Hitchhikers in Each Other's Mind is the sequel to The Summer of My Fourteenth Year. It picks up James' story three years later when he is in his first term of his senior year of high school. This is the Fall term of 1966. The only characters that carry over from the first book are James, his parents, and one brief run in with another "reptilian alien thing." As in Summer, some of the other characters in this story were based on individuals that I had interactions with in high school and beyond and some are purely fictional. Once again, the names have been changed to protect the guilty. Many of the names are anagrams for actual names and thus they may sound a little strange. Maybe you will find it challenging to figure those out (e.g., Mrs. Tinmoor is an anagram for "monitor"). Once again, I hope you enjoy reading my little piece of fiction as much as I enjoyed writing it. Jim Meaders
About the Author: Jim Meaders was born in 1949 in Birmingham, Alabama, but moved with his mother and father to Lakeland, Florida in 1954. Jim grew up in Lakeland and the small Florida town in The Summer of My Fourteenth Year is based on Lakeland and some of his experiences during 1963. Jim grew up in service stations that his dad ran between 1954 and 1967, probably pumping more gasoline by the time he graduated high school than most people pump all their lives. Jim Meaders attended the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida, from 1967-69, and graduated from Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida with a B.A. in Art in 1976. He continued his art pursuits at Clemson University in South Carolina graduating with his M.F.A. in Visual Studies with a painting emphasis in 1979. Jim and his wonderful wife, Dorian, whom he met in 1970 and persuaded to marry him in 1971, spent the spring semester of 1978 in Italy, Germany, Belgium, and France studying and traveling. Jim started teaching in 1979 and taught for three years in South Carolina, four years in Georgia, and six years in West Virginia before moving to Nashville, Tennessee in 1992, where he is still teaching art to college students. Jim primarily has taught a variety of courses in his thirty-one year teaching career including design, drawing, painting, ceramics, art appreciation, art history, and art education. He has exhibited work in regional and national art competitions in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Utah, California, and Tennessee since 1972. Jim's first book is not about art or creating art, but draws (no pun intended) on lingering memories of his childhood and how it's when we are children that we are the most imaginative. As Picasso once said, "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."