Klyde Morris Cartoonist Has An Actual Job ... Researcher And Author

Many of our Aero-News readers know Wes Oleszewski from his Klyde Morris cartoon strip or from the opinion and other articles he has written for us about spaceflight. What most of you may not know is that his full time job is research historian and author. Wes has just had his 25th book published. It's a novel, an aviation spy thriller, and he talked with Aero-News about his latest work.

Aero-News: First off Wes, congratulations on the 25th book.

Wes: Thanks. It’s a little like having your 25th child. It’s pretty fun and exciting the day it happens, but then it’s back to work on the next one.

Aero-News: This one is described as an aviation, spy thriller. What exactly does that mean?

Wes: Well, it’s my first work of fiction and when writing fiction you have to start with what you know. So, being a former airline captain and corporate pilot, I used aviation as a vehicle to carry the story along. It has a lot of political intrigue, but I didn’t want it to be about politics. So I used my own background in the aviation industry as the backdrop to move the readers from one scene to another.

Aero-News: So there are a lot of airplanes in it.

Wes: Oh yes, in great detail. I put the readers into the cockpits of turbo props, heavy jets and corporate jets as well as airline category simulators along the way and used my own personal experiences to make them feel as if they are right there in the jumpseat.

Aero-News: Is the story just about aircraft?

Wes: No, the actual story is about an NSA analyst who finds herself transferred into a specialized field operations unit called “Facility Nine” and then gets on the trail of a shadow organization that is creating havoc around the world. The aviation part just adds to the fun.

Aero-News: Why have you decided to stick your toe into the fiction world? Isn’t your normal area one of non-fiction?

Wes: Indeed, I have two dozen titles that are historical narratives, but my wife, who despises non-fiction reading, has pestered me since my very first book was published in 1991 to write some fiction. After eight years of that I finally wrote this book in 1999.

Aero-News: So you wrote this novel 19 years ago?

Wes: Yeah. Then it sat in my computer in an obscure file while my wife bugged me for 18 years to get it published.

Aero-News: What took so long?

Wes: Well… my print publisher didn’t want it because they were concerned that my name on fiction may confuse my readers who were used to me writing heavily detailed and deeply researched shipwreck history books. Publishers are like that, they want to pigeon-hole you, especially when you’re selling good. In order to find a different publisher I’d have to do the writing a proposal thing with the research into other books like mine and how they sell in different parts of the country and so on. I just didn’t have the time for that. I could write several chapters for my Great Lakes publisher in the time it would take to do all of that junk. Plus, the odds are it would just get rejected anyhow. Having multiple books in print from one publisher doesn’t carry over to another. So, I figured I’d just do the work for the guys who were already sending me the checks.

Aero-News: So, how did this book finally come to be?

Wes: Along came the world of internet publishing and a fellow author recommended this company called Elite Publishing. I was tired of my wife bugging me, so I contacted them, sent the manuscript, they loved it, we signed a contract and my next book was born ... simple as that. I try not to complicate things… that only leads to memos.

Aero-News: How did your own aviation career work its way into this book?

Wes: As you know, professional pilots spend a lot of time in hotels, with nothing much to do. I wrote the book while I was working as a corporate pilot. A lot of the places I found myself stuck in, ya’ know, distant cities and hotels, made great settings for scenes in the story. So when you read about a hotel in San Fran. And a nearby park, those are places I had been in and walked around in and then went back to my hotel room and put them into the story. Likewise, the details about the aircraft came from my own experiences. Most of the characters are patterned after people I worked with in aviation, usually taking two people and sort of blending them into one character. I took the time to make a heavy section involving pilots who were the turboprop regional dogs of the 1990s, which is the era in which the story takes place.

Aero-News: Knowing you Wes, there’s got to be Falcon Jets in there someplace.

Wes: Oh yeah! I take the readers for a fun ride on a Falcon Jet.

Aero-News: What other shameless acts of realism can you tell us about?

Wes: Well, not to give anything away, but there is a specific weapon that is used in the book that I derived from a pilot’s security briefing that I received in an airline training class shortly after TWA 800. Later I asked the GSA (Ground Security Agent) about that weapon system. He told me it was no big secret and was actually listed in a volume of Jane’s. He said I could just go and look it up! So, I went to the US Naval Academy here in Annapolis, found the applicable Jane’s and dang, there it was! Digging a little deeper I found the warhead too. So, I put that into the book.

Aero-News: Now that the book is out, what sorts of comments have you gotten?

Wes: That’s what worries me ... they’ve all been quite good, especially from my fellow pilots. They appreciate someone who has actually flown the line writing accurately about the industry and what it’s really like.

Aero-News: How about non-aviation people?

Wes: The comment that I’ve seen most often from the non-aviator public is that they love the fact that the plot isn’t “cookie cutter” so they could not predict where things were going until the end. In fact, many of the aviation people have made the same remark.

Aero-News: How do you think you avoided being “cookie cutter?”

Wes: I think that’s largely due to the fact that I, personally, never read fiction. I’m strictly a non-fiction reader. Thus, I had no concept of how a fiction story should go. I simply created the characters, set them loose in the story and allowed them to work the way they should.

Aero-News: Do you think we’ll see another novel from you?

Wes: Depends on how this one sells. After all, this is my business and not a hobby, so future products depend on sales. My latest non-fiction book, “World War II & the Great Lakes” is selling like crazy, so when the publisher asked for volume two a month after the first one hit the bookstores, I got right to work on it. Just like when I was flying, I’m a professional when it comes to authoring and success breeds new material which generates additional royalties checks.

Aero-News: Where can our Aero-News readers get this latest book?

Wes: It, like nearly all of my books ... including some of my out-of-print works ... can be easily had on Amazon. All folks need to do is to log onto Amazon, select “books” from the search window pull-down, type in “Oleszewski” and hit “search.” I’m the only Oleszewski in Amazon books!

Aero-News: That’s convenient.

Wes: Yeah. When my first book was being published I asked the Avery Color Studios, the publisher, if I should change the name I was writing under to something more easily pronounced by non-Polish people? They said absolutely NOT! Their contention was that my name generates name-recognition on the book store shelf. People who like my work just go and look for the long Polish name that starts with an “O” no matter if they can pronounce it or not. After all of these books- I must admit they were right.

Aero-News: Thanks for your time today Wes and I’m sure that a lot of our Aero-News readers will be picking up copies of your books after reading this.

Wes: Thanks for having me. It’s great to be a part of the Aero-News team. I would ask that everyone who is an Amazon customer, not only check out the book by doing the “look inside” feature, but then leave a review. It doesn’t matter if you buy it or not. Amazon scores the number of reviews and it doesn’t matter to them if it’s a good or bad review, or if it’s a paragraph or three words- it’s the number of reviews that counts.
“Invisible Evil” can be had on Amazon in print for $18.95 and ebook for $4.99. The print book is 6x9 format and is 362 pages long. (Click here) Also check out “World War II & the Great Lakes” on Amazon. That book contains a lot of aviation material and is 5x8 format and 283 pages long, but is not available in ebook form, $17.95. (Click here)

If unavailable on Amazon it can be ordered directly here.

(Images provided by Wes Oleszewski)

FMI: Invisible Evil