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Communion of Dreams:  A vision of the world in 50 years.

St. Cybi's Well:  A vision of
Wales in 7 years.  Well, sorta.

I've always loved science fiction, and exhausted that section of my local library by the time I was ten.  After I moved in with my aunt & uncle following the death of my parents, I exhausted the contents of the science fiction section of that local library in a matter of months, yet would return once or twice a week to see what new works had come in.

I started writing short stories in junior high school.  I actually wrote my first novel while in college (it is mercifully buried in a box somewhere in the attic).  But I always knew that I needed to live a little before I would be ready to be serious about my writing.  So it wasn’t until I was in my 40's that I decided to attempt to write a novel I had been thinking about for several years.

That first book was Communion of Dreams, which took me three years to write and polish enough to consider it "done."  It is science fiction but it is set only about 50 years from now, a time frame most science fiction authors avoid for the good reason that it is so close that you're undoubtably making predictions which are going to be proven wrong in the lifetime of some of your readers.  But it concerns an important moment in human history, a moment of transition and transformation which I couldn't resist.  After letting it sit for a couple years I have recently gone through and re-polished it, and put it on it's own website as chapters in .pdf form, available to download and read.

The second book is St. Cybi's Well.  It is a prequel to Communion of Dreams, set only about seven years from now.  I hadn't planned on writing this book, but in the course of writing Communion of Dreams one of the characters emerged who was so interesting that I had to explore his story.  While this character is an American, the book takes place entirely in Wales, and draws heavily on my travels there.  I am just starting to write this book, so there isn't yet much to share.  There's an early draft of the first chapter, if you're interested.


contact me:
jim@afineline.org
all work © James T. Downey, 1993-2006
photos © Martha K. John, 1994-2006
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