Salt Lake City

:::.............................. JAMES M. PRATT Trying to put a date on the beginning of a career as a writer isn't easy. I certainly wasn't my Simi Valley High School English teacher's dream student, when in 1971 she said on the final day of my Senior year: "Mr. Pratt, here is your report card. Trust me, you'll never make it in college. Good luck." But I believe my resolve to write remained and then took root in 1993. By that I mean something clicked and thinking about it wasn't good enough anymore. Serious writing began late one night in 1995 when I woke up with an idea for the title to a novel. Forcing myself to get out of bed at 3:00 am, I sat down at the kitchen table, and began writing The Last Valentine. As the plot developed it became the moving love story of a World War II Navy pilot's "last valentine" to his wife 50 years later--and just in time for a selected group of stores to receive the "hot off the press" first run for Valentine's Day 1996. With the help of a local distributor, Origin Book Sales, of Salt Lake City, Utah, I created a marketing campaign that sold more than 15,000 copies of the book in the following year. Kenneth J. Atchity, president of Atchity Entertainment International of Beverly Hills, agreed to represent me in early 1997. I was in the hospital recovering from life threatening blood loss and surgery for the second time in as many years when the offer came in that set me on my course to full time writing. With tubes coming out of my stomach, my throat, my nose, and other places, and with no health insurance, and no income, Ken Atchity put me on the phone with the wonderful Jennifer Enderlin of St. Martin's Press, who bought the rights and published The Last Valentine in a hardcover edition for a Valentine's Day release in 1998. Jim is also the author of The Lighthouse Keeper, Paradise Bay, and Ticket Home. Email Jim