What It's Like to Fly in a Private Jet

In writing my recent book, Stalking the Sky, I wanted to take the reader aboard a private jet, an experience most won't ever have. A private jet is like a limousine in the sky, with the crew always at the ready to convey its pampered passengers in luxury to any place any time. Sometimes, though, the passengers would rather not be taking that flight, nor would the crew. Here's an excerpt: Sometime after midnight she had finally dropped onto a sofa in exhausted sleep. The call from Crew Scheduling seemed to come only an instant later. A Presidential Service crew, which included a flight attendant, was needed for one of the business jets usually rented out to corporations: "spur of the moment . . . V.I.P.s . . . get here as fast as you can." For a moment after the voice ceased and the line went dead, she was uncertain whether it had been a dream, but then she felt the receiver against her ear and shuffled toward the shower. The last time Will had been in the Westwind was in the pilot's seat, flying with a contingent of GUA executives to Houston to hammer out a long-term jet-fuel arrangement with a large oil company. He had piloted the sleek plane then to build up hours. It was firm GUA policy that management personnel with operational skills maintain them sharply honed. Buck felt strongly that it kept his managers in touch with the nuts and bolts of running an airline. The Westwind’s cabin contained two rows of seats and a sitting/sleeping divan along one side of the cabin. Will hung up his jacket and loosened his tie. He was just about to stretch out and catch some sleep when he noticed headlights racing toward the plane. A slim girl clutching a small saffron-colored valise charged out of a taxi and up the stairs. For a moment she seemed confused by the sight that greeted her. Then disbelieving anger widened her eyes to blue floodlights "One person? You hired this plane and got us all out here in the middle of the night in a snowstorm for just one person?" The question was an indictment. She had been in such a hurry to make the plane that the buttons on her saffron-and-violet uniform blouse had worked open a good way toward the top of her skirt. Will found himself staring at the slash of skin. He lifted his eyes. "If it’s any consolation, lady, it wasn’t my idea either." Read more: Stalking the Sky

How Badly Does a Crash Hurt an Airline's Finances

     In writing my recent book STALKING THE SKY, I wanted readers to understand how airlines protect themselves financially against the possibility of losing an airplane. The airlines are well-protected by insurance and often by the way they may have financed that particular aircraft.

Here's an excerpt:

A moment later, he turned to Will. "Is the company’s insurance in order?"

Will nodded. The airline and its investors were protected, he knew, by a Lloyd’s of London syndicate that would make good on the liability to victims’ families within rather high limits. A second syndicate insured the aircraft itself: GUA would be repaid its share of the plane’s value, and the members of the public who had financed the rest of the transport’s cost by buying loan certificates and leasing the plane to the airline would be similarly reimbursed.

The Old Man reflected aloud, "The stock market’s been too skittish lately not to get terrified when something like this happens. The average guy thinks we’re in the hole for thirty-five million dollars’ worth of aircraft. Or else he’ll think passengers will stay away. Probably will, too, for a week or so. The truth is, recovering the cash value of a jetliner can be a damned blessing, although I’d rather have lost a 707—they’re older and a hell of a lot less efficient. Damned stockholders and smart-ass analysts don’t think that way. By noon tomorrow our stock should have dropped to eight or below." Buck’s fist slammed against the desk. "That’s just the opportunity that son of a bitch Girard has been waiting for!"

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

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?