In 1990, when I was able to
semi-retire fairly young, my wife asked me how was I planning on filling my
time.
“You don’t love golf or playing cards that much. You were always a great
storyteller. Why don’t you write a novel?”
She was right, so I started writing Trapped,
and managed to finish the first draft in probably 6 months. The idea for the
main character, Jackee, came from remembering a beautiful young neighbor when
we lived in North Suburban Chicago. She suffered an anesthetic accident while
undergoing plastic surgery, condemning her to a vegative state for the rest of
her life, which was no life at all.
I imagined Jackee in a similar coma-like state, but being sentient,
still sharp of mind and able to move her eyes. I knew nothing of “Locked-in
Syndrome” at the time, not realizing I’d “created” a real condition. Since
Jackee was immobile, I decided to create a side plot involving her conniving
husband with the Chicago Mafia … something to engineer some physical action and
external tension.
I submitted the story to Dave King, an independent editor, and he recommended
I remove my side plot in Trapped
because it detracted from Jackee’s story, but resisted. I had slaved over that,
building tension and danger, and weaving the climax into the ending of the
novel. But then later, a top literary agent at William Morris gave me the same
advice, also feeling it was a
distraction. So I pulled it out … but it’s not a total loss. Writers never discard any work, so I’m using
that story in my in-progress 4th Detective Al Warner novel, changing
the venue from Chicago to South Florida.
Trapped ran the
gauntlet of rejected query letters, rewrites, and more rejections … until it
was selected by small indie publisher, TAG Publishers, to be their “Next Great
American Novel.” Their editor suggested I convert the entire story to Jackee’s
First Person point-of-view. That took a considerable amount of work, because
every scene occurring somewhere out of Jackee’s purview had to be deleted. New
scenes had to be developed to fill that void. In the end, however, this made Trapped a book that quickly became an
Amazon Top 100 Novel. It’s now also available as an audio book.
From rejection to success – and it only took 22 years! Meanwhile I had
attended numerous writers’ conferences and some seminars, and through those
classes, I learned a lot about writing novels. It takes more than raw talent to
do it well. And I started my second novel, A
3rd Time to Die, a romantic suspense centered on Past Lives,
rebirth, and champion horse jumping. I’d read Dr. Brian Weiss’ first book on
the subject and I was captivated by the idea of souls reborn to deal with thing
left undone in past lives.
Wanting to fully understand the phenomena, I decided I needed to
experience the process of regression. I found a “facilitator,” who had worked
with Dr. Weiss, to regress me if possible. I entered the project strictly as
research for the novel, but came out a believer.
One precept of the belief is souls often bring learned skills from past
lives into their current existence. When I was twelve my father brought home a
bow-and-arrow set and a large straw target. What little I knew of archery was
from watching Western movies, but I nocked the bow and set up the target as if
I knew what I was doing. Then I walked off about 100 feet (not realizing that
was an extreme distance, especially for a novice) and started shooting bulls-eyes … one after another. While
practicing, a large crow flew by, high above, and without thinking, I shot it
out of the sky. Later, while walking in a nearby forest preserve, I knocked down
a flushed pheasant. I entered an archery contest for 12 to 14-year-olds, and
shot 297 out of a possible 300. The one miss was ¼” outside the “eye.” I was
always a deadly marksman with any sort of weapon … with no training. How was
this possible?
Well, in one of my regressed lives, I had been a 16th Century
forester, shooting game with a long bow for an English duke in Lincolnshire
Forest. Four hundred years later, I still maintained that skill! Doubters
usually jibe me, asking who’d I’d been in my past lives: Napoleon, Alexander,
King Richard, etc., expecting the process to be just self-aggrandizement. But
in only one life was I anyone of even moderate importance, and that was the
chief of a Polynesian village, probably in the 12th Century – the
oldest of the nine lives I discovered during my “research.”
Anyway, I used what I learned in my voyages through time as the basis
for A 3rd Time to Die, and
like Trapped. It quickly began
garnering 5-Star reviews, with readers comparing me to Dean Koontz and Stephen
King.
