J. Kilburn's narrative style has been compared to those of Joyce Carol Oates, Virginia Wolfe, D.H. Lawrence, Hunter S. Thompson, and Nell Zink.  His subjects and almost cinematic descriptions of setting have earned his work comparison to movies and television shows like Sons of Anarchy, Tin Star, Twin Peaks, and Thelma and Louise. Prior to Heaven's Door, a Novel and BEFORE,  Kilburn's other published work was a feature-length investigative news article that got the whole page in his community newspaper.

Kilburn lives a quiet and private life on the shore of America's sixth Great Lake.  He has lived and worked in Vermont, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Minnesota.  During these travels, Kilburn has dabbled in law enforcement, private security, emergency medicine, truck driving, and horse-logging.  Other occupations have included at-risk youth mentor, big-city process server, park ranger, and industrial wastewater treatment operator.  Along the way, he's pedaled to 14,000 feet above sea-level in a major bicycle race, been marooned overnight on a deserted island, ridden a motorcycle from Chicago to Thunder Bay, and hiked Vermont's highest peaks to watch sunsets on both the longest and coldest days of the year.  He currently maintains plastics processing machinery for a major manufacturing company. 

When not at work or pecking away at his keyboard in the middle of the night,  he and his wife enjoy life around a little urban farm complete with greenhouse, garden, and mini-barn.  Their current flock is composed of four chickens and a cat named Sierra Feral. 

From J. Kilburn:

What started as a short story became a book, and then a whole saga: stories about undercover policing and organized crime, but also about family, coming-of-age, romance, and friendship.  Each novel is independent of the others, but they all revolve around the same two communities - a small college town and the Organized Crime underworld of a big city.  The cast of characters is common to each setting; each character somehow has skin in the game in both places.  The bright sunny streets found in one chapter mesh and turn with the roiling dark edges that come in the next.  That was hard to do, but important.  We are not islands.  We sometimes participate in both worlds, whether we know it or not.  That the reader can be both disturbed and entertained by one of my books - that means I got it right.  The novels are complex and full of surprises  -  just like life itself.            -    J. Kilburn