J. Perry Kelly             James@jperrykelly.com                          01-719-685-2512 

In first grade, James used block letters to forge his parent's signatures rather than hand them a report card littered with "F's." His teacher somehow discovered the fraud and everyone laughed.  Decades later, no one laughed when he again played games with truth.  

Thirteen years ago, he squashed a life he loved by ignoring his common sense. Growing drowsy one sultry afternoon as he drove across Montana, he stopped for coffee but changed his mind. After all, he wasn't that sleepy; he had never dozed off while behind a wheel, and he deserved something cold after driving all day through an ozone shroud. Ten minutes later, he fell asleep and rolled his pickup into a gulch. When he awoke from a coma after several days, his body from the chest down lay unfeeling and inert--paralyzed for life.

By deluding himself over a trivial whim, James destroyed a twenty-year railroad career that grew from digging trenches beneath the Midwestern sun to serving as Acting Assistant Transportation Manager for a Class II regional railroad. No more would he hike Pikes Peak with Selene, his athletic and loving wife. Instead, two terrified people found themselves alone in a strange state with no belongings, no family and seemingly no future--only each other in an empty apartment. 

In addition to his spinal cord injury, James suffered brain damage and a crushed facial nerve that resulted in short-term memory loss, a tendency to lose mental focus, and the rotation of his right eye fifty degrees outward. His wife pulled him through this ordeal. Side-by-side on their only furniture—a twin bed given to them by a stranger who learned of their plight—Selene prodded her husband to read aloud daily for hours at a time. Slowly over months, his eyes once again tracked in unison and his brain regained its acuity. To further heal his psyche, she suggested he write a novel.

The story he scrawled by hand presented the theme and premise of Quantum Fires but without a pro-green context. The manuscript remained unpublished since he wrote it without first learning how to write a novel. Instead, he immersed himself in neuroscience and became an amateur liaison between scientists and non-profit funding sources—a course that led to five years of "pro-cures" activism in the world's stem cell debates. He little suspected his path would map the connections between the choice that left him paralyzed and Man's ecological fate.

Before global warming became a contentious issue (long before his accident), James observed the effects of pollution on America's Northeast, including climatic change. In 2006, rather than injure the earth by supporting a political platform that works hand-in-glove with Big Oil, he returned to Quantum Fires armed with two crucial insights: 1) The boss in the White House and the man in the street equally share subtle aspects of psychology that shape our relationship with Nature; and 2) crafting a successful novel requires as much preparation and diversified skills as managing a railroad.

A former modern dancer, yoga student, and martial artist, James may never again hike mountains in his present life, but he might in a future incarnation provided the air remains fit to breathe and the sun doesn't bake our planet. And yet, the common sense he once ignored tells him the detours that led to Quantum Fires are far more likely to benefit others by offering a path to a sustainable future than ensure his happiness in another life. Since James and Selene love the earth, their SCI nightmare would be a blessing if either potential should come to pass.

James Kelly
Manitou Springs, Colorado
May 2010 
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