I began to realize that to gain devoted fans, I might benefit from
writing a series, so I started Death’s
Angel, the first of my Detective Al Warner suspense novels. In it, a psycho
was first seducing, and then killing off some of South Florida’s most beautiful
young women, and no one had a clue as to his motives. I wanted my Warner novels
to be character driven, all about the detective and the things that motivated,
drove, and haunted him. I wanted these not
to be “police procedural” novels.
I’m often asked about my
procedure in writing a novel. The first thing, of course, is to come up with
the concept. For Trapped it was a
woman trapped in Locked-in Syndrome, seeking unlikely retribution against those
who wished her ill. For A 3rd
Time to Die it was murdered lovers, being reborn, murdered again, and now
reborn in current times – and their killer had returned, too.
For Death’s Angel, it was a tough, moral cop, haunted by PTSD from
glancing bullet wound off his skull during his last case, trying to keep his
demons at bay while hunting a clever psychopath. In Born to Die, the 2nd Warner novel, readers were anxious
to learn how Warner had survived another head wound, and while on medical
leave, was helping a beautiful nurse look for Motive and Opportunity for a rash
of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) deaths of 6-month-old infants. In my
latest Warner novel, The Prom Dress
Killer, Warner is after another serial killer who is abducting and then
killing lovely young redheads, leaving their bodies adorned in frilly
prom-style dresses.
Once I have a unique story
idea, I imaging the characters, listing on 4 x 6 cards their physical
appearance, their likes and dislikes, the cars they drive, and every other
detail about them or their lives that comes up. Then I do a chapter-by-chapter
outline of where the story is going. Just a sentence or two for each, as
guidance.
Now I begin writing,
limiting any editing to being sure where I am and fixing any glaring errors. My
style is to write the story and edit later. But the strangest things always
happens, usually about a quarter of the way into the plot: the characters start
taking over!
First they speak to me,
usually at night while I’m awaiting sleep. They tell me things about
themselves– things they’ve done (often horrific acts) I never imagined. And
they suggest actions and scenes never in the original outline. I often find
myself “going where no man has gone before,” to paraphrase Star Trek. New problems and solutions simply evolve as I’m writing,
often to my utter surprise. It’s totally exciting.
In every case, the villains
become more diabolical, the problems become more insurmountable, and the ending
become more dramatic and a bigger surprise. And I’m gaining renown as an author
with unique plots and surprise endings no one could pre-guess. None of my
editors ever have.
All my novels are available
at: http://amazon.com/author/georgeabernstein or you
can visit my web site: http://georgeabernstein.com
George A. Bernstein is the retired President of a Chicago appliance manufacturing company, now living in south Florida. Able to retire early and looking for something to do besides play golf, he leaned on a life-time flair for storytelling and turned to writing novels. He spent years attending writing seminars and conferences, learning to polish his work and developing a strong “voice.” Bernstein is acclaimed by his peers as a superb wordsmith.
His first novel, Trapped, was a winner in a small Indie publisher’s “Next Great American Novel” contest, and received high praise, gaining many mostly 5-star reviews at Amazon (reaching their “Top 100”) and Goodreads. His 2ndnovel, A 3rd Time to Die (A paranormal Romantic Suspense) has also garnered mostly 5-Star & 4-Star reviews, with one reader likening him to the best, less “spooky” works of Dean Koontz & Stephen King.
Bernstein works with professional editors to ensure his novels meets his own rigorous standards, and all of his books are currently published by small indie press, GnD Publishing LLC, in which he has an interest.
The Prom Dress Killer is the third of his Detective Al Warner Suspense series, with the first, DEATH’S ANGEL,and the second, BORN TO DIE, already garnering rave reviews. Bernstein has the next Warner novel already in the works, to be published in 2017. Readers have likened Bernstein’s Detective Al Warner to Patterson’s Alex Cross.
Bernstein is also a “World-class” fly-fisherman, setting a baker’s dozen IGFA World Records, mostly on fly-rods, and has published Toothy Critters Love Flies, the complete book on fly-fishing for pike & musky.
Connect with Berstein on the web:
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