by Summer Lane

What is it about someone that attracts your attention? Is it the way they dress, the accent with which they speak, or the simple way they sit on a park bench and read a book? In I Am Everyone I Meet: Random Encounters on the Streets of Los Angeles, James White does not hesitate to strike up a conversation with the most unlikely people. From the homeless man to the drug addict, everybody has a story to tell, and recounted through White’s eyes, the novel is not only entertaining, but also moving.

It is the people of Los Angeles who are the stars of this book. White encounters the most colorful of characters: a taxi driver who resembles Jesus Christ, a woman talking loudly on a cell phone during a movie and even a famous actress who points out the ill side effects of celebrity plastic surgery. Completely engrossing and entertaining from beginning to end, White does not simply tell you a story. The story tells itself.

James P. White was born in Wichita Falls, Texas. He was raised in Arlington and went on to teach Creative Writing at many prestigious universities across the country, including UCLA and the University of Texas at Dallas. Much of his time is spent in the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles, and it is here that he meets interesting people and interacts with them. Rick Flynn of The American Book Review says, “With shutters open a whole world gone missing is revealed in James White’s I Am Everyone I Meet.” The book was also featured in the Los Angeles Times.

James White’s novels include Birdsong (Methuen), The Persian Oven (Methuen), California Exit (Methuen), Clara’s Call (TCWP), and The Ninth Car (co author, Ann Reed Rooth, Putnam’s). Books that he has edited include Where Joy Resides: A Christopher Isherwood Reader (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). A Guggenheim fellow, he previously wrote the curriculum and directed the Master’s of Professional Writing at the University of Southern California.

Jules White designed and created the cover art for I Am Everyone I Meet. He is an Assistant Professor of Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech and the Art Editor of the American Center for Artists. Jules White had a highly praised one-man exhibit in Beverly Hills recently. His work was featured by the Huffington Post and written about across the nation and in the Herald International in Paris. White, an Assistant Professor of Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, has just been named “Outstanding Assistant Professor” in the College of Engineering.

You can learn more about James P. White on his blog, and about Jules White on his blog.

I Am Everyone I Meet is available on Amazon.

Summer Lane is a freelance writer with thousands of published articles on a variety of topics. She’s also a published novelist, publicist, book reviewer and cat lover. Her book, Snappy Social Networking, is available now! You can contact Summer for reviews or writing on her blog.