John Michael Ames

I grew up in an environment much like the one inhabited by the central character in Adventures in Nowhere, a place of beauty and dread. In response, I learned to be light on my feet, and I developed a sense of humor to combat the trials of life.

As a young man, I wanted to be an actor and was good enough to be invited to join a summer stock company. During the season, one actor threw his leading lady against the wall for upstaging him, and another told me to stay away from his wife, a woman I had hardly looked at. Later, a stage designer got drunk and painted obscenities on the side of the theater. To cap it off, the director in chief accused me of trying to undermine the whole summer schedule. To my young mind, there was only one conclusion: theater people are crazy. I changed my college major to English.

After graduating from college, I built a pole house and lived in the woods for several years on the edge of a spiritual community. I was looking for enough solitude to allow me to figure out the world, but the yogi next door built a 200-seat church and started holding frequent services. His enterprise was a great success. One day, I woke up and found a blue Buick parked ten paces from my bedroom window, put there by someone who thought my land was parking for the church. That ended my quest for enlightenment. I moved back to town and taught English and film at a local college.

Over the years, I have tried my hand at producing short films and videos, stand-up comedy, film reviewing, and lamp designing, all with moderate success. I am told , however, that the thing I do best is writing.

I am interested in people's internal lives, how what they think and feel is reflected in their actions. I have tried to get at this in my work as a coauthor, and now as a novelist. Adventures in Nowhere is founded in the people and things I saw as a kid in Florida and my experiences in dealing with them. Growing up, I always thought I was in the middle of nowhere. In later life I realized I was really somewhere unique.

My work:

Second Serve: The Renée Richards Story (Stein and Day, 1983) and its sequel No Way Renée: The Second Half of My Notorious Life (Simon & Schuster, 2007), Process and Perception--photographs by Jerry Uelsmann and essay by John Ames (University Presses of Florida, 1985), Speaking of Florida (University Presses of Florida, 1993), and Adventures in Nowhere (Pineapple Press, 2011).