BOB DOERR GUEST BLOG

Today, special guest and fellow PSWA member Bob Doerr, author of ANOTHER COLORADO KILL (and 3 other novels, with another on the way in 2012), joins me and explains why he chooses to write fiction. Bob has had a fascinating career in criminal investigations and counterintelligence in the military, which would explain why his books are so authentic and how he is able to come up with the ideas for his novels. He now writes full-time, which I greatly admire (and perhaps envy a little!)

FICTION OR NONFICTION

by Bob Doerr

As an author of four fiction books,I’ve often been asked if I ever plan on writing a nonfiction book. It’s a simple question that I can give a simple answer to. Yes, I would like to. However, there really is a lot more to it, and that reality I find somewhat intimidating.

In fact, I’ve had fellow authors, more successful than me, come up to me and say, “I write nonfiction. I don’t think I could ever come up with enough ideas to write fiction. I’m sure that I would get writer’s block on every page. It’s so much easier to write nonfiction.”

I hear them, and I want to believe them, but are they really just playing with me? I remember a high school teacher once admonishing me about the history paper I had submitted as part of a test. “Bob, anybody can make up stuff. I expect my students to do a little studying and write about what did happen.” The sad part is that I had studied.

Maybe, making things up simply comes natural for me. I remember one autumn day driving through Maryland with my wife and five year old daughter. “Look at those leaves,” I told my daughter. “All those colors are caused by little elves that come out at night and paint the leaves when the weather turns cold.”

“Daddy, I thought it had something to do with chlorophyll.” No lie, that’s exactly what she said. It floored me, but she explained her first grade teacher had explained the photosynthesis process that same day in school.

Writing book length non-fiction and making it interesting to read has got to be really difficult. I admire those that can do it. The research, documentation, organization, and everything else that goes into writing a nonfiction book infers hard work. I mean isn’t it easier to blame it on the elves than to learn the real science?

I enjoy reading nonfiction and there are a lot of real stories out there that interest me and beg to be told. I have a couple in mind and hope to get to them some day, but in the meantime, I’ll stay focused in my world of make believe, sinister plots, murder and mayhem. Oh, it’s so much easier!

ABOUT BOB

Bob Doerr grew up in a military family, graduated from the Air Force Academy, and thenhad a twenty eight year career of his own in the Air Force. It was a life style that exposed him to the people and cultures of numerous countries in Asia, Europe and to most of these United States.

Bob specialized in criminal investigations and counterintelligence gaining significant insight to the worlds of crime, espionage and terrorism. His field of work brought him into close contact and coordination with the investigative and security agencies of many different countries and with the FBI and CIA. This background has helped Bob develop the fictional plots and characters in his books.

His education credits include a Masters in International Relations from Creighton University. Bob is now a full time author, with four mystery/thrillers already published and a fifth to be released in the fall, 2012. Two of his books, Cold Winter’s Kill and Loose Ends Kill, were selected as finalists for the Eric Hoffer Award. Loose Ends Kill was also awarded the 2011 Silver medal for Fiction/mystery by the Military Writers Society of America. He lives in Garden Ridge, Texas, with Leigh, his wife of 38 years.