SFWA member John A. Pitts died on October 3 from amyoidosis.  Pitts began publishing short fiction in 2006 with “There Once Was a Girl from Nantucket (A Fortean Love Story),” co-written with Ken Scholes.  He went on to write several short stories on his own and in 2010 began publishing novels under the name J.A. Pitts with Black Blade Blues, the first novel in his series about Sarah Beauhall. From 2015 through 2016, he published The Cleric Journal, a sword-and-sorcery serial which featured daily additions and totaled more than half a million words.

Pitts grew up in Kentucky with a love for books and reading, imprinting on the fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard. He earned a Masters of Library Science from the University of Kentucky, but wound up working in high tech fields. He also enrolled in the Oregon Coast Writers Workshop.

SFWA President Mary Robinette Kowal commented, “John A. Pitts was one of my earliest writing friends. He has been a welcoming voice for so many writers in the Pacific Northwest and a tower of cheerful humor. His loss is a blow to our community.”