Background

James Michael Pratt was born on April 6, 1953, in Los Angeles, California, United States.

Education

James Michael Pratt attended California State University at Northridge and received a Bachelor of Arts from Brigham Young University.

Career

Pratt’s first professional writing experience came in the early 1980’s, employed to combine technical and promotional narrative with back-stories for a Los Angeles based financial company representing projects to investors. Taking note, he was next hired by one of the country’s foremost newsletter writers to run the editing of a financial home study course headquartered in the shadows of the Wasatch mountain ranges of Utah.

As time passed, and the financial newsletter company sold its interests, Pratt moved back to his native Southern California eager to explore the investment practices he had expounded upon and edited for. He rolled the dice and took the next ten years to work the home building business during boom periods in Southern California’s growing defense contracting economy.

As many entrepreneurs attest, they often work hard and long hours at creating success to find some elements of longevity out of their control. Such was the case when nearly one million dollars in Pratt’s hard-earned real estate equity in affordable home building, evaporated in California’s saturated residential market with sudden changes in defense industry employment. At this low point, James Pratt chose to become guided by a favorite author; James Allen and his 1904 worldwide bestseller, As a Man Thinketh.

These unexpected changes to life motivated Pratt to go back to his dream of writing. Pratt’s breakout title soon followed. The Last Valentine, came while making a living to support his writing hobby.

His reflections of his father and mother’s romance during World War II set the tone for the 1998-99 New York Times and USA TODAY bestseller. Three novels by St Martin’s Press followed, written one year after another. The Lighthouse Keeper, Ticket Home, and Paradise Bay appeared in hard and soft editions nationwide with rights sales to major literary book clubs, as well as in audiobook, and in foreign rights. In 2003 The Last Valentine was shepherded through the lengthy process of the screenplay, then sales, and finally production, until in 2011 it became one of the top viewed Hallmark Hall of Fame and CBS Movie of the Week films ever produced. Renamed The Lost Valentine, it still plays monthly on the Hallmark Channel and Feeln network; and always as an annual Valentine’s Day classic.

In 2004 a well-respected publisher and book store company in the intermountain west - who had published the author’s great grandfather’s pioneer memoirs for its entire one hundred year company history - contracted Pratt’s two non-fiction parenting and success memoirs designed for their hardcover gift-book market and their fifty stores. DAD, The Man Who Lied to Save the Planet and MOM, The Woman Who Made Oatmeal Stick to My Ribs struck a note and became bestsellers under their newly created non-religious imprint Shadow Mountain, with regional independents and the private chain’s own stores from 2003 through 2005.

In 2005 Pratt added his fifth fiction manuscript, The Good Heart, a political-medical mystery category sold to the inter-mountain regional market by the same publisher. During this time he co-wrote the screenplay of the same title in 2007 with Maryann Ridini Spencer, the gifted writer of Hallmark Hall of Fame’s adaptation of Pratt’s The Last Valentine. It has remained available for production interests along with Ridini-Spencer’s film option and screenplay based upon the 2002 national bestseller, Ticket Home.

In 2008 James was a producer for a war documentary examining two tours of duty in Iraq for a squad of Marines using their own footage from the experiences. All did not return. In a touching reveal of emotions and raw nerve, the young Marines tell their story of lost innocence in Between Iraq and a Hard Place directed by talented brother Rex Pratt of Santa Barbara, California. It went on to win several film festival awards and wide national acclaim. Additionally, from 2005 to the present, Pratt produced three more fiction manuscripts, two of which he chose to self-publish and which are often used in promotional ways to continue expanding a diverse fan and reader base. The Christ Report and As a Man Thinketh…In His Heart explore questions about today’s world, what is at stake with the choices we make, and the historical past in ways that his other novels have not.

Achievements

• James Michael Pratt is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling fiction author. Called "A master of moral fiction," by Booklist, his novels are filled with history laden plots, conflict, mystery, and romance.
  
  Pratt has been a guest over the years on hundreds of radio talk shows, and has appeared across the country on all major networks and cable television shows including FOX, CBS, NBC, and ABC.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Dad, the Man Who Lied to Save the Planet

    (Recalling his growing-up years in Los Angeles following W...)

    2003
  • Paradise Bay

    (For anyone who came of age in the 1950s, 60s, or 70s, New...)

    2003
  • Ticket Home

    (At the dawn of World War II, in rural Oklahoma, identical...)

    2001
  • The Last Valentine

    (James Michael Pratt's The Last Valentine is the basis for...)

    2010
  • As a Man Thinketh

    (James Pratt gives voice to the book that changed his own ...)

    2012
  • The Christ Report

    (This story of intrigue, suspense, love, and healing weavi...)

    2012
  • The Lighthouse Keeper

    (From the acclaimed author of The Last Valentine comes an ...)

    2001
  • The Good Heart

    (One man dies, another lives through the gift of a transpl...)

    2005
  • Mom, the Woman Who Made Oatmeal Stick to My Ribs 2004

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  Hiking, snow and water sports

Connections

James is married to Jeanne. They have two children, Amy and Michael.

Spouse:

Jeanne Pratt

Daughter:

Amy Pratt

Son:

Michael Pratt

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, TV, & Other Fields, Vol. 193 In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010