I’ve been writing most of my life. The first piece I submitted for publication was a poem about volcanos I composed in 4th grade that I sent to Scientific American. Interestingly enough, although they don’t publish poetry, and I probably wrote the poem in pencil on a Big Chief tablet, I received a rejection about six months later.
In high school I wrote poems for the Littleton High literary magazine (which I helped found). I think Robert Heinlein’s story, “The Green Hills of Earth,” had a motivational role in my interest in poetry, but I admired Edgar Allan Poe and Dylan Thomas too.
My real love was science fiction. Besides Robert Heinlein, I gobbled up Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Zenna Henderson, Clifford Simak, H.G. Wells, Ursula Le Guin . . . you know: the classics. Basically anything in the library with a rocket ship or atom icon on the spine.
Of them all, Ray Bradbury captured my attention most.
Other powerful influence were my parents. My dad, Jack Van Pelt, an aeronautical engineer, did a lot of work on America’s space program. He loved science fiction (mostly movies–he also liked movie horror), and we watched many films together. Betty Van Pelt, my mom, loved to read. She focused on mysteries and romances. I grew up in a house filled with books. Generally my parents didn’t spoil me. Toys and treats came on birthdays and Christmas, but they’d always buy me a new book if I asked. They’d take me to the library. Dad built shelves for my growing collection.
By my junior year in high school, I decided I wanted to be a teacher. I majored in history with an English minor (mostly because I could complete the minor by taking creative writing classes almost entirely). Later I decided I liked teaching English more than history, so I finished an English Major, student taught a second time, this time just English classes, and started working at Fruita-Monument High School in western Colorado in 1981. At various time I sponsored the year book, ran the newspaper program, coached the swim teams, and was head of the English department three times.
After teaching high school for seven years, I took a two-year sabbatical to earn a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of California in Davis.
My wife, Tammy, and I married during grad schools. We have three sons who we’re inordinately proud of.
In 1992 I took on evening classes for Mesa State College (now Mesa State University), teaching creative writing, until they folded all the evening classes into their full-time teachers schedules.
I loved teaching.
In 2014 I started working half time so I could spend more of my day writing. I fully retired in 2019.
In 1990, I sold my first short story to a small magazine called After Hours. I’ve been selling short stories steadily since. As of August of 2025, I’ve sold 206 of them. I’ve appeared in most of the major magazines and numerous anthologies. My work has been included in many year’s best collections. Several stories have won or been finalists for various awards, including the Nebula, Locus Awards, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and Analog and Asimov’s Reader Awards
In 2002, Fairwood Press published my debut story collection, Strangers and Beggars, which the American Library Association recognized as a “Best Book for Young Adults.” Since then Fairwood published two of my novels and five more collections, including the very fat Best of James Van Pelt.
At the end of 1999, nine years after finishing my degree, I evaluated my productivity, and I was disappointed. Non-writing days could pile up, and at the end of the year my totals made me wonder how I could waste so much time. That year I finished with about 35,000 words total. I looked at that and asked what would make me happy. Doubling that would certainly put me in a better mood, so I did the math and realized if I just wrote 200 words a day, but didn’t miss days, I’d have more like 70,000 words.
I haven’t missed a day of writing since.
I can be found on Facebook and if you’d like to chat, you can drop me a note at vvanp (at) aol (dot) com.