run into water or not. So there’s a lot of things that we get right. In my books. At least I feel most people that read them do as well. So
] Stephen: what other books out there would you say are similar to yours for people that are interested?
] Jim: I would say Dale Jackson’s book. All the pretty horses or they ride, they ride pretty horses is one that takes place. And in the old west, Johnny D bogs has got his very first novel about a trail drive. He’s great. There’s a couple of writers that write fiction westerns as, as well as I do. I think it as far as does it mean talking?
] Stephen: There you go. I’ll, I’ll make sure people know that. That’s great. I it’s been awhile since I read any Western, uh, [00:14:00] supernatural Western sounds like something I could get into. Definitely.
] Jim: It’s a long book. It’s almost 400 pages, but it’s your bet.
] Stephen: And you’re an independent independently published?
] Jim: No, we actually have a company that’s I started black dog publishing with my first. And then I merged with Richard Polin Ellie and Tuscany bay books seven years ago. And we now are co-owners of black dog publishing slash Tuscany bay books, which is our imprint.
] grow. So please don’t make me. Please don’t make me other than that, we have quite a stable of writers now.
] Stephen: Yeah. What about, uh, Western supernatural romance?
] Jim: Actually, you know what? There is one, I just finished reading. It’s called the lives of diamond Bessie and we’re interviewing her tomorrow night on my show.
] Stephen: Nice. We’re going to talk about that for the second half for everybody listening to stay tuned for that, but the little preview there. Yeah. So what type of feedback do you get from readers on your books?
] Jim: I get fairly good reviews. The only bad review I ever got was my, my, one of my first book. And he goes, he says it was it.
]
] Stephen: I think honestly, if people. They’re gifted a book for review. They put less value in it than if they actually, I
] Jim: think, you know what I think you’re absolutely right.
] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. I know. There’s a few authors I’ve discussed. Picked up a book, cause it was like a free or a 99 cents sale or something like that.
] And, oh, I love these guys and bam, I just hit buy don’t even look at the price because it’s worth the value. I look at people that say, oh, this isn’t worth the money. And yet they’ll spend $60 to go to a two hour music concert or a hundred dollars to get seats behind a home plate at a game that lasts two hours.
] Jim: I’m a firm believer in that writers should never remove a book.
] Stephen: I can understand that. I
] Jim: just don’t think writers should reveal it because you have your own ideas. The writer may be writing a book.
] Stephen: right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I haven’t asked other writers to review my books. Leaving comments and reviews it somehow it’ll come back to bite [00:18:00] you.
] Jim: I think it always does come back to bite you.
] Stephen: So I’m going to guess my next question is, would you rather see your book as a movie or a TV show? I’m going to guess with 13 books, a TV show would be ideal, but could you tell us why you think would make a good TV show? And if there’s any book you think would make a better movie,
] Jim: I think Jefferson’s chance would make the better movie.
] of them now. Wow.
] Stephen: And that’s from an ax.
] Jim: But, uh, I, I think Jefferson’s chance would make the butter movie. Jonah blue would make the better short Sturt series because it’s definitely three distinct parts. And the rest of the a hundred shares I think would make a great series, maybe limited in a 10 book, Netflix or something.
] Stephen: So you mentioned some things growing up. What are some of your favorite books and authors?
] Jim: Oh my gosh. One of my very favorite authors in the world is John Sanford. He writes to pray novels. I’m sure you are aware of what they are and how important that whole group of guys Virgil flowers. John Sanford actually was on our show.
] oh, the guy who writes long Meyer. Oh
] Stephen: yeah. I tend to be at 3:00 AM. I’ll call you at 3:00 AM when it
] Jim: comes from. Exactly. But anyway, he’s been on my show like four times and he’s just a great guy, but I love the longwear stories and I love the TV.
] Stephen: Yeah. I was looking it up real quick novels by Craig Johnson.
] Jim: Johnson. Yup. Craig Craig lives at a little town in Wyoming that has 25 people in it. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And he was telling us the story of how we all ended up there. It was pretty cool. So how many
] Stephen: cattle do they [00:21:00] have? All he doesn’t have. Let’s see. I always here we’ve only got a hundred people, but we’ve got like 10,000 cattle in town.
] Jim: He’s got, he said he’s got a 150 or 250 acres. It doesn’t have a head of cattle. Got some horses. That it just doesn’t, it doesn’t deal with the candidate with too much.
] Stephen: So where you live out there in Idaho, you have a favorite bookstore
] Jim: isn’t one. Yeah.
] Stephen: Yeah. We don’t have one in our local little town, but I know there’s a couple of close by.
] Jim: Yeah. There’s I think there’s one in Boise, but if used bookstore, no, they closed all the orders and they closed Barnes and noble brick and mortar bookstores.
] Stephen: So Jim tell us where we can find your book. And if you have a website, tell us that in any other spots to get ahold of you, I
] Jim: can find my books on Amazon.
