Steven James is the author of more than thirty books, including the critically acclaimed Bowers Files, an eight-book series of psychological thrillers which currently includes The Pawn, The Rook, The Knight, The Bishop and The Queen. The series has received two Christy Awards and numerous other honors.
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Steven James was born in Wisconsin in 1969. He earned his M.A. in Storytelling at East Tennessee State University in 1997. He lives with his wife and three daughters in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee.[1]
Steven James' most famous books to date form the psychological thriller series, The Bowers Files. Each book delves into the life of Pat Bowers, an Environmental Criminologist. Each book is its own story, but they all tie in together in various points.
Special Agent Patrick Bowers never met a killer he couldn't catch. Until now.
Called to North Carolina to consult on the case of an area serial killer, Bowers finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Cunning and lethal, the killer is always one step ahead of the law, and he's about to strike again. It will take all of Bowers's instincts and training to stop the man who calls himself the Illusionist.
Thrilling, intense, and impossible to put down, The Pawn will hold you in its iron grip until the very last page.[2]
Patrick Bowers is about to uncover the military's darkest secret . . . and his own dark past.
While investigating a series of baffling fires in San Diego, Special Agent Patrick Bowers is drawn into a deadly web of intrigue where nothing is as it appears to be. With a killer on the loose and one of the world's most deadly devices missing, Bowers is caught in a race against time to stop a criminal mastermind's trap before it closes around the people he loves.[3]
The stakes have never been higher.
Agent Bowers is used to tracking the country's most dangerous killers, but now it looks like a killer is tracking him. Bowers faces a race against time to decipher who the next victim will be and to stop the final shocking murder — which he's beginning to believe might be his own.
Gritty, chilling, and intense, this psychological thriller is guaranteed to keep you up all night.[4]
The game is on.
FBI Agent Patrick Bowers's cutting-edge skills are about to be pushed to the limit when a young woman is found brutally murdered in Washington DC. Her killers continue a spree of perfect crimes in the Northeast, but with nothing to link them to each other, Agent Bowers faces his most difficult case yet — even as his personal life begins to crumble around him.
The Bishop is a gripping, adrenaline-laced story for readers who are tired of timid thrillers. Strap on your seat belt and get ready for a wild ride.[5]
While investigating a mysterious double homicide in an isolated northern Wisconsin town, FBI Special Agent Patrick Bowers uncovers a high-tech conspiracy that ties together long-buried Cold War secrets with present-day tensions in the Middle East. Amid the hazardous winter weather and harsh landscape, Bowers must piece together the puzzle before it’s too late.[6]
The synopsis has yet to be announced, but Steven has announced that this novel will be a prequel to the series. Recently, he announced that the novel will be taking place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the city in which the series protagonist, Patrick Bowers, was a homicide detective before becoming an FBI agent. Speculation has been that Opening Moves will deal with a well-known character and killer in the series, Richard Devin Basque, whom Patrick put in jail. Opening Moves is due to be released September 2012.
The King returns to the title of a sequel. As with Opening Moves, the synopsis for this title has not been announced, but Steven has mentioned a few events that he has planned. Following the timing of the previous books' release dates, The King should be released sometime around September 2013.
Checkmate will be the last book in the series. There has been no word on what we can expect when it is released. Checkmate will most likely have the release date of September 2014.
Besides writing the suspenseful Bowers Files series, Steven James has also written other inspirational nonfiction books, including Sailing Between the Stars: Musings on the Mysteries of Faith, Never the Same: Stories of Those Who Encountered Jesus, Becoming Real: Christ’s Call to Authentic Living, A Heart Exposed: Talking to God with Nothing to Hide and Story: Recapture the Mystery. In addition, he has written prayer collections, dramas, monologues, a nine book series on creative storytelling, and young adult fantasy.
