IN MEMORIAM: JIM CHRISTINA

1949-2022

When we enter this life, we are each of us given a measure of life. For some, that measure lasts longer than others. What matters most is what we do with that measure we are given.

Jim Christina lived his life to the fullest measure.

Born James Lambert Christina in 1949 to an Air Force family he grew up in Del Mar, California when the family’s travels around the world finally ended. After graduating college, Jim served in the U.S. Army for a decade, returned to the States, and joined his father’s paint business in the Pacific Northwest. It was then he began writing songs, both the music and the lyrics and formed a band, Sundown, and the writing bug had firmly taken hold of him.

An idea for a character, and a series of books, had been forming for years in Jim’s head and in 2008 he put them down on paper. What followed were several books set in the Old West, Jim being a historian as well as a poet, musician, and writer.

Unlike Louis L’Amour, Jim’s stories of the Old West were, in his own words: “If you are looking for Louis L’Amour, you won’t find him here. If you are looking for a walloping good story, turn the pages (of my books) and start reading.”

Jim wrote and published nearly twenty novels set in the Old West and a collection of his song lyrics, That’s All You Get.

While Jim would never try to pick just one book as the best he’d written, his 2017 novel, Jonah Blue, was listed as required reading for a college history course. His follow-up novel in 2019, Jefferson’s Chance, was an incredible story of a young man who lost his leg as a child, but never lost his dream of becoming a Texas Ranger.

But he was not finished blazing his trail in the written world.

In 2015 he had teamed up with Bobbi Jean Bell and created The Writer’s Block, a weekly one-hour radio show broadcast on LA Talk Radio. The show featured a different author every week, allowing that author to introduce their book to an audience that eventually grew to an overall listenership – live and on-demand – of over 600,000 people every week from around the world.

For Jim, meeting new authors and finding out about their works and how they approached the art of writing, fascinated him. Many of those authors quickly became long-time friends, including one who he would collaborate with on a novel as well as form a new publishing house.

After writing The Last Lonely Trail with Richard Paolinelli, Jim merged his Black Dog Publishing with Richard’s Tuscany Bay Publishing. In 2017, Tuscany Bay Books was born – Jonah Blue was his first book released under the new publishing house - and would publish nearly 50 novels, books and anthologies involving nearly a hundred authors in five years.

Jim Christina passed away at his home in Star, Idaho on June 19, 2022. He is survived by his wife, Gerry; his children, Joseph Christina, Margaret Christina Boyce, and Monica Hale Ferguson; his nieces Patricia Cunningham and Ginia Christina; his siblings: Wallace Christina, Margaret Christina Wells, Bonnie Christina Ingram, and Patrick Christina; and his beloved dog, Bella; as well as an incredible legacy in the publishing world.

A full measure of life given, a full measure of a life lived.

~Submitted by Richard Paolinelli