About the Author

Click on a question below to read the answer.


Where were you born and who were your parents?

I was born on June 8, 1946 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. My father was James Herbert Jarratt, Jr. and my mother was Helen Montgomery Jarratt. Officially, I am James Herbert. Jarratt, 3rd, but that sounds so very American and I don't use it in Australia. They were married just after my father got back from World War II, which makes me one of the many baby-boomers.

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Where did you go to school?

I went to Calvert School on Tuscany Road in Baltimore until 1958. After that, I went to Gilman, also in Baltimore.

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What did you think of life as a teenager?

I didn't enjoy life in high school very much. My father was preoccupied with the idea that I should go to college but I wasn't a good student by Gilman's standards. So bad, in fact, that even graduating from high school looked dubious. Going to college thus began to look like it was not an option. I was pretty much an "angry young man". But things got better because of some creative teachers, and I eventually graduated from high school and went to college.

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Where did you go to college?

As I've said, I wasn't a good student in high school and I repeated my senior year, but in that time I sort of got my head together and scored in the 99th percentile on the CEEB Exams. That and a particularly high score on the Architectural Aptitude Test got me admission to the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York to study Architecture and I received my Bachelor of Architecture degree there in October of 1970.

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Why Architecture?

It may sound pretty shallow but I first thought of Architecture because the only one of my parents' friends who seemed happy was an Architect. I also thought that it involved building things and drawing, both of which I liked. But having been an "Architect" now for 38 years, I would be hard-pressed to give you a concise definition of what Architecture is. Maybe that's the answer. It's open to definition.

I think that Architecture is about understanding something and designing an environment in which it can thrive.

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What took you to Australia?

When I was a kid, you could tell the good guys from the bad guys in cowboy movies because the good guys had white hats and the bad guys had black ones. Superman fought for "Truth, Justice and the American way". But while I was at Pratt, I was lucky enough to meet real people who came from very different backgrounds than my own. For them, good and bad were not so easily defined, and "Truth, Justice and the American way" was an oxymoron. The war in Viet Nam was in full swing and I was one of the many people opposed to it. I realized that if I were to stand on a soapbox in Washington Square and read "The Declaration of Independence", I would probably be arrested.

After graduation from Pratt, I worked for the NYC Department of Social Services in the South Bronx and married a girl from Puerto Rico. We bought a house on Alexander Avenue, just north of 139th Street, near the police station known as "Fort Apache".

I went to work for the South Bronx Community Housing Corporation with high hopes and we created a lot of decent housing, but the problem was growing rather than abating. If you've seen the movie "Fort Apache", you will have some idea of what I mean. It wasn't the sort of place you would want to raise a family.

My wife, as I said, was from Puerto Rico but she wasn't "Puerto Rican" in the New York sense. She had come from a land of sense and sensibility. Four guys in a stolen car once abducted her but she talked her way out of it and was returned unharmed. We both walked to work but that generally meant stepping over junkies lying in the gutter. A local gang frequently escorted me to the perimeter of their "turf", where I was met by another gang and escorted the rest of the way.

I had done a lot of work on our house and I really liked my job but I knew that it wasn't the right place for us to be. We were talking about moving but it had been made clear that we wouldn't be welcome back in Baltimore and I particularly liked San Francisco, but it still had what I would have called the American Problem.

Coincidentally, the Australian government was running adds in Time Magazine which talked about what a wonderful place Australia was and offered to pay the airfare of professionals and their families who would agree to relocate there for a minimum of two years.

I didn't know much about Australia except that it was near Southeast Asia, and the inhabitants spoke English. I imagined popping over to Japan and spending the weekend in Katsura. Anyway, I responded to the ad and they invited us for an interview. That turned out to be a tea party with the Australian Consul and we were approved. So we went, expecting to stay the two years and then move on.

Within those two years we both had pretty good jobs and I had renovated another house, in Redfern, which is Sydney's equivalent to the South Bronx but a little better.

Instead of leaving we moved to Chatswood, one of Sydney's north shore suburbs. I started renovating that house too, but mostly in the basement, so we had a more normal life, with grass to cut and gardens to tend.

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What was your professional life in Australia like?

On May 24, 1976 I was registered by The New South Wales Board of Architects.

I worked for a number of small architectural firms and made a lot of money for other people.

In 1985 or thereabouts, I set up James Jarratt and Associates and began practicing on my own behalf. It bumbled along for a while and I was using computers rather than people as staff; I found myself being drawn into computer systems more than structural systems and a friend suggested that I might do better focusing on computers rather than building projects.

In September 1991, James Jarratt and Associates (Strategic Software) was formed and I pretty much never looked back. I was selling project management and other software to the building industry but I was also developing applications for other industries, and most of my clients were coming by referral.

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How did you end up in Pretty Beach?

In 1987, my marriage ended but the break-up wasn't attended by the usual acrimony and we sold the house in Chatswood. My former wife went off to live the life that she wanted and I bought a beautiful old timber yacht.

