Today, Norm Goldman Publisher & Editor of Bookpleasures.com is pleased to have as our guest Wayne Harding author of His Edge: Three Women, Three Mentors, One Plane.
Good day Wayne and thanks for participating in our interview
Norm:
Please tell our readers a little bit about your personal and professional background.
Wayne:
I was born in 1921 in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Between schooling, athletics, and boy scouts, I spent lots of time in the Ozarks in my off-time. I entered Princeton in an accelerated engineering course in June 1941 and graduated February 1944. I went from Princeton to the Navy Induction Center in Brooklyn, NY. My flight training took me to Troy, NY; to Chapel Hill, NC; to Glenview, IL; and finally to Pensacola, FL for the final step advance flying where I passed and was awarded the wings of gold as a Navy pilot and commissioned Ensign in the US Navy. I went directly from Pensacola to Stratford, CT to be a test pilot for Chance Vought Aircraft in February 1946.
In February 1948, I resigned and returned to Ft. Smith, Arkansas to marry a girl I had known most of my life.
She and I began our married life in Kansas (16 years in Topeka) before we moved to Denver, Colorado in 1964.
I founded two businesses: Harding Glass and Harding Steel. I was active in YPO (Young Presidents Organization), Rotary, and served as vice-chair for the urban renewal project in Topeka. My wife of 51 years and I had five children who are happily married. I have 13 grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. My wife died in 2000 from complications of Alzheimers, and I remarried in 2004. Presently I am semi-retired and live in Boulder.
Norm:
What was the timeline between the time you decided to write His Edge: Three Women, Three Mentors, One Plane and publication? What were the major events along the way?
Wayne:
Twenty years and 10 to 12 manuscripts that is the time between my decision to write this novel and the publication of it. The major events along the way were checking my facts through research, re-visiting places in the novel, and reconnecting with some of my old friends.
Norm:
Could you briefly tell our readers something about your book and what motivated you to write it?
Wayne:
My motivation first: Dick Burroughs and Bill Millar, two test pilots also from Princeton, and their skills, integrity, and love of life. They motivated me.
About the book: It is about a young man who has ambition and enough talent to keep that fire burning, but he is missing a great need love, deep love, two-way love, which makes him question his direction in life. At this point, evil challenges him and tries to dislodge his faith.
Norm:
Did your book develop from an outline and did you write from your own experiences?
Wayne:
No outline; I wrote it from my experiences. I call it semi-autobiographical but made it fiction. That gave me leeway in some events, names, and places.
Norm
Is there a message in your book that you want your readers to grasp?
Wayne:
I hope my novel encourages and excites the reader to live life as a thrilling adventure within the boundaries of integrity and love, and to accept the evil as allowed by God to keep us sharp and sensitive to His awesomeness, if there is such a word.
Norm:
Do you agree that to have good drama there must be an emotional charge that usually comes from the individual squaring off against antagonists either out in the world or within himself or herself? If so, please elaborate and how does it fit into you novel?
Wayne:
Drama to be good must have conflict, within or from the outside. In His Edge, there is definitely conflict with the Brain acting as the evil quarterback, and the lightning acting as the Brains star player. The Brain is a nickname in the novel for a complex plane which needs to be tested.
Norm:
Do you have a specific writing style and is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
Wayne:
My writing style tends to embrace the shorter, more compacted sentences. In this particular novel (although I have also written non-fiction), I tend to engage in more dialogue than most novels. Some of my family says my writing reminds them of Hemingway.
Norm:
What do you like to do when you're not writing and what does your family think of your writing?
Wayne:
I am slightly involved in a couple businesses I founded and in some ministries. I also like to go to the gym several times a week. I have a very supportive family, and we see each other often.
Norm:
If you could switch places with someone famous, who would it be?
Wayne:
Lindbergh
Norm:
How can our readers find out more about you and your book and is there anything else you wish to add that we have not covered?
Wayne
I have a fantastic website: www.hisedgethebook.com. I try to post an article once every 10 days to 2 weeks which tells stories about the story. