Who am I?

In the words of an old Stone’s song, allow me to introduce myself.

I write under the name of Peter N Bernfeld. There are two reasons for this; firstly it’s my name and secondly there’s an American chap who publishes academic papers under the name of Peter Bernfeld. I suspect that’s because it’s his name and I wanted to avoid both confusion and any royalties going to the wrong person. I also suspect that we may be related but I’ve never investigated that.

An ex-helicopter pilot, ex-airline pilot, ex-pub owner, resting hypnotherapist and more or less full-time writer, I was born at an early age in Norwich. I was swiftly transplanted to Winchester and proceeded to grow up there. Having grown up a bit and done a few things I decided to sail off round the World in slow time and am currently living on my boat in Malaysia. For those interested in sailing yarns and mis-adventures My Sailing Blog There, I will tell you all you wanted to know and more about attempting to sail round the world in a small boat and on a small budget. Yes, that is ‘Troutbridge’ as in the ship in the BBC radio comedy show ‘The Navy Lark’. Like that ship, my little ship has clouted quite a few reefs in the Pacific which perhaps indicates you should name your boat with some care. Lucky I never felt moved to name her ‘Titanic’, although that would have been apt on at least one occasion.

Why do I write?

Several people having read my books and My Main Blog  have asked the same question. Well it’s obvious innit? I want to own a castle in Scotland and attend film premiers of my books! Meanwhile, back on the planet on which I was born, I’d settle for enough money to fix up Troutbridge after my latest reef-clouting event in Fiji and supplementing a fairly pathetic pension. It comes to something when the UK state pension is bigger than your private pension.

It’s not actually all about money of course although have you noticed that most people who say ‘money isn’t everything’ tend to have more than the average? They’re right of course but some does help. I think the main reason that I write is I enjoy spinning a good yarn. Honest officer, a magpie flew into the car and pinched the tax disk not ten minutes ago. I’m just on my way home now to organise a replacement.

‘They’ say that everybody has a book in them and I’m sorry to disagree but they don’t. Writing is a solitary occupation so unless you’re happy spending time with yourself, don’t try it. You also have to have a good imagination and actually want to write. It’s not all wandering down to the nearest pub, getting pissed in convivial company and waiting for the muse to strike. In fact, none of it is about that, pleasant though it may be. It’s about setting yourself a daily writing goal and achieving it, be it a daily word count or writing a chapter. You don’t just sit and stare at a blank screen hoping for inspiration, you write a word. After the word comes a second and pretty soon you have a sentence. From there you have a paragraph and somewhere in the process an idea occurs. If the idea is ‘sod this, I’m off down the pub’ ignore it and keep adding one word at a time. Eventually you have a paragraph. It might be rubbish and you might delete it but you’re writing. That’s what writers do and don’t let anybody tell you any different.

What do I write?

Ah now thereby hangs a tale. The first book I wrote and completed in 2011 was a sci-fi, current affairs thriller called ‘Eliezer’s Journey’.  I was lucky enough to find an agent fairly quickly but actually getting published takes time. Eventually ‘Emma the Agent’ got me signed up with an American Indie publisher, Solstice Publishing and the book is due out in the next month or so.

A three thousand year old ship appears out of a violent storm and there is one survivor.

You don’t know who or what caused the storm.

You don’t know how the storm was generated.

You don’t know why the storm was generated.

You do know that knowledge the survivor possesses might change history.

You do know you cannot prevent the formation of other storms.

You do know you cannot prevent people from your time being taken by similar storms.

You are the Government. What do you do?

In all, Solstice have taken five of my books:

Eliezer’s Journey

Eliezer’s return

The Mysterious Dr LeMesurier

Terrific Tales of trembling Tim the two-tone tiger

The Legend of Tim Turpin

The last two are illustrated children’s books.

Whilst waiting for Emma the Agent to ‘sell’ the various manuscripts I had with her (sell is a misnomer, only the big publishing companies give any sort of advance these days) I decided to try my hand at self-publishing. For ease and because Amazon seemed to me to be the biggest ‘e-tailer’ I just self-publish on Amazon for the eBooks and their pod (print on demand) off-shoot CreateSpace to produce the paperback versions.

To date I have self-published five books, all about a fictional detective DCI Leon (Fred) Karno of the Cornishire CID. Yes, they are not books to take seriously but most of those readers who have reviewed them found them amusing.

Kittie Cracks case

Karno’s Casebook (three short-ish stories)

Polly Picked the Pistol Up

The Kaieteur Caper

The Poisoned pastie

These are all available in both eBook and paperback from Amazon