Jim Meaders

I was born in 1949 in Birmingham, Alabama, but moved with my parents to Lakeland, Florida in 1954. The small Florida town in "The Summer of My Fourteenth Year" is based on Lakeland and on some of my experiences during the summer of 1963. I grew up in service stations run by my dad between 1954 and 1967, probably pumping more gasoline by the time I graduated from high school than most people pump in a lifetime. I met my wonderful wife, Dorian, in 1970 and persuaded her to marry me in 1971. I attended the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida, from 1967-69, and graduated from Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida with a B.A. in Art in 1976. I continued my education at Clemson University in South Carolina and spent the spring semester of 1978 studying and traveling in Italy, Germany, Belgium, France, and Luxembourg. I graduated with my M.F.A. in Visual Studies with a painting emphasis in 1979. I also started teaching full-time in 1979 and taught in South Carolina, Georgia, and West Virginia before moving to the Nashville, Tennessee area in 1992, where I taught art to college students until retiring in 2016. My first book is not about art, but draws (no pun intended) on lingering memories of my childhood, something I had always wanted to write about. After putting off writing for over 35 years, I finally sat down in 2007 and started writing my first book. Book one, "The Summer of My Fourteenth Year," is set in 1963 and started out "normal," but my fourteen-year-old imagination soon kicked in and it took on a kind of science fiction twist. Book two, "Hitchhikers in Each Other's Mind," is second in what has become a series and jumps forward to 1967, when the main character, James, is in his senior year of high school. This book revolves around telepathic communication with two beautiful alien females and his relationship and adventures with them. Book three, "Signals From Passionate Minds," continues the series beginning the next year when James and his new love, Lilith (one of those beautiful female aliens), head off to art school together where they use their telepathic and telekinetic powers to do good. My fourth book, "Minds Against Wicked Things," continues the story of James and Lilith.