I was helping to make the movie "Crocodile Dundee" and a lady with whom I was working decided that I should be married again, so she took it upon herself to set me up. She had a neighbour whom she thought needed a husband and arranged an introduction. Neither of us was to keen on the idea but we eventually agreed to a meeting, which took place at a fund-raising dinner aboard an old square-rigged ship in Sydney Harbour.

We didn't eat much because we were too busy talking. With a little more coercion we became friends. I had dinner at her house once or twice but I wasn't interested in a long-term commitment and neither was she. I asked her out to dinner once, which seemed like a good idea at the time. But I chose a satay restaurant and the day before she had tried to pick up a rotary lawnmower while it was running and done serious damage to her fingers. It wasn't your normal romantic Dinner a Deux. She had to go to the hospital for something else a while later and I volunteered to mind her four children.

I stayed on after that, to help, and it began to dawn on us that we could be married, which we were at Palm Beach, north of Sydney, with all four kids as witnesses.

There was a lot of love involved, but with one stroke of the pen I got a wonderful wife, four kids, two cats, a dog and a duck.

The kids were growing and the house got too small so we made it bigger, but having learned from previous mistakes, I contented myself with designing it and then employed a builder. Predictably, the kids kept growing and one by one left home until there was only the two of us.

My wife had a small holiday house at Pretty Beach to which we had escaped on weekends. We both liked being there and we didn't need the "family" house, so we moved.

I didn't move to Pretty Beach with any plan of retirement and my office was only about an hour's drive away. But about a year after we moved the office lease ran out and I felt that I could convert the unused garage in the back yard of the house at Pretty Beach to an office and work from there.

My boat was moored 50 yards offshore in front of the house, my office was a 20-yard walk out the back, and with occasional exceptions, and I didn't have to go anywhere. I had been living this almost idyllic life for about a year when out of the blue, I had a major CVA or stroke.

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How has your stroke affected you?

The immediate effect of the stroke was that I couldn't talk, walk, or even stand up. The doctors were advising my wife to gather the family because they thought there was a good chance that I wouldn't make it. But I did. Mostly with will-power.

In the longer term, it has made me grateful for friends and family. I think that I am more tolerant. And I am very glad to be alive.

It also gave me cause to think about the fact that I am alive. I thought that people died from strokes. And if I am alive, there must be some reason for it. I was reminded of being held back in high school, and figured there must be something else for me to learn.

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Has your stroke inhibited you?

No, not in ways that matter. I enjoy my life very much. I can walk in the sun and sail my boat. The interesting part is that if anything, I feel disinhibited.

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How did you go about recovering from your stroke?

The experts seem to say that you don't recover from a stroke but I feel pretty much as good as new. I have made extensive use of what I guess is called "alternative" therapies, but not really one in particular. A lot of the benefit for me has come from gentle psychological manipulation. By believing that I could recover from my stroke, I think that I have.

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Why did you write the book?

There were several reasons.

One was that I find Egyptology fascinating but think it is often presented in a dry and dusty fashion. A lot of people miss out because they are turned off by the presentation, and I wanted to illustrate that what was going on in Middle Kingdom Egypt is not all that different from what happens in today's world.

Another reason is that I felt I have learned something in the course of recovering from my stroke and I wanted to share it, but not like some sort of evangelist.

It also allowed me to indulge my interests in sailing and navigation without getting my feet wet.

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What other interests do you have?

I take a lot of pictures. I draw. I paint watercolours and I read.

I am also rebuilding a 1970 Ducati 450 Street Scrambler (motorcycle) that I bought in Bologna.

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When did you start sailing?

In the oldest photograph that I have of me on a boat I would be about three or four. I have been sailing as long as I can remember. Before I went to New York, I sailed mostly on the Chesapeake Bay.

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What is your family like?

My wife is a wonderful, supportive person. As I mentioned before, when we got married, she came with four kids, two cats, a dog and a duck. The oldest child was 15 and the youngest was about 8, so I was very lucky not to become the hated stepfather. Twenty years later, they are all in their thirties and in my opinion fine young people. Two of them have found partners and are raising families of their own, making me a grandfather three times over.

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What do you want to do in the future?

Before 2012, I am hoping to figure out if the Maya calendar stops at that point because they ran out of numbers, or if something is really going to happen in that year. Anyway, I am looking forward to being here to see for myself.

I am also looking forward to completing the motorbike, even if I just put it somewhere and look at it.

I don't have any desire to sail around the world but I want to get "Windsong" into first-class condition.

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What is your proudest moment?

When simultaneously and without inducement from me, two of my stepchildren decided to change their last names to mine.

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Do you have any regrets?

If I thought I could sing, I would try: "Regrets, I've had a few. But then again, too few to mention..."

Chestnuts aside, I have had a wonderful life so far and I can only wish that I had known back then what I know now.

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What do you regard as your greatest achievements?

I've done some pretty amazing things but they were all just what seemed necessary at the time. What I am most proud of is that I think I've been a pretty good father.

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What is the most important message in your book?

"Embrace the unknown" might sum it up, but overall the book is about becoming grounded.

Act on your own intuition and dispense with the need for proof. Keep your attention on the present. Don't worry about the past and do the best you can with what you've got.

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What makes you laugh?

In a word, "Irony".

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