Meet J.S. James, Ridgefield's Own Mystery Author

Ridgefield's own Joseph Stowitschek — who writes as J.S. James — sent out eighty-three query letters before someone finally said yes. Now he's a published mystery author who does his best plotting from a casino floor, gets cultural sensitivity notes from an actual expert, and has a Dagger Award nomination he'll mention only if you ask nicely.

I met Joe on a Wednesday morning, and within about four minutes I understood why his book has an award nomination attached to it. He is, and I mean this in the most Ridgefield way possible, a delightful man — the kind who smiles genuinely while talking about his characters. He claims writing is "torture," yet he very clearly cannot stop doing it.

Before he was Ridgefield's favorite local mystery writer, Joe picked strawberries and beans, clerked at a grocery store, and worked plumbing day-labor jobs — the resume line items nobody puts on a book jacket. Then came a long career in special education, and eventually, a retirement he apparently had no intention of spending quietly.

Full disclosure on how this piece came together: I'd seen Joe around a Starbucks I work from more than a home office really should require, but my house is too quiet to get anything done in. It was Suzzie, the manager there, who first told me who he was — "that's Joe, he's an author" — and I introduced myself the next time our paths crossed. That's Ridgefield in one sentence, honestly. You get your best leads from the person behind the counter.

From the Classroom to the Casino

Joe was born in Minnesota and grew up in Salem, Oregon. He built his career around special education, earning his B.S./M.S. in Secondary Education and Speech Pathology from Oregon College of Education (now Western Oregon University) in Monmouth, and an Ed.D. in Special Education and Instructional Technology from Utah State University in Logan.

From there, it's a genuinely impressive run: assistant and associate professor with tenure in special education at George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, associate professor with tenure at Vanderbilt University, professor with tenure back at Utah State, and eventually Research Professor Emeritus in Educational Leadership at the University of Washington in Seattle. Along the way, he co-led Peabody's Field-Based Special Teacher Education Program, co-founded the Journal of Special Education Technology (which he edited for a decade and which is now in its 48th year), and served as principal investigator on Washington's Migrant Early Head Start Research — one of seventeen national projects that helped build the evidence base for Early Head Start nationally.

So, tenure twice over, a journal he built from scratch, decades of research into how kids with disabilities learn best — and then he retired and decided the next move was writing a serial-killer mystery.

He didn't just sit down and start typing, either. Once he retired, Joe went back to school for it — taking writing classes and joining writers' groups in both Seattle and Portland, which he credits with shaping his literary journey more than almost anything else. He's said his time with the University of Washington's migrant Head Start research work left its own mark too: he spent years working alongside young Latina women through that program, and their assertiveness and ethics ended up shaping Delia Chavez, his eventual protagonist, more than he expected going in.

Here's the part that actually explains everything else: Joe doesn't write in a quiet room with a view. He writes in Starbucks. He writes at the casino. Years of teaching young children with special needs, it turns out, will make almost any level of background noise feel like silence. He shows up. He writes every day.

Writing River Run

River Run: A Delia Chavez Mystery follows a serial killer targeting hunters along the Willamette River in Oregon. The premise traces back to his own life: mishaps he and his brother had hunting and fishing on the Willamette made their way into the book, exaggerated for effect. As Joe's put it, he and his brother survived those trips — not everyone in the book does. He also gave Delia potamophobia, a fear of rivers and running water, as a fear she has to work through over the course of the story — a term Joe says he'd never even heard of before he started writing.

It's Joe's debut, and like a lot of first books, it didn't arrive in its final shape. The original draft ran 180,000 words — a length that, as Joe learned the hard way, is simply too long for the publishing world to take seriously from a debut author. Cutting it down changed more than the word count. A character originally written as a minor side player grew into the book's lead, becoming Delia Chavez herself. That kind of thing happens more in fiction than writers like to admit, and Joe talks about it like it was less a decision than something the manuscript did to him.

The lesson he passes on to anyone asking: be genuinely open to criticism, and don't fall too in love with your own characters. The ones you're most attached to aren't always the ones who should be leading the story — his own book is proof of that.

Getting It Right

Because the book deals with Native American elements and true-to-life crime detail, Joe didn't try to wing it. He brought in subject matter experts to check his work — the kind of behind-the-scenes credit that rarely makes it into a jacket blurb but absolutely shapes whether a book holds up.

Fiction wasn't Joe's first writing life, either. Across his decades in academia, he authored and co-authored special education textbooks, research articles, and grant reports — the kind of writing that's all third person, no dialogue, and zero characters to fall in love with. He's said the third-person habit made an easy transition into fiction; dialogue was the part that actually gave him trouble. (Curious readers can find his academic publishing history at gettextbooks.com.)

Eighty-Three No's and One Yes

Joe sent out eighty-three query letters before a publisher — Crooked Lane Books, out of New York — said yes. River Run came out in November 2019.

The Book, By the Numbers

What's Next: The Tail

The Tail: A Jim Hand Mystery is next up from J.S. James — same pen name Joe writes under across the board, new protagonist entirely.

The Tail isn't a Delia Chavez sequel — it's a standalone introducing a new lead, Jim Hand. Four misfit teenagers, each desperate to break away from home, drive coastward to crash a class-of-1960s senior skip day beach bash. They accidentally run a logging truck off the road on the way — and then all hell breaks loose at the party itself: fireworks, cops, and revenge all get tangled together. The foursome barely escapes the aftermath and cuts and runs down Highway 101 chasing what Joe calls "the California Cool" — expecting surfing and sunshine, and instead finding themselves running for their lives.

Joe says he does have more Delia Chavez stories in mind eventually; he just wanted to write something different first. Fair enough, honestly — the man earned a change of pace.

He's also got a personal detail worth mentioning to any dog people reading this: his beloved Vizsla, Maggie, has passed away, but the family's current Vizsla, Lulu — a committed slipper thief — makes a cameo appearance late in The Tail.

FAQ

It's a standalone Delia Chavez mystery. Joe has ideas for more books featuring her down the line, but his current work in progress, The Tail: A Jim Hand Mystery, introduces a new lead and an unrelated story.

No — Joseph Stowitschek is his real name; J.S. James is the pen name he publishes under, including on River Run and the upcoming The Tail.

Locally, at Copper Bell Bookshop right here in Ridgefield. It's also available in hardcover through Amazon.

He's done author events before, including a local sportsman's expo tied to the book's themes. Keep an eye on this site — we'll post details here if and when he has something coming up.