詹姆斯·罗林斯

詹姆斯·罗林斯（英语：James Rollins，1961年8月20日—）是美国畅销小说作家詹姆斯·保罗·柴可夫斯基（James Paul Czajkowski ）的笔名。詹姆斯原本是一名兽医及潜水员，经历多年的写作，他在千禧年后推出西格玛中队系列，令他成为纽约时报排行榜的常客，自此更专心于写作。至2011年，詹姆斯西格玛中队系列已经推出六本，华文翻译本包括圣骨拼图及黑色密令等。除西格玛中队系列外，他亦曾替夺宝奇兵之水晶骷髅国撰写电影小说，又以詹姆斯·克莱门斯（James Clemens）的笔名写奇幻小说，独立故事小说最新则有伊甸园的祭坛。

James Paul Czajkowski (born August 20, 1961), better known by his pen name of James Rollins, is an American veterinarian and writer of action-adventure/thriller, mystery, and techno-thriller novels who gave up his veterinary practice in Sacramento, California to be a full-time author. Rollins' experiences and expertise as an amateur spelunker and a certified scuba diver have provided content for some of his novels, which are often set in underground or underwater locations. Under the pen name James Clemens, he has also published fantasy novels, such as Wit'ch Fire, Wit'ch Storm, Wit'ch War, Wit'ch Gate, Wit'ch Star, Shadowfall (2005), and Hinterland (2006).

Biographical sketch

James Paul Czajkowski was born in Chicago, Illinois. His father worked for the Libby's canning plant and his mother was a housewife.

He graduated from Parkway West High School in Ballwin, Missouri in 1979. His undergraduate work focused on evolutionary biology and he graduated from the University of Missouri in Columbia in 1985 with a doctorate in veterinary medicine (D. V. M). Soon afterward, he moved to Sacramento, California, where he established his veterinary practice.

In an August 16, 2012 interview, Rollins told SLM's Jeannette Cooperman:

For 20 years my paycheck was coming from my veterinary degree and my writing was my hobby, and I thought it would be really cool to flip that around. Veterinary medicine is much harder. It's a 14-, 16-, 18-hour-a-day job. I owned my own practice, had 24 employees. I couldn't get away, that was the biggest thing. In the 10 years I ran my own practice, I had three weeks of vacation total. I started writing during my lunch hour at the clinic—dogs barking, cats meowing—so now I can write anywhere.

Influences

Rollins found the authors of the Doc Savage series inspirational as a youth and acquired an extensive collection of the popular 1930s and 1940s pulp magazine stories. Rollins was fascinated by stories of the exploits of Howard Carter and his discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun (King Tut); this true-life tale later inspired Rollins' novel Excavation, in which the main character, archaeologist Henry Conklin, and his nephew Sam discover a lost Inca city in the mountains of the Andean jungle that contains a treasure—and a curse. He also enjoyed L. Frank Baum's Oz series, Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan novels, and C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. Additionally, he was inspired by Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, whose works he used as a springboard for creating similar contemporary novels filled with what he refers to as "the three M's of fiction: magic, mayhem, and monsters".

First novel

Czajkowski sold his first novel, Wit'ch Fire (1999), under the pen name James Clemens, through Terry Brooks' publisher. Brooks had been one of the judges for a writing contest at the Maui Writers' Conference in Maui, Hawaii, in which James had entered a manuscript he had recently completed.

Action-adventure novels

Subterranean (1999)

Beneath the ice at the bottom of the Earth is a magnificent subterranean labyrinth, a place of breathtaking wonders—and terrors beyond imagining. A team of specialists, led by archaeologist Ashley Carter, has been hand-picked to explore this secret place and to uncover the riches it holds. But they are not the first to venture here—and those they follow did not return. There are mysteries here older than humanity and revelations that could change the world. But there are also things that should not be disturbed—and a devastating truth that could doom Ashley and the expedition: they are not alone. The caverns are inhabited by an entire subterranean ecosystem of primitive mammals—some intelligent, others savage, all beyond the reach of today's knowledge.