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Author draws from his life experiences in new novel
The main character in the novel, "Gathering Moss," is a small boy named Wesley Stone. The story follows Stone's life beginning in Selma, on to other settings, such as the University of Alabama, Georgia Tech and the University of Montana. Stone is also commissioned as a Lieutenant in the United States Army and assigned to be a sniper in Iraq. The proverb that "A rolling stone gathers no Moss," is the basis for the title of the novel. Stone tells his fiancé' he does not want to be a "rolling" Stone. He promises to be a Stone who settles down to a normal life and who stays in one place so long he "gathers moss." This became impossible once it was discovered Stone was biologically different. This genetic difference would be passed on to his descendants and alter the human race. The author, Jim Herod, was born in Selma and graduated from Orrville High School in 1955. He attended the University of Alabama and received a Ph D in Mathematics from the University of North Carolina. For 35 years he taught mathematics at Georgia Tech, the University of Montana, the United States Military Academy at West Point and the University of Karlsruhe in Germany. During this time he wrote mathematical research papers, a textbook in mathematical biology and several electronic texts in mathematics. Herod draws from his own life experiences, as well as those of family members and friends for the book. "It's no surprise that both scientific and mathematical ideas are often in the background of the stories," he said. "I rely on experiences I have had, but change the context a little bit." His first attempts at writing were made when he was in elementary school. He once wrote and illustrated his own comic book. The teacher was so impressed she read it to the class. One student, who found the book extremely funny, asked Herod where he had copied it from. "I was so embarrassed I never did it again," he said. Herod also tried writing a newspaper for the elementary school, providing the copy and typing it himself. He also kept journals whenever he went on sabbatical as a college professor. He became more serious about his fictional writing after helping to establish a writer's club in Grove Hill. His fiction has appeared in the Birmingham Arts Journal and the literary journal Creativity Connection. He is a member of the Alabama Writers' Conclave and the Grove Hill Writers' Group.
Herod and his wife, Martha, retired to Clarke County in 1998. They live at the edge of the Nethermost in Grove Hill, as he refers to it. He writes essays for The Democrat in a column titled From the Nethermost.
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