Let’s Meet The Author

Let’s find out all about James Rollins.

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).

Rollins was born in Chicago. His father worked for Libby's canning plant, his mother was a housewife and mother of seven, and he lived what he likened to a Brady Bunch lifestyle.
He attended Parkway South Junior High School and then graduated from Parkway West High School in Ballwin, Missouri, in 1979. His undergraduate work focused on evolutionary biology. 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, licensed July 24, 1985.

In an August 16, 2012 interview, he 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.
Now, he's flipped that equation: "Once a week I spend about eight hours spaying and neutering trapped feral cats for the Sacramento Council of Cats. All I do with my veterinary degree now is remove genitalia."

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 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 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".

As James Rollins
Stand-alone action-adventure novels
* Subterranean (1999)
* Excavation (2000)
* Deep Fathom (2001)
* Amazonia (2002)
* Ice Hunt (2003)
* Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
* Altar of Eden (2009)

Sigma Force series
1. Sandstorm (2004)
2. Map of Bones (2005)
3. Black Order (2006)
3.5 Kowalski's in Love (2006) short story
4. The Judas Strain (2007)
5. The Last Oracle (2008)
6. The Doomsday Key (2009)
6.5 The Skeleton Key (2011) short story
7. The Devil Colony (2011)
7.5 Tracker (2012) short story
8. Bloodline (2012)
9. The Eye of God (2013)
9.5 The Devil's Bones: Cotton Malone vs. Grey Pierce (2014) (with Steve Berry) short story
10. The 6th Extinction (2014)
10.5 The Midnight Watch (2015) short story
11. The Bone Labyrinth (2015)
11.5 Crash and Burn (2016) short story
12. The Seventh Plague (2016)
12.5 Ghost Ship (2017) short story
13. The Demon Crown (2017)
14. Crucible (2019)
15. The Last Odyssey (2020)
16. Kingdom of Bones (2022)
17. Tides of Fire (2023)

Tucker Wayne Series (with Grant Blackwood)
1. The Kill Switch (2014)29
2. War Hawk (January, 2016)30

The Order of the Sanguines Trilogy (with Rebecca Cantrell)
0.5 City of Screams (2012) short story
1. The Blood Gospel (2013)
1.5 Blood Brothers (2013) short story
2. Innocent Blood (2013)
3. Blood Infernal (2015)

MoonFall series
1. The Starless Crown (2022)
2. The Cradle of Ice (2023)

Kids & Adult series
1. Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow (2009)
2. Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx (2011)

Anthologies
* Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night. (2006)
* "Kowalski's In Love"
* Warriors (2010)
* "The Pit"
* Fear (2010)
* "Tagger"
* Thrillers: 100 Must Reads (2010)
* "Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers"31
* FaceOff (2014)
* "The Devil's Bones"

As James Clemens
The Banned and the Banished series
1. Wit'ch Fire (1998)
2. Wit'ch Storm (1999)
3. Wit'ch War (2000)
4. Wit'ch Gate (2001)
5. Wit'ch Star (2002)

The Godslayer series
1. Shadowfall (2005)
2. Hinterland (2006)

Thanks Eadie. 👏👏👏 I loved The Order of the Sanguines Trilogy when we read it. I prefer the Sigma Force series to his standalones, but they are still good reads.

>2 EadieB: Thanks, Eadie.

>1 Andrew-theQM: Glad he changed his pen name to Rollins. Cannot pronounce his birth name

>5 JohnDBurke: It would certainly be more of a mouthful.

>4 Carol420: You’re welcome!

Thanks Eadie! I still have a lot of his left to read. Lol. I like his standalones, but am looking forward to reading the Order of Sanguines and Moonfall series

What a prolific author. It's interesting to have sigma force disentangled from the others. I would like to go back and read some of the earlier ones. Many thanks Eadie.

>9 Maura49: >8 bluebird_: - Definitely check out the Order of the Sanguines. Originally I was sceptical because that isn't one of my favorite genres, but it ended up being a wonderfully unique story.

Thanks >2 EadieB:

Thanks, Eadie, 🙂.
I see there are quite a few short stories linked to this series - I want to read these, if I can get hold of them.

>8 bluebird_: >9 Maura49: >10 Olivermagnus: >11 Sergeirocks: you’re welcome!

>10 Olivermagnus: Many thanks for the tip. I must search this out.