Eyewall
A one-sitting, white-knuckle read
A few people got an early peek at my forthcoming novel, EYEWALL. Below, in condensed form, is what they thought of it. “Great characters combine with razor-sharp suspense and leave you breathless. A one-sitting, white-knuckle read.”–Vicki Hinze, award-winning author of DEADLY TIES “…an edge-of-the-seat action read of the finest quality. Bernard’s realism will have you…
Read MoreAn interview with a Hurricane Hunter pilot
In several previous blogs, I’ve posted interviews with Dr. Nicholas Obermeyer, a key character in my novel EYEWALL Dr. Obermeyer, or Obie, as he’s called, is the best hurricane forecaster I’ve ever met. He’s also known to be outspoken and controversial. Today I’d like to introduce you to another prominent player in EYEWALL, Major Arlen…
Read MoreSo where does EYEWALL stand?
Now that Old Man Winter (OMW) has retreated from north Georgia and returned to his more usual haunts–permanently I hope–it’s back to the business of writing for me. For much of the previous two weeks I was wrapped around the axle, first watching apprehensively as OMW marshaled his forces for an assault on a region…
Read MoreWhy Labor Day? Why St. Simons Island?
Labor Day weekend is approaching and here we are with Hurricane Earl poised to charge northward just off the East Coast of the U.S. While the Southeast would appear to be immune from Earl’s fury, the same can’t be said for coastal locations from North Carolina to Massachusetts. While none of the models currently suggests…
Read MoreHurricane Jeanie
It’s funny. In all the months I spent working on EYEWALL, I touted it, in what’s known in the business as an elevator pitch (because of its brevity), as the story of a crippled Air Force Hurricane Hunter aircraft that becomes trapped in the eye of a violent hurricane. Well, it certainly is that. By…
Read MoreSometimes a Long Journey Ends Close to Home
Sometimes a long journey into the wilderness ends close to home. That’s where my journey, a quest to find a champion–a literary agent–for EYEWALL ended. I began my odyssey in 2008, but after half a hundred rejections from agents, I realized the book wasn’t good enough. Not one agent requested the entire manuscript. (For those…
Read MoreEyewall
After writing a novel, EYEWALL, about an Air Force Hurricane Hunter that becomes trapped in the eye of a hurricane, I feel as though that I, too, have become trapped in one. As an unpublished (read unproven) novelist, I need a literary agent to get my manuscript through the front door of a major publishing…
Read MoreNew Year, new book
New Year. New book. Well, old book really. Much to my dismay, the consensus of response from agents and publishers to INSIDE THE WEATHER CHANNEL has been that they don’t see a big enough market for it to be commercially viable. They acknowledge The Weather Channel has a large following, but don’t feel that would…
Read MoreThe velvet hammer, part deux
The search for a literary agent goes on. Here’s my box score so far: 45 queries dispatched; 6 requests for partials (up to 100 pages of the manuscript) received; 1 request for a full manuscript (which I now believe wasn’t a serious request–but that’s another story). At least some of the rejections I’ve received have…
Read MoreYou’ve got to be a stubborn SOB
Novelist Steve Berry, one of my encouragers, told me, “If I can do it, you can do it.” Steve labored twelve years, completing eight manuscripts, querying 300 agents, and suffering through 85 rejections from publishers before his first novel, The Amber Room, was purchased by Ballantine. The book became a national best-seller. All of his…
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