NOVELIST JAMES HOUSTON TURNER TURNS SWEET 16 AND CELEBRATES SECOND CHANCE AT LIFE

Los Angeles, CA (June 20, 2007)-- Kansas-born, Adelaide-based novelist James Houston Turner celebrates his second chance at life 16 years after his cancer operation. Not many people have two birthdays, but acclaimed fiction author James Houston Turner has been receiving “sweet sixteen” birthday wishes from all over the world via his MySpace site.

The “sweet sixteen” actually refers to Turner’s 1991 cancer operation, where doctors at Australia’s Royal Adelaide Hospital cut out half of his jaw bone in order to excise a malignant tumor the size of an orange. They then fashioned him a new jaw bone out of hip bone, grafted skin, placed vessels from his arm into his mouth where teeth and gums used to be, and took muscles and arteries from his other arm to reconstruct his face, all while grafted skin from his thigh was replaced onto his arm. Turner was told if he lived eighteen months, he would probably live to be 100. Luckily, after 16 years, he is well on my way toward that goal; but it has not been an easy battle.

“I thought I had been given a death sentence,” Turner recalls about being told he had cancer. “To make matters worse, when the cancer specialist in San Diego found out that we didn’t have health insurance, he simply walked out of the room, leaving me alone in the examination chair. We cried all the way home, knowing we could not afford the $200,000 needed for an operation.” His wife, however, was an Australian citizen, and called her sister in Adelaide to find out if help was available there. She arranged everything, and although they had to pay for the operation and treatment, it ended up costing us $17,000. The experience was life-changing for Turner, both personally and professionally.

“Like many cancer survivors, it caused me to examine my life and refocus on what was important... to get off the fence and do something with my life. My passion had always been writing, but when the going got tough, I would quit. My fight against cancer taught me determination and perseverance, and those qualities inhabit my books. I don’t write ‘donut stories,’ either – all fluff and air - but stories of triumph, reconciliation, and hope... stories with some ‘meat’.”

Like the characters in his books, Turner continues to defy the odds. One of his secrets is laughter. “My wife and I laugh a lot,” he says. “I’m always poking fun at myself, mainly because I think laughter is the proverbial ‘best medicine’ out there.”

Besides having a great marriage, Turner walks, takes supplements, lifts weights, climbs stairs for 15-20 minutes, and does hundreds of sit-ups daily. He and his wife seldom eat out at restaurants. They enjoy cooking their favorite meals together at home or with friends, and mostly from ‘scratch.’ They even make our own bread and yogurt.

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About James Houston Turner:

A native of Baldwin, Kansas, James Houston Turner’s passion has always been writing, and his real break came with the publication of his potato cookbook, The Spud Book (St. Martin’s Press, New York), which saw him cooking potatoes for television audiences across America on behalf of French’s Foods, including appearances with celebrities Regis Philbin and Pat Boone. After working as a journalist in Los Angeles, where over 130 of his interviews with victims of abuse and misfortune were published in Lifeline, the magazine of the Union Rescue Mission, Turner turned to writing fiction, being influenced by his travels as a courier behind the old Iron Curtain. His first novel, The Search for the Sword of St Peter (1996) was a result of those experiences.

His acclaimed espionage thriller, The Second Thirteen (JB Books, Australia), is also a result of those experiences. It earned him high praise as a fiction writer-- and is currently optioned for film. His most recent novel, thriller, The Identity Factor, will be launched in January 17-21, 2008 during the prestigious Australia Week G’day LA” festivities.

Please visit www.jameshoustonturner.com.

For more information, please contact: Mona Loring, M. Loring Communications PR at (805) 231-3182 or contact@monaloring.com.

This release was published on openPR.