Steven has received two Christy Awards for best suspense, one in 2009 for The Rook and the second in 2011 for The Bishop. He has received four Storytelling World Honor awards and two Publishers Weekly starred reviews. The Bishop was named the 2010 Book of the Year by RT Review, Suspense Magazine and The Christian Manifesto. Steven is an active member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, the Authors Guild, and the International Association of Crime Writers. He is also a contributing editor to Writer's Digest. He has taught writing and storytelling principles on three continents.[7]
Early Beginnings
Steven’s infatuation with stories has been with him throughout his life. When he was in sixth grade, he and a friend made up and wrote their own epic adventures. Steven also told himself stories to escape the monotony of his job as a school crossing guard. “I remember older people driving past and staring at me, because this crossing guard kid was standing there talking to himself,” Steven recalled with a chuckle. “I can still picture some of these older drivers staring at me while driving past, almost driving into mailboxes.”[8]
When Steven was in college, he took wilderness guide training and became a camp program director. “I always enjoyed that, but I found that even when I was leading trips, in the back of my mind, I was kind of making things up … and thinking, Oh, I’d rather be sitting down writing about this.”[9]
“Finding my own voice took me a while,” Steven said. In fact, he had to write 18 books before he felt like what he was writing was truly “him.” One of his English professors and later a great editor, who reaffirmed him as a writer, provided encouragement in his journey. He also gained impetus and courage to write by reading Why Geese Fly Farther Than Eagles by Bob Stromberg and Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.[10]
Writing Habits
Steven has come a long way since his early years. When it’s time to crack down on some serious writing, the office in his basement, his porch, and his kids’ tree house (which he built “supposedly for them”) are a few of his favorite places to tune out the world’s distractions. Finding his optimum time to write, however, can be tricky: “It’s funny; I work really well late at night from 11 to like 1 and from like 6 to 10 a.m. or so, which really stinks because I can’t do them both one day after the other. I have to choose: Do I want to stay up late or get up early?”[11]
Writing Style
Steven describes his style as “writing forward and backward at the same time,” and he’s not afraid to change things around while he’s writing. While he was editing The Knight, he realized that if he was reading his own book, he would correctly identify the killer. For a Steven James thriller, predictability is unacceptable, so with three days left before his deadline, Steven began the intricate process of changing the culprit’s identity.[12]
What are the most basic ingredients of a good story? Steven defines a story as having “a character who wants something but can’t get it. At its core that’s what every story is about.” According to an article Steven wrote for Writer’s Digest, the three secrets of good story telling are the mastery of cause and effect, believability and escalation.[13]
Steven also believes that a good story doesn’t make promises without keeping them. That is, evil people don’t make empty threats, and the author doesn’t waste the reader’s time with meaningless details. “Every word in a sentence is a promise to the significance of that word in the story,” he said.[14]
Another essential is narrative tension, which must be used by the writer to hold the reader’s curiosity and interest. He gives an example: “Romance is not about romance. It’s about romantic tension: two people trying to get together and not being able to do it. Once the romance starts, the story’s over!”[15]
Steven also says that there are benefits to the “organic” story-writing process, which he uses. “I believe you need to be responsive to where the story is going as you write it,” he said.[16]
He explains that getting acquainted with fictional characters is a process: “I can’t just sit here and expect that I’ll know everything about a character, but as I write, I spend 6 or 9 months to a year, 5 to 6 hours a day with this character.” Steven notes that over time, he is able to fill in characters’ back-stories, and he learns how they would respond to different situations. His process of refining characters and plot points is an extremely holistic process. For this reason, he is incredulous of authors who can outline a story and then fill in the details linearly from beginning to end. He believes that such an approach would feel too boxy and be too predictable.[17]
Steven strongly opposes some writers’ practice of “muting” evil to make it look less disgusting or terrifying. Where other authors might choose to substitute in cardboard cutouts for their villains, he prefers to give a more honest view of reality, even when reality is gruesome. He has been disturbed by some of the fictional serial killers he writes about, but he insists that it’s necessary for authors to explore fictional personalities so that the characters seem more real on the page. It can also be difficult for him to make his main characters suffer. As an example, Steven mentioned Tessa, a teenage character in his Bowers Files, who struggles with cutting and emotional instability. Without realistic obstacles to overcome and suffering to stir the readers’ emotions, however, there’s no story. “I think at its heart, reading is an emotional experience,” he observed. “A book should draw us in, and it should move us. And if it doesn’t move us, it probably fails.”[18]