About James A. Ross

“Jimmy, quit telling tall tales!” was my mother’s frequent admonition when I was a boy. It took several decades before she begrudgingly accepted that she might have produced a writer and not a future politician. The capitulation took place at my dining room table where she and I were listening to her six-year-old grandson practice his newly acquired reading skill by reciting the contents of my junk mail. When he got to a letter from the South Dakota Review and began to read in his hesitant first grader’s voice, “Dear… Mr… Ross. We… are… delighted…” I saw first-hand proof that jaw dropping is not just a figure of speech.

That was more than twenty years ago. Since then, I have been honing my storytelling skills in various formats and venues, including the Rose Bar in Jackson, Wyoming which occasionally bestows a large pizza and a tractor cap to the best storyteller of the evening. My seven grandchildren know, too, that “Papa Jim, tell us a story,” is a magic phrase guaranteed to suspend chores and homework for the duration.

Storytelling is fun, but it never paid the bills. To take care of necessities, I’ve at various times been a Peace Corps volunteer in the Congo, a low-level staffer for a Midwestern Congressman and a three-piece suited Wall Street lawyer and deal maker. Hey, it was a living. These days I write from my home in the Teton Valley of Wyoming, where elk and other four-legged residents outnumber the two-legged variety by ten to one, and the patrons of the local cowboy bars appreciate a well-told tall tale.

My short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. I have been a guest storyteller on the Moth Main Stage and a several times winner of the live storytelling competition, Cabin Fever Story Slam.

My debut novel, Hunting Teddy Roosevelt, won the Independent Press Distinguished Favorite Award for historical fiction and the American Fiction Award in the Adventure/Historical category. It was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Award and the American Book Festival Award for historical fiction. My debut mystery novel, Coldwater Revenge won the Firebird Book Award for legal thrillers, the Maincrest Media Award for Mystery/Suspense, the American Fiction Award for Hard-boiled Crime, the Pinnacle Award in the Thriller category and the Pencraft Award in the Thriller-Terrorist category. The second book in the Coldwater Mystery series has just been released and is available wherever books are sold.