About Me

My full name is James Kelley Butler, and I was born in Dayton, Ohio on April 14, 1973 to Terry Lynn and Oscar Kyle Butler, Jr.  My dad was in the Air Force, so by the time I was 20, I had lived in Michigan, Tennessee, Greece, Germany, and England.  In 1998, I came full circle and moved back to Ohio and have lived here ever since.

Around the age of ten, I began to manifest the creativity I inherited from my mom, not to mention a budding interest in computers, by assembling a network of computer mock-ups made entirely out of cardboard.  It didn't take too long to convince mom and dad that a real computer would be a sound investment.

My interest in creative writing began as early as the second grade.  That was when I received my first writing assignments, and all I really remember is that I enjoyed them.  I had no idea at that time that this would become an important part of my life, but from that time I looked forward to almost all creative writing opportunities that came up in class.

If I remember correctly, it was in the eighth grade that I began writing just for the fun of it.  My first story was in a sort of play/script hybrid form, and was titled Ghost Vice.  I still have copies, but the quality is quite laughable compared to my recent works.  Several of my early stories were in this format, though it didn't take long before I "branched out" into prose.  The first of those stories was Hostage High, loosely inspired by a preview of the movie, Toy Soldiers, which I had never seen.  It was written with GeoWrite on a Commodore 64 computer.  It was by no means a good story, but the experience was enjoyable enough that I stuck with prose from that point on.

Of all the early stories, Heart of Glass was probably the most autobiographical.  While To Every Thing a Purpose was inspired in part by elements of my life, Heart of Glass contained actual events and added a happy ending to them.  Like a good number of my stories from these years, it was more therapeutic than anything.  It also marked the first appearance of Karen Reeves, who was my character's girlfriend in several more stories.

Unexplained Absences came next, and marked a return to the more fantastical type of story that Hostage High was.  I deliberately wrote the story in three distinct parts, and even included a faux author interview at the end.

After that I wrote The Avalon Brigade, which was certainly my most ambitious project at that time.  Not bad, considering it was only my senior year of high school.  The plot itself falls apart extremely early, but one element of the story still holds up surprisingly well, so much so that I intend to reuse it in my next novel.  My favorite parts of the story had to do with it, and it will be interesting to see how well it fares in a Christian novel.

During that senior year I saw and read The Silence of the Lambs, and was inspired by Anthony Hopkins' performance to write The Orphan Factory.  This story marked the first time I created extensive background information for the story to help more fully realize the world in which the story took place.  The story was begun in my senior year of high school and finished during my first few months of college.  It was the first time I didn't use myself as a main character, though I was still an important supporting character.  I actually had started work on a sequel titled The Price of Sanity, but never wrote more than a couple chapters.

I did write another shorter story called Dead Screams, but the parallel nature of its two halves made the second half way too predictable.  This was completed before The Price of Sanity was started.  I also tried to start a science fiction story entitled First Contact (no relation to Star Trek), but lost interest in that story, too.  For one reason or another, I stopped writing (other than the occasional poem) until the summer of last year when I started Whispers, ending an eleven year hiatus.

My life has changed considerably since I first started writing.  Some of it is due to just being older, but much of it is due to a refocusing of my life toward Christ and what He has done for me and through me.  Church has become much more of a priority in my life, and my writing reflects this.

I can only credit what writing ability I have to God.  He gives each of us special gifts to use for His honor and glory, and my biggest regret as far as my writing goes is that I did not use mine for Him earlier.  I know that some of my happiest memories in these past couple of years (aside from the birth of my darling niece Callie) have involved the writing of Whispers and To Every Thing a Purpose.  There is an excitement in doing what God made me for that can't be measured.  I have to restrain myself when telling people about my stories so I don't spoil plot points for them.  Only God can tell how far it can go, and I can't wait to see just what is possible.