Joe Bernard

J.F. BERNARD

I was born and raised in New York City but presently hang my hat in Port Saint Lucie Florida where I now live contently, and in relative comfort, along with my lovely wife, Maria, and my two little tax deductions…I mean kids, Wesley 9 and Maria 6. I’m a civil engineer by profession (hey, got to pay those bills somehow) who’s been writing off and on for about the last twenty years with moderate but satisfying success.

I actually prefer, and am probably better at, writing non-fiction, which, for whatever reason, seems to be a hell of a lot easier to sell nowadays, especially when it meets the current moulds and criteria set forth by the ‘big publishing houses’ that continue to churn out such modern day classics as (fill in the blank).     

Then again, sometimes there is more truth, and facts, to be found in one page of fiction than there is in the entire Sunday edition of the New York Times. But first you got to get it printed. Right? And in the immortal words of Mister Herman Melville (Moby Dick), another author rejected by his contemporaries and who died in virtual obscurity: “Dollars dame me! What I write, I can not sell. But to write any other way, I cannot.” I think I know how he felt.

Hell! Writing good fiction is hard. I don’t care what anyone says. But it’s also rewarding, if not monetarily (Hey we’re, talking New York Times Best Seller here – Ain’t we?) then at least in the more personal sense that it is, after all, your own creation and, therefore, one could only assume, beyond criticism. But people are sometimes cruel, and will find fault in just about anything, even our own children. Speaking of which…They are the real reason I began these stories in the first place, other than my own personal ego, of course.  

For perhaps when they are old and curious enough, and not too busy doing whatever it is grown up kids do, and I am, to quote the dead philosopher ‘food for worms’, they just might come across, quite accidentally, of course, one of my old manuscripts tucked away in the attic, under a box of old Christmas ornaments, perhaps, dust it off, and actually begin reading the damn thing! And, you see? That’s the pay-off. The Motherload! For then, and perhaps only then, will they finally find out who the old man really was, and what he was thinking about all those long and lonely hours he spent banging away on the computer keys (if computers still have keys by then) and discover that, maybe, he really wasn’t as ‘whacked-out’ as everyone said he was. Or maybe not…

THE EXPEDITION is the first book in a four volume series of historical fantasy/fiction that provides a unique and entertaining perspective of American culture as viewed through the kaleidoscopic and unassuming eyes of its main character, Elmo Cotton, a young black sharecropper of questionable identity....More>>

THE MOTHERSTONE The Motherstone, a sequel to Book One of the Harlie Series, completes the ‘Expedition’ which Homer Skinner and company have undertaken in search for the lost gold mine of Cornelius Wainwright.  When they finally arrive at the site of the doomed excavation, no one is more surprised than Elmo Cotton, the ‘Lucky Number...More>>

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A RACCOON ON THE RUN by Joe Bernard...In book three of the Harlie Series, ‘A RACCOON ON THE RUN’, Elmo Cotton is forced, through a series of unfortunate events which he still doesn’t quite understand, to make the most difficult decision of his life....More>>

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NEW!!  THE MIRACLE MAKER by Joe Bernard...Leaving a troubled past behind him, Elmo Cotton (along with his good friend and neighbor, Mister Sherman Dixon) finally arrives at Old Port Fierce. It is there, in the infamous city he hopes to find the so-called ‘Miracle-Maker’ who had deserted him and his mother so many years ago, and kill him....More>>

THE APPLE TREE BOOK I: CREEKWOOD GREEN....It all began one quiet evening up on Lazy Hill Road, at the Nickel Pig Saloon, that is… you know, down ‘round Creekwood Green? They were all there: Pete Liddle, the sheriff, Doc Thiemann, Deacon Hoot, the mayor (of course). Jim Bob was there too; and so was his little brother, Tater…. Well, he wasn’t really his brother, but that doesn’t matter right now. Lil’ Tate was actually somewhere down in Pete’s basement, playing in the stardust with his new friend. They were rolling a stone back and forth as sound of dynamite thundered in the near distance. It was a black stone, I tell you...More>>

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