Have Blue Sky is a forthcoming novel based on the 25-year operational flight history of the F-117 Stealth Fighter.
The flying stories in the novel are true. They are based on the direct experience of the author, or on interviews the author has conducted with his fellow pilots.
While the flying stories are true, all of the characters in Have Blue Sky are fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental and unintentional. The historical figures and public officials described in the novel (presidents, prime ministers, and so forth) have been rendered as accurately as possible based on the available historical record.
Although the characters in Have Blue Sky are fictional, all the descriptions of the aircraft – including the F-117, A-10, F-16, KC-135, C-130, A-7, T-37, T-38, F-15, F-22, B-1, B-2, and RAF Jaguar (to include the procedures, capabilities, and technical details of each aircraft) are presented as factually, and as accurately, as possible.
The idea for Have Blue Sky came to me in August, 2020. For more than a year I rose early to write every morning. Writing as fast as I could for as many hours as I could, wanting to get the story out of my head and onto the page before I got hit by a bus. I finished the first draft in October 2021, and then began the humbling process of sharing the draft with friends and asking for their feedback. The re-writing process has been as important as composing that first draft.
Writing Have Blue Sky has been a joy.
Perhaps that’s an odd way to describe writing a novel. But it’s true. Because part of writing the many stories woven into Have Blue Sky has meant reconnecting with friends to ask them about their experiences, and ask them who else I might talk to as part of the writer’s detective work unravelling historical events, before figuring out how best to render them into the dramatic arc of a novel.
I knew exactly where I wanted to begin the story: with the crash of the F-117 outside Bakersfield, California in 1986.
At the time, the very existence of the airplane was still “Top Secret.” I wanted to tell that story through the eyes of a female reporter assigned to cover the crash. To be sure I got the technical details of reporting right, I called my friend Robert Pondiscio, who had once written for USA Today. I asked him how a story would be assigned to a young reporter. I also asked him how a news conference in Washington D.C. – announcing the existence of the F-117 – would have been communicated to the newspapers on the west coast in the days before the internet.
“For defense stories,” Robert said. “You should talk to my friend Mark Thompson. He covered the U.S. military with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Time Magazine.” He connected me with Mark. I told Mark I was starting a novel and that one of my main characters would be a female reporter with the Bakersfield newspaper. Mark answered my questions and then said: “You know, I know a reporter who worked at The Bakersfield Californian in the mid-1980s. Would you like to talk to him?” Mark connected me with Bob Cox, who told me about the Bakersfield newspaper, and then said: “You know, there was a female reporter who covered that plane crash back in 1986. Would you like to talk to her?”
I had created a fictional reporter without realizing there was an actual female reporter who had covered the story, and here was a chance to talk to her.
Bob connected me with Kathy Freeman. As Kathy and I talked she said: “You know, my husband, Jess Baker, saw the crash. He was a Sergeant in the Kern County Sheriff’s Office at the time, driving back to Bakersfield in the middle of the night. He saw the fireball in the mountains east of the city. He’s the one who called it in.”
This is why writing Have Blue Sky has been a joy.
It has been a chance to connect with people, some strangers, some old friends, to listen to their stories about the F-117. To bring those stories to life.
And what I have described above just covers the story of Chapter 1.
The subsequent chapters have provided their own share of unexpected discoveries.
Unexpected, in many cases, even to the author.