James Reum is a Harvard-educated lawyer who’s enjoyed a distinguished career in senior positions with an international law firm, the national government, and nonprofit organizations, including Junior Great Books and Children’s Legal Aid. Among his favorite pursuits are sports/coaching baseball, classical and ragtime piano, French cuisine, Broadway musical theatre, and dreaming up puns and fractured fairy tales. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Christel, and is the proud father of daughter Chloé and son John.
Q: What inspired the idea behind your book?
A: As a child on a family trip to Italy, I was fascinated by a visit to a glassblowing factory in Venice and conjured up the amusing image of a burping glassblower. While the idea lingered in my mind for many years, only recently did I envision a way to develop a children’s story around it centered on a young heroine.
Q: As an author, what tips would you give anyone who wants to get into writing?
A: I think it’s important to write about subjects you know and about which you have unique insights or personal experiences. For children’s books, it’s also important to be authentic and educational and to portray positive role models.
Q: What is your favorite book?
Politics From the Inside Up by Walter J. Reum
Q: Was your main character modeled after anyone in your life?
A: The lead character Luciana was principally inspired by my mother Lucy (an equestrian) who exhibited a strength of character, a pathbreaking spirit, and an engaging personality that earned her wide respect and affection.
Q: What is your favorite part about writing? Is plotting out the story, creating dialogue, world building, etc.?
A: The most fun aspect is taking an imaginative idea and developing an engaging story around it with insights, a sense of humor, and colorful details.
Q: Do you believe that being a “good writer” is a developed skill or a natural talent?
A: Good writing skills can be developed with practice (!) together with the necessary substantive components—keen observation, life experience, and a nuanced vocabulary.
Q: Do you have a favorite book, poem, TV, or movie quote?
A: Yes, from the 1930 Marx Brothers film Animal Crackers in which Groucho quips, “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don’t know. We tried to remove the tusks. . . . But they were embedded so firmly we couldn’t budge them. Of course, in Alabama the Tuscaloosa, but that’s entirely ir-elephant to what I was talking about.”
Q: Would you write another book or are you already writing another book?
A: One and done!
Q: Is there an author you look up to? Why?
A: I admire Ernest Hemingway not only because we were both editors-in-chief of the same high school newspaper but also because I highly regard his succinct yet descriptive writing style (developed from his journalistic background)—concise and clear.
Q: If there were an apocalypse and you could only take five books into your doomsday bunker, what would they be?
A: Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris
The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale
The Mammoth Book of Jokes by Geoff Tibbals
Whip Hand by Dick Francis
Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt
Learn more about James Reum’s new children’s book, Luciana’s Finest Hour, here: https://blueballoonbooks.com/bookstore/lucianas-finest-hour/. Coming soon on April 29, 2025!
