The Aviation Pioneers Who Built the Airlines

In writing my recent book, Stalking the Sky, I wanted to give readers a sense of aviation history after the invention of the airplane that had led up to an era of giant airlines flying giant planes.

Here's an excerpt:
There was no denying that Ben Buck was larger than life in many ways. Well over six feet tall by age fourteen, he had lied about his age to join the Flying Service in 1917, the same day he had seen his first biplane chug suddenly out from behind a hill and across the sky. He had chased it all the way to town. During the war, swooping and wheeling like the cavalry he replaced, he had gunned down his share of Fokkers and had had his share of fighter planes shot out from under him. He had barnstormed in the twenties—like so many who could not rid themselves of the addiction to air and skill and the flirtation with death—and then had flown mail to South America. On the spindly backs of those mail routes, Ben Buck had built an airline, leaving it only to fight a second war, when he had helped put a worldwide military air transport network together almost from scratch. After that he was "the General" to most of his employees, "Big Ben" to those who had known him longer, "Buckie" to a few old-timers still captaining Global Universal’s flights around the world, and the "Old Man" to all.
Until the early seventies, he could do no wrong. Global Universal grew to become America’s premier air carrier. But in recent years higher fuel and operating costs and lower ticket sales had hurt all of the airlines' revenues. Global Universal had been hard hit. Only last week Financial World had asked in its cover story, "Has Big Ben Finally Struck Out at Global Universal?" . . .

In the midst of Will’s musing, Ben Buck suddenly spun around.

"Took you long enough."

It was always a mistake, Will reminded himself for the dozenth time, to consider Ben Buck in terms of the past. Buck lived in the most immediate present.

Read more: Stalking the Sky

The Behind-the-Scenes Operation of a Major Airline

I’ve written several novels including A QUESTION OF PROOF, DEEDS, BIRTHRIGHT, and STAR TIME.   In writing my most recent book to go on Amazon STALKING THE SKY, I wanted to depict the inner operations of a major American airline in a time of crisis. I undertook a good deal of research to immerse the reader in that world.

Here’s an excerpt:

The nerve center of any airline, Operations Control at GUA occupied a good part of the second floor. At the center of the large room was a glass-walled area filled with computer terminals and Teletype and fax machines, sending and receiving messages from all of the company’s offices. The ability to maintain administrative surveillance was why Buck had insisted on keeping the company’s headquarters at the airport. . . .

Ordinarily Buck would have scanned the Teletypes for problems. Tonight a storm had diverted planes from New Delhi to Karachi, mechanical problems had delayed Flight 22 inbound from Brussels and London to JFK, and a flight engineer had been routed directly back home because of a family emergency. Chances were Buck would have sent a note to the man in the morning. But another, more urgent event not yet on the Teletype dominated his mind.

At Flight Dispatch, white boards with a strip to track each plane along its route covered one long wall. The information gathered in this center—weather reports, fuel burn rates, schedules, air traffic—would be fed to the computer programmed to prepare each trip's flight plan that the captain could use or revise as he saw fit. Regional Flight Dispatch Centers operated twenty-four hours a day in New York, London and New Delhi, but Denver was the brain stem. . . .

"Any more news?" Buck asked.

None of the men shifted their eyes from the screen, as if a moment's inattention could allow bad news to slip in.

"Nothing decisive," Keller said quietly. "But I’ll fill you in. Flight 211 arrived at O’Hare from L.A. at ten p.m local tonight and left the gate for New York at ten-fifty-five."

"Right on time."

"To the minute. It lifted off from O’Hare at eleven-thirteen. Four minutes later Departure Control handed the plane off to Chicago Center. Twenty minutes after that, at the Medum intersection, Chicago Center advised the pilot it was terminating radar service and to contact Cleveland Center for the next leg of the flight. But the plane never contacted Cleveland Center. It just disappeared."

Read more: STALKING THE SKY http://amzn.to/18Py6MJ

What a Woman Must Overcome for Success in Finance

I’ve written several novels including <ASIN: 0985314427> or <ASIN: B008FD5I4C> (Kindle); <ASIN: 0985314435> or <ASIN: B008RBPH7A> (Kindle) and <ASIN: 0985314451> or <ASIN: B009LNPE94>. I have recentlyreleased <ASIN: B009LNPE94>, in which I wanted to show what a woman has to go through to achieve success in the decidedly man's world of finance.  Here’s an excerpt:  

"Thank you, Mr. Landy. I've asked for this meeting in order to present some ideas that I think can be useful to the firm and, at the same time, demonstrate my capability to move into a position in investment banking."

"That's right," he replied, "you told me you were studying finance."

Deborah was encouraged by his having remembered and began to outline her thinking.

"Say, I've got tickets to the football game down at Princeton tomorrow," he interrupted. Same firm or not, you just have to bend the rules when a girl looks like this, he thought. "How would you like to drive down there with me, maybe make a whole weekend of it?"

"Thank you, but I've got plans already," she said politely, emphasizing by her tone that she had no intention of smudging the line drawn between a business and a social relationship. "The matter I've come to discuss could open up a major new source of revenue for our firm. I've done extensive research and come up with a list of excellent companies that are ripe for acquisition."