] I have a website, Chimp, christina.net. You also find my books at Tuscany bay books dot Facebook. You can find me at Jefferson. Email is Jim [email protected]. Oh,
] Stephen: now we’re going to get tons of email for you now wanting to talk about their books.
] Jim: because they’re real, they’re true to their true to life. I think that once you get into one of my books, you start realizing that the dialogue is truly.
] Stephen: There’s a lot of wrong.
] appreciate that. Thanks for talking about your. I can’t wait to see more about them. That’s wonderful. Thank you.
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Show notes
Overview
Jim spent time in the army and traveling with his wife. He settled in Idaho and writes supernatural westerns.
he not only writes, but helps publish other authors. They have 15 writers that are producing stories that Jim is publishing.
Website
https://jimchristina.net
Book
https://www.amazon.com/Return-jim-Christina-ebook/dp/B01A4VX98E?&_encoding=UTF8&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=d780466f0df7e2fe31505e7200823249&camp=1789&creative=9325
Favorites
https://www.amazon.com/Investigator-John-Sandford-ebook/dp/B0997VH2VP?&_encoding=UTF8&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=4dd430daaf8659f9119fd6ae542ddfff&camp=1789&creative=9325
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074BR34B2?&_encoding=UTF8&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=85e17716e0930b2a3c27aaa212673e21&camp=1789&creative=9325
YouTube
https://youtu.be/Qs7MF6UkDd4
Transcript
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We traveled around a little bit, spent four years in the Philippines, but we always came back to Del Mar. That was our home. And I was in the army for 10 years. I was the grunt for two and a half years of Vietnam. I was a teller copter pilot for years, that was rifted, which is reduction in force and got out in 1977 and went to work for my dad after he purchased a paint company.
But I always had this musicianship in and I became a business. Part-time cause you never give a day job. Like a writer never go. So I had abandoned Tacoma, Washington for years called sundown and, um, we traveled hither and Yon up and down the coast and did all kinds of shows. And we were acoustic vocal group, but for years and years, and I wrote most of the music for the band for the long time, I was pretty prolific song.
But I always had this character runs to the back of my head and I thought everybody wants to read the same [
Don’t take care of their animals. They’re just perfect. And that’s not how they were in the west. They were ugly. They were short squat, long hair, beards, dirty. It had different jobs. And I wanted to show them these guys and their fifties could be just as viable as a guy in his thirties. So I started a series called the hunter and he’s a aging men hunter in Arizona in 1880s, and hit had turned into 13 books.
Wow. And the book we’ll be talking about tonight is a double. It’s uh, in two parts, it’s called the return and it is a, it’s a supernatural Western. It is
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We watch them every week and we do all that stuff. But the first half of the book is dedicated. It’s called the dark ages. And the dark angel is a demon that has taken over. He takes over a fallen men of the, as they lose their Pius, uh, he takes them over and he’s taken over this one river in Alabama named T oh, what is it?
I forget. But anyway, he, he kills a guy and he runs away from Alabama and he winds up in Arizona on the Arizona New Mexico border with a gang of Brigance and they’re wrestling. And, but he has this place that he goes, that is it’s called the Tiatros DDR, blo. I don’t know how your Spanish is, but it’s the theater of the devil.
It’s an actual, it’s an actual place. It’s an actual place and Arizona and the [
And he had built an altar in there and he goes in and he so flagellates, he beats himself to honor his master. And this is it’s wild. It’s just a wild, he could take over painting. He just looked at. Mesmerized as you, but he eventually is killed by the hunters, um, proteges, Jeff Stryker. And as he is dying, the black swirl comes up from him and demon leaves T Joshua Velman is his name.
And he looks up at striker and he’s dying on the ground. And the demon now has left him and he looks at striker and he goes, why, why didn’t you kill me? [
He is now three times the deadly, as he was before he’s taken over another minister this time he’s, he is able to shapeshift and he turns himself into a Raven and it’s a huge Raven, like six foot weeks banned. Great yellow eyes. He that’s how he finds his prey. His only deal is he can’t read the righteous.
Can’t find the righteous. He can find everyone else. But if you’re a righteous man, he can’t see you, which is, it goes along with the demon thing. And it’s a wild book. It takes place in Louisiana and Cajun country up in a parish right above. And he’s tried to take over. It was the largest parish in new Orleans and Louisiana [
And he was trying to take over the entire parish for himself and his band of Brigance, which he now has a bunch of pirates with. And one of the protagonist is a elution LeDoux. And Lucian is the cousin of one of the people that worked for the hunter at his ranch in Arizona. So that’s how the hunter and Jeff Stryker wind up in a P row guiding through the swamp and this little tiny yet.
And these are big guys and they’re in his little PIRO, which is nothing more than a dugout and floating through the swamps in Arizona or in Louisiana. And it’s a fascinating book. My wife is the one who came up with the second half of it and we it’s been selling very well. This is a reissue and I’m so glad we did because it’s a great book.
So there you have it.
