James Rollins

 James Rollins is the pen name of American veterinarian James Paul Czajkowski – born August 20, 1961 – a writer of best-selling, action-adventure, thriller novels. He gave up his veterinary practice in Sacramento, California to be a full-time author.

Rollins is an amateur spelunker and a certified scuba diver. These pastimes have helped him to provide content for some of his earlier novels, which are often set in underground or underwater locations. Under the nom de plume James Clemens, he has also has published fantasy novels, including Wit'ch Fire, Wit'ch Storm, Wit'ch War, Wit'ch Gate, Wit'ch Star, Shadowfall (2005), and Hinterland (2006) Born in Chicago, Illinois, he graduated from high school from Parkway West Senior High in Ballwin, Mo in 1979. His undergraduate work focused on evolutionary biology. He graduated from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri in 1985 with a doctorate in veterinary medicine (D. V. M). Soon after, he moved to Sacramento, California where he established his veterinary practice, licensed July 24, 1985. Rollins found the authors of the Doc Savage series inspirational as a youth. He acquired an extensive collection of the popular 1930′s and 1940′s pulp magazine stories. Rollins was fascinated by stories of the exploits of Howard Carter and his discovery of the tomb of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh, King 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 Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan novels, L. Frank Baum's Oz series, and C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. In general, He was also 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. "