"Have the companies told you that?" he asked grumpily.

"They don't yet know that we're looking at them, nor would they until we've located the right client to acquire them. Some of the acquisitions might well have to be made against the wishes of the target company's management."

"How's that?"

"Our client would publicly offer to buy the target company's shares directly from the stockholders."

"That's a messy business which makes an awful lot of enemies, Miss Crown." He grinned patronizingly. "You haven't been involved in the financial world very long. Let me explain that that sort of thing just isn't done."

Deborah gritted her teeth. Landy sounded exactly like so many English bankers she had heard, exactly like Leslie, despite the gap of three thousand miles and a different culture and accent: "That's not the done thing, my dear, not done at all."

A wide smile exposed Landy's white teeth and boyish charm. "If you're sincerely interested in learning more about investment banking, why not come down to Princeton with me for the weekend?" he winked. "There are some things I'd love to teach you."

You're no different from Corcoran or any of the others, she thought with disgust. On the surface, better bred. But underneath, no different, no different at all.

"Mr. Landy," she concluded with a tight smile, "I don't need personal instruction to know that the purpose of an investment bank is to make money for the clients and for the partners. This proposal does that— they'll make money, lots of it. If you should happen to change your mind about the direction in which you wish to take your division, I'd be glad to speak further to you."

Read more:  <ASIN: 0985314427> or <ASIN: B008FD5I4C> (Kindle); <ASIN: 0985314435> or <ASIN: B008RBPH7A> (Kindle) and <ASIN: 0985314451> or <ASIN: B009LNPE94>, <ASIN: 098531446X> or <ASIN: B00CF3SD3G> (Kindle).

What Is the Appeal to Readers of a Grand Saga?

         I've written a number of novels, including A Question of Proof or A Question of Proof (Kindle); Star Time: New Version & New Introduction or Star Time (Kindle) and Birthright or Birthright (Kindle). In writing my novel DEEDS Deeds or Deeds (Kindle), I wanted to explore how events over generations and secrets buried in the past have repercussions in the present. That was true also of my novel BIRTHRIGHT. I believe there are still readers who enjoy savoring what I hope I have delivered in each: a satisfying story on the scale of real life.

         Here’s an excerpt from DEEDS of the moments after Abe Weintraub has taken Ralph, his son-in-law, and Gail, his daughter, on a tour of the Lower East Side where he and his family and Ralph’s family, too, first settled in America; the tour reveals so much about his roots that Ralph never imagined:

         As it once had to Raphael, it came also now to Ralph that he somehow shared with the Jews who had struggled to survive in and then to transcend this neighborhood a common culture and values passed down by generations of Jews, among them Raphael and Sally [Ralph’s grandparents], who were endowed with the strength to brave the journey here and seek a better life. They knew no one. They may have not have been able speak the language. And yet they strove and succeeded. One of their beliefs, Ralph mused, was that life rewarded virtues like honoring one’s father. In that regard he had fulfilled the mandate of his Jewish heritage. In contrast, his father had treated that blind loyalty as gullibility, exploitable when expedient. Had his parents, Raphael and Sally, set his father that example by abandoning their Jewish identities? . . .
         Gail asked Ralph whether he felt saddened or disillusioned by what he had learned about his grandmother’s true background and his grandfather’s original homeland.
         “At first, like a kid who’s had his candy stolen. But then I realized that if they had been accepted where they came from, they never would have put themselves through hell to travel here. They came because of the opportunities, believing that they could do anything here if they tried hard enough, even re-invent themselves into brand-new people. It makes me feel kind of proud. My grandparents did whatever they had to do to make their way.”
         “They couldn’t change the important things about themselves. That’s what my father seemed to think.”
         Ralph nodded. “And maybe it took them a long while to understand what was important and what wasn’t.” He reflected on that for a moment and then said, “I don’t feel more Jewish or less Christian now than before. What I really feel is richer, in a way I hadn’t expected.”

Is the Perfect, Untraceable Murder Possible?

I believe I created a perfect murder for my newly reissued novel STALKING THE SKY.  And not just the murder of one person, but of over three hundred.  And I did it twice.

STALKING THE SKY is the story of America's leading airline in crisis.  As a ruthless corporate raider is moving to seize it from its legendary founder, one of its 747s explodes in mid-air, killing everyone on board.  Then a second airliner goes down.  Sabotage is suspected.  Will Nye, the airline's general counsel who lost his best friend in the second disaster, is working closely with the FBI to track down the killer.

Obviously a bomb of some sort had to be employed with the killer able to escape after placing it, but how to accomplish that and how does one place it in the absolutely precise place to disable a giant aircraft built to survive a multitude of in-air mishaps?  I devised a scheme, but needed to be sure my scheme would work.  On a vacation trip with my wife, I entered the jetliner's lavatory and nervously went through enough of the steps my murderer would be taking to place the bomb until I was sure that I—and he—could get away with the crime.  Fearing arrest at any moment, I returned, sweating, to my seat.  Yet, like the murderer, I safely got off the plane at my destination.

