Excellence summarizes the writing of James Scott Bell. The master of the Christian legal thriller and a Christy Award winner, Jim continues to sharpen his craft and share lessons learned.
Jim pursued acting and law before becoming a writer – quite fitting that his novels feature attorneys and courtrooms and that a movie changed his career. “When I saw Moonstruck, I was practicing law, and had given up the dream of writing because I had been told you either have it or you don't, and I didn't. But the movie just blew me away, and the desire to write took hold in me and I knew I had to.”
In addition to his contemporary suspense fiction, Jim teamed up with Tracy Peterson for three novels focusing on female lawyer Kit Shannon in turn of the century Los Angeles. Jim also did three Shannon books on his own as well as the stand alone historical novel,
Glimpses of Paradise. Not just page-turners, these thrillers delve to the bone with Jim’s passion for characterization. “
The Whole Truth starts off with a childhood trauma. A couple of brothers are sleeping in the same room. The older one is kidnapped. The younger one blames himself, and then we see how that has played out when we cut to him 25 years later. I wanted to get to the heart, soul and marrow of this character. What would he do? Especially when his own life is on the line?”
The Whole Truth is Jim’s latest stand-alone thriller for Zondervan, for whom he’s also written
Breach of Promise,
Sins of the Fathers,
Presumed Guilty, and
No Legal Grounds. Currently in progress is an untitled multi-viewpoint thriller set in “real time.”
His new Buchanan series, under the general market imprint Center Street, begins with
Try Dying. Attorney Ty Buchanan’s fiancée dies in a freak accident, shattering his world. At her funeral, an oily snitch claims she was murdered, and Ty will stop at nothing to find out the truth.
”
Try Darkness, the second book in the Buchanan series, comes out in July. In this one, a homeless mother and her six year old daughter come to Ty for help. It seems like a typical landlord-tenant dispute...until the mother is murdered and the little girl clings to Ty for protection. The series allows me to do some of the things I like best--suspense, legal thriller, quirky characters, social commentary (the books are set in L.A., which is nothing if not a window to our crazy times)”
Jim listens to music as he writes, listing classic rock and jazz as his favorites. “When I need to set a mood I turn to soundtracks. When I'm doing an especially suspenseful scene, I use Hitchcock scores a lot.
Psycho,
Vertigo,
North by Northwest. You can't write flabby scenes when you listen to those.”
Jim balances his novel-writing by passing on the writing techniques he’s developed over the past twenty years. Previously a columnist for Writer’s Digest, he is the author of the bestselling
Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure (Writers Digest Books). His next book for the
Write Great Fiction series,
Revision & Self-Editing, comes out in May. When he’s not writing, he enjoys reading, old movies, backgammon, chess, and traveling with his wife of 27 years, Cindy
He’s also one of the few people willing to admit he likes Los Angeles, and he and Cindy have lived in the same house there for two decades. “It's my home, it's my fictional canvas, and it has the ocean, the mountains and the Hollywood Bowl for summer evenings. As long as it doesn't shake too much, it's the place I want to live.”