About James Payne

Soon to be : Best Selling Author

My Story

As I look at this section of my authors web site, I wonder what I could possibly tell you about my self that is awe inspring, impressive? But to be honest, my life has been mostly unremarkable.   I’ve always been the creative type, a musician, a songwriter all my life, and since I was a boy, have taken situations, both real and imagined, and developed them in my head, formulated numerous stories and scenarios. Apart from two or three half hearted attempts at writing a short story in my younger years, I never really considered the prospect of becoming a ‘real’ novelist.

More recently though, numerous personal challenges steered me in to a pretty dark place, and I know, ultimately, that stripped away what I feel was a fundamentally important part of me. In some ways I felt like I had lost some of my heart, a little of my soul, and a great deal of my reason for being, so I felt, somehow, I had to address some of those feelings.

One day, a totally random event triggered something inside me. A culmination of feelings and emotions sent me on a lifetime journey and in the blink of an eye the entire ‘We Have the Time‘ story idea came to me. A story of deja vu, of visions and apparitions appearing around us and what they could actually mean. I didn’t need to plan it out, i didn’t really need to rack my brains for ideas. They just came. The story happened in my mind.

In writing, they say there are two kinds of writers; ‘plotters’, those that plan or plot their entire story out methodically from beginning to end, even before they start writing. And then, there are, what they call, ‘pantsers’, that is, they write by the seat of their pants. That was me…a pantser. The story wrote itself. I had no idea where it was going, it just went. In the beginning, I was actually turning out chapter after chapter, I think i wrote somewhere around fifty thousand words, in a week. The ideas just appeared out of nowhere. 

So the story itself pretty much takes account of many imaginary scenarios I have visualised over the years. Some real life experiences are reflected, but to be honest, not that many. I guess there are parts where someone can say after reading “that’s me he’s talking about!”, and that’s fine. But, the reality is, the only parts that reflect on anyone is me, and even then, at a pretty high level. I’m ex-military, so can speak from personal experience, even though that seems like a lifetime ago. Sometimes I’ve felt I have faced the same challenges as the main character, but we have all been there in some form at some stage in our lives. I feel blessed that I’ve been fortunate enough on most occasions to experience positive reinforcements in one way or another.

On a more personal note, I live in Central Scotland with my Partner and our extended family. I’m still gainfully employed as an I.T. technician. I love my guitar collection and my studio, and I already have my follow up novel in motion.

A Final thought…..

I don’t have a favorite place. I have my favorite people. And whenever I’m with my favorite people, that’s when it becomes my favourite place.