A perfect mass murder?  I think it would have been.  I'll leave for my book's readers the details of how one gets a bomb on board and still makes a safe getaway.  But I'm sure that if Will hadn't found and tracked down a tiny clue I planted, STALKING THE SKY would have had a very different ending: The killer dancing all the way to a happy and very wealthy retirement.

So, I definitely think a smart, thorough thriller/mystery writer could devise a perfect plan to get away with murder.  The question is: How many novelists pecking out their daydreamed plots possess a killer's nerve?

Instilling Jeopardy in My Novels

In the TV quiz show Jeopardy, the stakes get doubled part way through the show and are raised again at the end in Final Jeopardy. For that last difficult question, the contestants can risk up to whatever they have won so far in the hope of correctly answering it and doubling what they've put at risk. Perhaps more important, the top money winner gets to return to compete for more prize money in the next game.

In my courtroom thriller, A QUESTION OF PROOF, the protagonist, Dan Lazar, a renowned criminal-defense lawyer, is divorced and badly misses his son. Moreover, burned-out and disillusioned by his success at winning acquittals for people he knows are guilty of horrendous crimes, he is ready to call it quits. He falls in love with Susan Boelter, the estranged wife of an autocratic newspaper publisher, who is seeking to take everything from her in divorce proceedings, including custody of their daughter. Susan's happiness and consequently Dan's as well are at risk. Suddenly, Peter is found dead, and Susan is charged with his murder, raising the stakes again for Susan and Dan. He yields to her entreaty that he defend her at the murder trial, an unorthodox and personally wrenching arrangement that puts more at risk for Dan. The stakes are raised even higher by Dan's urgent inner need to use his lawyering skill to save at least one person he can truly believe is innocent. In this case that person is also the woman he loves. But is she innocent or merely using him/  Events put his certainty in doubt.  Ultimately at stake is virtually everything Dan's considers worth living for.  The outcome turns on a question of proof.
STALKING THE SKY is my latest thriller to be published on Kindle and simultaneously in print on Amazon with new material and  new Introduction. Its protagonist Will Nye, the general counsel for America's leading airline, is feverishly seeking to uncover the identity of the saboteur who planted a bomb on one of the airline's 747s. To raise the stakes, one of the pilots who went down with the plane was his best friend, who saved his life in Vietnam. Nye's quest becomes an obsession. When he finally learns that yet a third airliner has been targeted and the woman he loves is one of that plane's flight attendants, the stakes--and the suspense--soar as high as the sky that plane is flying through.

Jeopardy is not just a game, it's at the heart of a thriller.

How I'm Using New Media to Reach Readers

Nearly all authors in the pre-Internet age experienced the galling frustration of having a publisher put little or no marketing effort into a book we may have spent years writing. The new media, primarily social media, provide emancipation from that netherworld; we can personally market our books in so many ways that were never before available. In days of yore, we hoped the people reviewing books for newspapers would pick ours to write about or maybe someone would write an article or even that we’d be interviewed on a phone-in radio show. Today, we can reach potential readers with what we hope are intriguing pitches for our books on Twitter, the major resource for my marketing, Facebook, blogs, and web sites like 
Goodreads, where readers gather and exchange opinions on what they've read. I created a website, JosephAmiel.com, which  features all my books and additional material about me and them. 

Everyone with access to a computer can be a reviewer in this new age, and thousands of people with only a love of books as a qualification are conveying their opinions on Amazon book pages and blogs and Facebook pages and Twitter. They are also communicating directly with writers and each other on websites and in online book forums. And just as they can be stimulated to see a movie through trailers, they can be motivated to buy books by watching promotional video trailers online.

To take only one instance of how I'm attempting to use the new media, I’ve always felt that my legal thriller A Question of Proof, a book I loved that received gratifying pre-publication reviews and endorsements (one person called it "a masterpiece of suspense"), was not marketed effectively or vigorously by the publisher and could have reached many more readers. The presence of the new media with its potential to communicate my enthusiasm and belief in my book directly to thousands of potential readers induced me to launch a new edition it in digital and also print form. I updated it so that it takes place in the present and added new material and a personal Introduction to make it as pleasurable for new readers as I believed it was originally. Being an experienced film-maker, I created a video book trailer, which is available both on GoodReads and on my website (and even appeared in it). As I write this A QUESTION OF PROOF is selling prodigiously on Kindle, as well in its new print edition, both with new covers, and it's garnering great reviews, which gives me enormous, if delated gratification.

A similar effort to reach readers via Twitter is expended on my other books now also available in new Kindle and print editions at Amazon: the just-published STALKING THE SKY (formerly "Hawks"), a thriller about America's leading air carrier under siege both from a saboteur destroying its 747s in flight and a corporate raider seeking to seize it; my 3-generation mystery romance DEEDS; my beloved woman's novel BIRTHRIGHT about a strong woman fighting for success in a man's world; and STAR TIME, an TV insider's novel. 

In short the new media is the best tool authors and readers have ever had to find each other.  Please contact me at Joe@JosephAmiel.com and let me know what you think.  And if you enjoy the books, please leave reviews for them here and on their Amazon pages.