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Where one called Jonah blue, about a 10 year old boy who wants all the world to be a mountain man takes place. It starts in Canton, Ohio actually in 1830 and, and his father’s, his father’s name is blue, B L E U, and his father drives his wife did commit suicide and Joan, his brother and his sister are down committing incest at this point.
And Jonah finds his mother hanging in the barn and he takes off his father and tells him to go do this. And he says, no, I’m done. So he runs and he grabs his only possession, which is like three pennies in his hat that a Greek sailor, David, [
And from there he jumps overboard. Cause he’s. And he’s hanging into a cleat because he’ll riverboat, the Dex use extended over the actual boat part and he’s hanging into it clean on the side of this boat until he finally sees the area shallow enough where he can let go. And. And he gets up out of the water and he is crawling up on the bank and this voice comes out of nowhere and he says, I seen what you done.
I took some sand boy and it happens to be a mountain man in Burnsville dog. It hooks out into Jonah and it takes John up into the mountains and teaches him the waves of the mountain, man. But he changes his name. He says, what’s your name? He goes, Jonah. Not blue, but blue. So that’s where this name genital blue came from.
And then there’s three separate ventures. They takes place with John and the book and it ends, it starts in 1830 and 1853. Sorry, [
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They’re just
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Uh, supernatural Western and that whole type of genre,
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And one of my favorites was mad. And I’m one of them. And that was one of my favorites because the co-host a cold lead of that. Jack Kelly was my next door neighbor and Domar and a good friend of my family. And he and my dad used to get drunk on beer and Saturday nights and watch Maverick.
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Yeah. I grew up watching a lot of those with my father. In fact, he still watches the same Western.
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I really learned to love the state. I love Arizona. I don’t particularly love the Berkeley bitey things. State itself is cool. And a lot of places that I. Are in my books. And then I just, I learned a lot about Cowboys and a lot about my own horses. So I knew about horses and I knew that Zane grey and Louis Lamar didn’t ride horses correctly.
So I started making sure that everything around the horse, especially in the westerns were taken care of correctly. The Cowboys get, they get off their horses. They take care of them first, before they get wide, before they get food, the horse gets water though. And I learned that if you were on the road for more than a day, you had a pack animal with you.
And if you were going to be out for a long [
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But
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I think as far as Western writers go, I’m probably one of the better ones.
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It reads fast. Cool.
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We have a 15 writers now working for us as writers. We publish 15 writers. We’re just picking up by more five more. Mickey is our in-house published. We have, we do everything from science fiction slash fantasy, and we don’t do pure fantasy, but we’ll do it. If it’s mixed in with science fiction, children’s books, young adult supernatural with the westerns mysteries.
Most of the genres, I don’t want it to [
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Okay. Story’s not worth 1999. And then I was gifted this book, this book, it’s an okay story, but not worth 1999. And I almost wrote back and said, you didn’t buy don’t head. [
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I do. I just reviewed one for Paris after bonds, her latest reluctant rebel. And what a great story. It’s about the, oh God, what was it called? Oh, anyway, about the delousing and stuff in Mexico Morrison in 19. There was a big fight that went on for three days about the lousy thing they were using kerosene and stuff.
So it’s a true story, but she sent me a copy and she says your mind ravine for me? No, not at all. So great story. Nice. But I think you’re right. I think when you’re gifted a book to read, I don’t think he put as much into it is as you should.
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Yep. A book that will take them three or four hours of reading for eight, nine, $10. They think it’s too much. I don’t understand that
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That’s not what you would do. So that becomes a point of. And then you start picking up on everything and the book instead of file, instead of reading it for the story,
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It’s a solid story. Start to finish. It’s got great characters in it. It’s got a great plot line in it and it, it makes you cry about three quarters of the way through the book. Matter of fact, I’m going to, I’m going to, my wife was not listening to this, but I buy ex-wife. She bought Jefferson. She had, she’d never read anything diabetic.
And she bought Jefferson’s chance on a whim because you saw it, had it and she didn’t review it. She says, I’ve never read a Western book. I’ve never read one of Jim’s. But I started crying halfway through it and I couldn’t stop until I finished the book and I will read all [
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That’s pretty good.
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Yeah. And what a wonderful guy, but his books. I just love reading because they read so. And his stories are always really cool. And he’s got really great characters in them. So I love, [
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But the stories are inherently different than the TV show. I like Johnny D is a great writer, J R Sanders up and coming wonderful writer of true crime and fiction. A lot of writers that bladder people who’ve never heard of, but write just wonderful stories.
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You can find them at any online bookseller. Good reads all of them. You can find it there. [
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So before we move on to some author stuff, Jim, tell everybody listening. If you’re in an elevator, why they should get your books and read your books
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The stories are true to life. The things that happen in these books could have happened or did happen at one time or another. And I think it gives you a little bit of education that you may not have had it opens your eyes to things that you never got watching TV, Western. Yeah.
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Put it that way. Great. I [
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