About Me
My name is James Bezerra. Sometimes I am Jamie. It depends on where we meet and what kind of mood I’m in.
If we meet in a class at CSU Northridge, where I am a creative writing major, I will tell you to call me James. This is because Jamie is a girl’s name and I am worried that you will mistake me for a girl even though I am balding, hairy, and wearing men’s jeans. Also, I think James is a better name for a writer, it implies that I am a serious author with big ideas and writing with which to be reckoned. So I am James.
But if we meet over drinks at a dimly lit little restaurant (maybe the sushi place across the street from my apartment) and we have a sprawling conversation about life, love, politics, sex, the politics of sex, writing, movies, history, and music, well then I will tell you to call me Jamie. Jamie because it is the name I use when I think about myself. It is the name I am when I am smirking at you.
If you meet me at work in Santa Clarita, California, where I analyze numbers for a living and figure out how much money other people are making, then I will tell you that I am James. This is a good name for an accounting clerk who works diligently, talks only a little, and generally keeps his nose to the grindstone.
But mostly, don’t think too much about me, or my name, at all. I am less worthy of your time then the writing. I am infinitely more confident in my writing than I am in me (and that is saying something, because I am as arrogant a prick as you will ever meet).
As for the writing, it takes a lot of forms. I am always a novelist deep down in my heart of hearts, but I pride myself on being a writer. I like to imagine a simpler time when I could ride into your dusty one-saloon town and hop off my horse and belly up to the bar and spit my chew into a spittoon and tip back my hat and say to you, “I’m a writer. Anybody around here got any writin’ need done?” And then just like that, I am on the job, doing whatever writing there is to be done.
This is how I have always felt about writing. I would hate to have to choose one kind from the other. I have been writing stories since I was about ten. In high school I circulated extremely violent and rather pornographic short stories though the local underground. Also in high school I started writing for the stage. At nineteen a play I wrote won The Young Playwright’s Project and it was professionally produced at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. As a younger man I spend a couple of years as staff writer for the newspaper back home. It was a small town paper, but it was owned by Pulitzer, so there were standards and stuff. While I was doing that, I was also writing for community theatre.
A screenplay I wrote called “Strange Angel” it is now in post-production in LA, with a very indie production company. Check out strangeangelthemovie.com. It should hit the festivals next year.
I have a finished (and unpublished, sad face) novel called Very Nearly Fabulous which is about luck, sex, and nihilism. And porn. And computers. And miniature golf.
I am working on another novel about love and all the parts of reality we never think about.
I’m also working on a screenplay about Jesus. But funny.
And I’m also working on a play about the awful lengths to which people will go for love.
Yeah, I’m one of those people who works on multiple projects yet seldom finishes any.
Recently I have been published in The Northridge Review, The American Drivel Review, Prickofthespindle.com, and Bloodlotus.com.
Additionally, I have led an awesome and varied life. I have worked a deep-fryer technician, a barista, a waiter, a truck dock worker and truck un-loader, in the children’s department of a now bankrupt department store, for a rental car company, for a healthcare company, as a telemarketer, as the manager of a pet cemetery, and I have logged tape on the lot at CBS in Hollywood.
My life is currently busy and stressful, but rewarding. I have a very cute little girlfriend. I have two cats, I like one of them.
I hope that you enjoy this blog. Let me know if you have any thoughts.
And if you are an agent, or if you know an agent, I’m you’re fricken’ meal ticket! You can call me James or Jamie.