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MONTY JOYNES: A BRIEF LITERARY BIOGRAPHY

Monty Joynes began his literary career with George Garrett at the University of Virginia where he met and drank coffee with William Faulkner and other significant literary personalities. On to Europe after graduation, Monty wrote and directed a television feature film for KRW, a Swedish production company. While in basic training as a draftee in the U. S. Army during the Vietnam War era, he was advised that the film had won a film festival award.

In the late 1960s Monty was writing short fiction and wrote and directed his second film, The Graz Experience, shot in Austria. By 1970 he had founded Metro Hampton Roads Magazine. Within four years the slick magazine was in color and averaging over 100 pages a month. From Metro, Monty went to Holiday Magazine, the original national travel magazine published by The Curtis Publishing Company. By that time he had authored over 200 magazine features for publication.

In the late 1970s Monty founded the Insiders’ Guide travel series and co-authored and edited its first five titles. His Insiders’ Guide to New Orleans became a best seller, and Monty moved to New Orleans to become the city’s restaurant critic and a part-time radio talk show host. By 1982 he had completed three novels.

In 1985 Monty and wife Pat moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina with the objective that Monty would focus on his literary career. He did find time, however, to become the founding president of the Blowing Rock Stage Company, an Equity summer-stock theater that is now into its 20th successful season.

In 1995 Monty found a publisher for Naked Into the Night, a novel that appeared in 1997. Encouraged to write sequels, he produced Lost in Las Vegas (1998), Save the Good Seed (1999), and Dead Water Rites (2000). Critics acknowledged that he was one of the most important authors in a new literary genre—Visionary Fiction—with the publication of these four novels in the Booker Series.

The Booker Series employs literary fiction to enhance personal understanding of contemporary issues in Native American culture and metaphysics. American Indian leaders have endorsed the Booker Series for authenticity and sensitivity. In June 2005, Grandmother Red Leaf, Texas Cherokee Clan Mother, and one of the twelve Wisdom Keepers of the native tribes of North America, named Monty Tsu-na-lu-gi (Smoke Rising) at a ceremony on her lodge grounds in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, the Cherokee homeland. Grandmother Red Leaf had made Pat, Monty’s wife, her Chosen Daughter and named her Sunalei Kanogisdi (Morning Song) in October 2003.

In the intervening years, Monty had served as Grandmother’s Firekeeper at her major ceremonies, and he received recognition as a Dog Soldier Warrior from Cherokee, Shawnee, and Narragansett tribal elders for his protection of their ceremonies. In the sweetest of ironies, the recognition that the fictional Booker received from Southwest Indian tribes in the novels is now accorded, in fact, to Monty by Eastern tribes. Without any claims to bloodline, he now wears the red sash of a ceremonially recognized Indian warrior.

Monty works full time as a literary artist, and he completed his 18th novel in 2004 just prior to going on the set of The Celestine Prophecy to write a making-of-the-movie book with best-selling author James Redfield.

With the encouragement of his new friends in the movie business, Monty has written screenplay adaptations for Naked Into the Night, Lost in Las Vegas, and Grid, a yet-to-be published novel. Another Joynes novel, Pass In Review, has been adapted for film by screenwriter Paul Brody.

In 2005 Monty wrote War Journal for film producer Terry Collis. War Journal is an adaptation of the non-fiction book, The War Journal of Major Damon “Rocky” Gause, the firsthand account of one of the greatest escapes of World War II.

In 2005 Monty also began a long two-subject biography—Journey To The One: The Biography of Jeanne White Eagle and John Pehrson. The book documents the couple’s worldwide peace mission to end separation between conflicting cultures.

Monty went on the set of the film Conversations with God in November, 2005 to write and photo edit his second making-of-the-movie book. The Conversations with God series by Neale Donald Walsch was a huge best seller.

An agreement has also been made for Monty to do a third making-of-the-movie book for Richard Bach’s Illusions, which is in pre-production script development.

monty joynes