Bruce Borgos

Bruce Borgos lives and writes from the Nevada desert where he works hard every day to prove his high school guidance counselor had good instincts when he said “You’ll never be an astronaut.” He has a degree in political science which mostly served to dissuade him from a career in law while at the same time tormenting his wife with endless questions about how telephones work. When he’s not writing, you can usually find him on a tennis court somewhere or at his cabin in the mountains of Utah.

Borgos's new novel is The Bitter Past.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

It's funny because I didn't pick the title. I had a working title for what ultimately became The Bitter Past, but it wasn't until my editor and the team at Minotaur started kicking around some alternatives that we were able to find a title that did exactly that - it took readers into the story. My novel is about a time in our history when we were racing to stay ahead of the Soviet Union and "win" a nuclear war, if necessary. We were literally blowing up the Nevada desert, sending poisonous clouds of radiation downwind and, eventually, across the globe. In many ways, we didn't understand or appreciate the consequences of those actions. It is a bitter past.

What's in a name?

I used to pull character names out of a phone book. Of course, we don't have those now. For this novel, I wanted something for my main character that sounded western but wasn't overly cowboy. I chose Porter Beck. My character doesn't like his first name, and almost everyone just calls him Beck.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

My teenage reader self, as cocky as he was, probably wouldn't be surprised at all by this novel. He would have expected it, although a few decades earlier, no doubt. I've always wanted to write novels and have always been a voracious reader. I can remember as a teenager reading spy novels and marveling at an author's turn of phrase or how a chapter was constructed. My teenage self would have seen this novel as a natural consequence of those first steps I took in creative writing so long ago.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Beginnings are definitely more difficult for me. By the time I move from my extensive outline to the first words of a first draft, I already know the ending pretty well, and that seldom changes. But determining where and when to start the novel usually takes me about fifty miles of morning walks. It's so crucial to start the story in the right place, and even after I think I've gotten it right, I find myself going back and eliminating parts of the beginning. In medias res - in the midst of things - is what I'm shooting for.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Well, they say to write about what you know. For me, the easiest way to do that is to inject elements of myself into my main character. In this novel, Porter Beck, for better or worse, has my sense of humor. And we see the world pretty much the same way. Neither of us takes things very seriously at first contact.

Visit Bruce Borgos's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Bitter Past.

My Book, The Movie: The Bitter Past.

--Marshal Zeringue