Jim Hime was born in Magnolia, Arkansas on February 1, 1954, the eldest of three sons of Paul and Pat Hime. Jim's parents both grew up in rural Arkansas and met as college students. Pat Hime and her four brothers hailed from conservative, farming folk. Paul Hime's father, a truck driver, abandoned his wife and four children during the Depression leaving them to struggle on without him. As a kid, Jim moved around a lot—Ruston, Louisiana; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Houston, Texas; Narrows, Virginia; Pearisburg, Virginia and, finally, Kingsville, Texas. Moving so often made Jim feel like an outsider. Reading became his salvation. He grew up reading Hardy Boys mysteries and science fiction. In High School he was captivated by Sherlock Holmes. His early writing attempts were tributes to his love of baseball. He dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player like his hero, Mickey Mantle As a High School student in the rural ranching community of Kingsville, Texas, his academic prowess became evident. He skipped ninth grade and excelled at almost everything he tried. He joined the school golf team, wrote for the school newspaper and edited the school sports page. He became the only junior to edit his school's literary magazine, The Descant, where his first written works were published. At the end of his junior year, Jim got a job working at the Big Scoop Ice Cream parlor in Kingsville. (The ice cream parlor and its owner became the inspiration for scenes in Night of the Dance.) Graduating third in his High School class, Jim was accepted at The University of Texas and Rice University. A serious bout with mononucleosis complicated by hepatitis and pneumonia almost cost him his life that summer. But, he pulled through and entered the University of Texas in the fall of 1971 In the fall of 1972, a friend set him up on a blind date with a Houston girl named Paulette Toellner. It was love at first site for Jim. It took a little longer for Paulette. After some serious wooing with love poetry and Paulette's discovery that he was sporting a 4.0 grade point average, Jim's courtship gained momentum. Following his graduation in August 1974, Jim and Paulette were married. Jim worked his way through law school stacking groceries, working in a department store, and serving as a legislative assistant to a state representative from Tahoka, Texas named E. L. Short. (Representative Short became one of the models for The Night of the Dance's character, Jeremiah Spur.) Graduating from law school in 1976 at the top of the class, Jim was recruited by the prestigious Houston law firm, Baker & Botts. He became a tax lawyer with such celebrated clients as Gerald Hines, T. Boone Pickens, John Malone, and Hugh Liedtke. He was the youngest lawyer (29) to ever make partner at Baker & Botts. In 1985, he moved to Washington, DC to develop a tax and real estate practice for the firm. As if that was not enough of a challenge, he also began running marathons—nineteen at last count. Jim and Paulette's family expanded with the birth of their sons, Travis (1978) and Josh (1982). They enjoyed living in Virginia and Jim greatly admired the Managing Partner of the Washington office, Perry Barber. (Barber, a trial lawyer, was also a model for his Jeremiah Spur character.) Fall 1990 found the Hime family back in Houston briefly before Jim took on another important assignment for Baker & Botts—opening an office in New York and establishing a practice. From 1992 to 1995, Jim put the firm on the New York map by developing a profitable business employing 35 lawyers. While Jim loved his firm and enjoyed practicing law, managing a major law office left him little time to pursue his other interests. So, when offered an opportunity to create and manage funds for international real estate developer, Hines, he took it and moved to Houston. Over the years, Jim had started two or three novels, but never finished them. During his Thanksgiving holiday of 1998, he wrote a short story about an old rancher whose daughter was dying of cancer. He put it in a drawer and forgot about it until he enrolled in a crime fiction writing course at Rice University. He used his short story as a basis for his weekly homework assignments. This work lead to the creation of Night of the Dance. His earliest draft of Night of the Dance was 25,000 words long and read like a legal brief. He stopped writing and began reading works by some of his favorite authors—Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy, Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy—to get a better feel for writing in a distinctive voice. He began rewriting his novel in a much looser style. In the midst of his rewrite, he was lured away from his secure life at Hines to plunge headlong into a highly risky dot.com venture. He and his partners wanted to revolutionize the commercial real estate business on the Web. After securing financing for his new venture from Goldman Sachs, he began a remarkable fifteen month odyssey that ultimately fell victim to the capital crunch of 2001. Not having much experience with failure, his dot.com experience was sobering. As it turns out, it was also freeing. He began writing again. This time with less fear of failure. He returned to Hines and began writing every day—at home, on planes and in hotel rooms. He finished the first draft in July 2001, the second draft in August 2001 and began looking for a literary agent. Like everything Jim does, he was very tactical in his pursuit of an agent. He contacted a friend who reviewed crime fiction for the Houston Chronicle and asked him for suggestions on finding an agent. Through queries of some of the authors he knew, his friend came up with the names of several agents for Jim to contact. Jim was so sure that the first agent he queried would want to represent him; he carried a copy of his manuscript with him on his next business trip to New York so he could drop it by her office. He boarded the plane to New York on September 10, 2001. The next morning, September 11, 2001, Jim was sitting in a 66th floor conference room in the South Tower of the World Trade Center facing north —an eye witness to American Airlines Flight 11 slamming into the North Tower. He and his business associates escaped unharmed, but he, like the rest of the world, did not escape unchanged. For many months, Jim was consumed by the events of 9/11. He had nightmares, he was depressed, he was angry. Time, family and friends helped him move past his grief and anger and get on with his life. That November, his friend from the Chronicle forwarded an email from the celebrated author, Michael Connelly, recommending that Jim submit a query letter to his agent, Philip Spitzer. Philip liked the book and agreed to represent Jim. After receiving over twenty rejection letters, Jim rewrote the book again and resubmitted it. Within a month, St. Martin's Press bought his manuscript. The book was published and distributed in April 2003. Jim is hard at work on his next two novels: Three Thousand Bridges inspired by his 9/11 experience; and Scared Money featuring his Night of the Dance characters Jeremiah Spur and Clyde Thomas. Jim and Paulette live in Dallas with their Golden Retriever, Merlin. In his "day job," Jim works as the President and CEO of Grovac Southern Select, L.C., a food processing technology company (please visit their website at www.grovac.com). Travis is a physics graduate of Caltech pursuing his PhD in condensed matter physics at UC Berkeley. Josh lives in Hollywood, where he is pursuing opportunities in the entertainment industry and working on his own first novel.

Back to Home  |  Optimized for MSIE 5 or higher