JC Simmons is the author of an Ernest Hemingway biography, several short stories and ten critically acclaimed serial mystery novels, known as the "Jay Leicester Mysteries Series". Included in the series are: Blood On The Vine, Some People Die Quick, Blind Overlook, Icy Blue Descent, The Electra File, Popping the Shine, Four Nines Fine, The Underground Lady, Akel Dama, and The Candela of Cancri, all of which have been recently re-released as ebooks by Nighttime Press LLC.
From the Author's mouth:
My flying career and writing in general was inspired by a single book titled, Fate is the Hunter, by Ernest K. Gann. Writing specifically as a style was manifest due to a single book titled, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, by Carlos Baker, Hemingway’s official biographer. A friend and Emergency Room doctor, Edgar Grissom, who would later publish the definitive bibliography on Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway: A Descriptive Bibliography, loaned me his copy of Baker’s bio one summer back in the early 70s. The rest, as they say, is history.
During the next few years, I read everything by and about Hemingway. Never has a writer influenced me more. My first foray into the world of letters was to be about Hemingway. John Evans, owner of Lemuria Books, and my mentor in all things literati, pointed out that there were literally hundreds of bios on Hemingway. However, a scholarly study on the man and his work had never been done in a Q&A format. So was born the “Workbook.”
Evans, Grissom, Evan’s store manager, Tom Gerald and his assistant Valerie Sims, all collaborated on the manuscript. It took two years to finish. I learned much on the journey.
It was from this endeavor with the Hemingway bio that emerged the Jay Leicester Murder/Mystery series. Even the name Leicester came from Hemingway’s brother, who also published a bio, My Brother Ernest Hemingway, in 1961.
Hemingway once said he “learned to write landscapes by looking at the paintings of Cezanne in the Louvre in Paris,” and “that it’s not how much one puts into a book, but what the writer leaves out that makes the story.” From him I learned how to write true dialogue, and how to add the sights, sounds, and smells so that the reader feels he is there. While I did not try and copy his style, thousands have tried and failed, I did take what he offered and used it well, I hope. You the reader will make that determination.
J.C. Simmons was born, raised, educated, and stayed in the great State of Mississippi. He is a retired Airline/Corporate pilot and lives with his wife on the family farm in Union, Mississippi where he is working on a autobiographical work detailing his life and times as a pilot.
