Explains James: "Called 'Undercover,' which I wrote and produced for my first QANTAS tour to the US back in 2000, it was way too long -- seven minutes -- but was my first effort to innovatively capture the attention of readers. For Department Thirteen and my 2011 promotional tour, I took it to the next level and organized a photo shoot with some good mates here in Adelaide. We took over a pub one Saturday morning and spent nearly three hours recreating a scene from the book, as well as shooting a promotional photo for tour sponsor, Chopin vodka. THANK [...]

James spoke candidly with publisher Marisa Darnel about his twenty years as a struggling writer, his triumphant battle against cancer, his time spent as a smuggler behind the old Iron Curtain and how these varied experiences helped influence his writing because of the impact they had on him personally. "We seldom learn life's lessons when the going is easy," he says. "It's in struggle and hardship that we're especially teachable." One experience in particular was James being turned down for a customer service job in Adelaide because he was too ugly, referring to the facial scars from his cancer operation. [...]

Esteemed internationally as a man of peace, Jerusalem’s Rabbi David Rosen praised James for the way he balanced religious and political sensitivities with unrelenting suspense in his international thriller, The Identity Factor (Comfort Publishing, 2011). “I knew I was walking a tightrope when I wrote The Identity Factor,” says Turner of his novel, which not only addresses current Arab/Israeli tensions in the Middle East, but challenges the traditional view about the origin of Genesis. "My novel [also] postulates how a terrorist like bin Laden could escape the clutches of the US military time and again. It raises the bar of [...]

"I love a great villain," says famous TV bad guy, Abu Fayed, from Season 6 of the hit television series, 24. "Great villains demand great heroes and The Identity Factor has both." Abu Fayed was played by the accomplished actor, Adoni Maropis, who was flawless in his role as the villain everyone loved to hate. Entertainment Weekly had this to say: “It takes a hell of a guy to rattle our unflappable hero [Jack Bauer]. Enter Abu Fayed, who proves his prowess by torturing Bauer while coordinating multiple terrorist plots." To read more, click HERE.

"It's especially rewarding," he says, "because doctors didn't think I'd live 18 months. The first sound I remember was the metronome of the heart monitor when I came out from the anesthetic of my eleven-hour operation. The first sight I saw was my wife, Wendy. She was standing beside me, holding my hand. We still hold hands." A collection of G'day USA photos is available at: http://jameshoustonturner.blogspot.com/2011/01/cool-dude-writer-goes-to-gday-usa.html.

"The best writing comes from massive rewriting," says James about journalist Bob Larson, with whom he worked as a journalist at the famed Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles. "And that is exactly how the script version of The Identity Factor has played out. There was lots of chopping and condensing, and it was hard to eliminate favorite scenes and characters, but the results have been genuinely spectacular. "I also had to get to know my characters better than I did in the book. That's because nuance in film is visual, and I needed to communicate that nuance into the [...]

Speaking about his life as a smuggler and courier behind the old Iron Curtain and how these experiences inspired him to write espionage thrillers, James addressed an exclusive breakfast crowd at the annual NAFSA convention in Washington, D.C. "As an American living in Adelaide, James was a natural," says Denise von Wald, Chief Executive of Study Adelaide. "We did an Oprah Winfrey style of interview, as well as furnished guests with complimentary copies of James's thriller, The Identity Factor." According to the NAFSA website, the National Association of Foreign Student Advisors was founded in 1948 to promote the professional development [...]

James has been featured several times in Rainbow Magazine, including the feature, "Books by Brothers," and the "Global Delts" issue, where he was quoted on the cover as saying, "Like the view of Earth from space, the view of America from afar is spectacular." Other featured Delts included bestselling authors Richard North Patterson and Forrest Gump's Winston Groom, along with actors Drew Carey, Matthew McConaughey, Will Ferrell, David Schwimmer, James Marsden, Academy Award winning screenwriter Stephen Gaghan ("Traffic"), and football legends John Elway and Gene Washington.