Featured Interview With Author James Dain
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
James Dain here, and hello to all my readers.
I grew up in the '60s in a small industrial town called Bridgeville, about a dozen miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The main industry in town was the steel mill where my father worked, but we also had a GE lamp factory and a chemical plant. The town was dirty and polluted, but we were free-range kids who spent our days exploring the woods and shooting bottles in the creek.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I have loved reading ever since I was big enough to flip through the pages of the picture books my mom would buy me. She was an avid reader, and we made frequent trips to the library together. As I got a little older, I started pilfering sneaks at my brother's comic books before graduating, first, to the Tom Swift series of science fiction books, and finally to Ian Fleming's James Bond books, which I didn't understand but which enthralled me imaginatively. My first efforts were, in fact, knock-off James Bond thrillers.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I love a good story with a strong, straight-forward plot and characters who have to fight for every inch of ground they can get. Classic writers like James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler continue to thrill me, and of course I devour every John Grisham and Jeffrey Archer book I can get my hands on. But I also love writers who can write action with strong thematic depth: Hemingway and Fitzgerald come to mind, as do Graham Greene and Flannery O'Connor.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
"Everyone Dies in Youngstown" tells to story of MJ Shea, a low-level cocaine runner trying to bring the killer of his crack-addicted brother to justice. It's set in rust-belt Youngstown, Ohio, in the mid '80s, which was ground-zero for post-industrial despair and emblematic of the deteriorating mind-set of the main character. It's a character-based thriller, but with lots of twists and turns but no cheap short cuts. I'm very proud of it and readers seem to like it.
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