Jeff Berney

stories that thrill

Jeff Berney

Book update: round 3 edits almost finished.

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Edits to my debut novel, “A Killer Secret,” are nearly finished. Boy has this book been a journey! I started writing it slowly in what little spare time I had between my job as a creative executive at an ad agency and my crazy home life filled with seven rambunctious kids and one very amazing wife. Okay, full disclosure: two of the oldest kids are out of the house now. But I left out the two dogs, two cats, and one fish. Not to mention the odd rabbit now and again.

I wrote the first few chapters in March 2017 at a coffee shop and at a hotel in Denver where I’d accompanied my wife to a banking conference. After that, I’d write on lunch breaks, on airplanes to and from business trips, in hotel rooms, late at night when the rest of the house was asleep. I thought about my characters during my daily commutes. I practiced dialogue out loud when nobody else was home.

I would write a scene here, a snippet of dialogue there. Progress was unsteady. My writing times sporadic and unpredictable. And then I lost my job last Halloween. Well that’s not true. I know where it is, but I’m not in it. I was the victim of a global merger. I went home, put on a mask, and hid my misery and embarrassment long enough to trick or treat with the kids.

That was nearly 10 months ago. It was the lowest point in my professional career. It was quite a blow to my ego, too. You want to know something weird though? The world didn’t end. My wife and kids didn’t love me less.

So there I was with time on my hands and a half-finished manuscript. I took six months and finished the first draft while I thought about the next chapter in my career. Then I put it away and out of my mind for a little over a month so I could concentrate on finding a job, and so I could look at it fresh when I started the edit.

To my surprise, I still loved the story when I reread the manuscript. Sure there were some bad sentences, weird scene shifts, and a ton of inconsistencies, but I liked the book as a whole. I even found that I like the editing process.

But who cares what I think! I should like my own story. After two rounds of edits, the book is in the hands of my first beta reader – my wife. If she likes it, I’ll send it to a handful of others to read and critique. After making any final edits based on their feedback, I’ll work on the audiobook production and finalize the layout for the ebook and print editions.

My goal is an early December launch. So stay tuned!

My heroes have never been perfect.

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I read “A Prayer for Owen Meany” at least once a year. It’s so brilliant that at first I didn’t understand why I loved it. It’s the first book I can remember reading in which all of the characters, especially the protagonist, are flawed. The story of fate and goodness and innocence never surrendered even in the face of the harsh realities of an unforgiving world always makes me contemplate how little we really know about why we do what we do. It’s a complicated, inspiring story.

And no matter what your politics or beliefs, “The Cider House Rules” should be required reading for anyone who wants a reminder of the gritty reality of life before abortion was legal. Talk about imperfect but inspiring characters. “Goodnight you Princes of Maine, you Kings of New England!” is not just a bedtime sendoff but a rallying cry and a reminder that even an unwanted orphan can rise from his circumstances.

“The World According to Garp” opened my young eyes to the differences that divide us even though they shouldn’t. I wish, and I believe Irving does as well, that the fear, hatred, and bigotry his characters faced in the 70s were in our past. Instead, they endure today. That makes his characters and his writing even more important.

These are just three of Irving’s novels. All of his books, though, share his openness to exploring the darker side of humanity, the weirder tendencies, and fringe ideas that make us such a fascinating species.

Though I don’t write literary fiction and would never be so bold as to expect to ever be compared to the great John Irving, I do hope to bring a sense of literary purpose to my works. Themes as well as thrills. Reality soaked fiction where nobody is pure evil or perfectly good. Because my heroes, fictional and real, have never been perfect.

John Irving “A Prayer for Owen Meany” quote

Writing is the easy part.

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Web Code on a Laptop

I’m not a web wizard. Sure, I know my way around the internet and have led countless website builds and redesigns. But only in the capacity of creative director. Not the designer. Certainly never the coder.

Until now. In the last month, I have labored over this little website you’re now enjoying with the same intensity as I did the initial draft of my novel. Which is to say a lot. Every little change seemed to mess something else up. I couldn’t get the colors to match. My images were too lo-res or too large or, and this one confounds me, both.

Finally it’s ready. It’s live! And I even managed to figure out how to add a subscribe form (assuming it works). There’s not much to it right now, but please have a look around. Make yourself at home. I’ll be adding to it as I can.

In the meantime, I’m going back to finalizing my novel. Otherwise, there is no reason for this site to exist. Which, given the hours ams headaches I’ve endured to bring it to life, would be a crying shame.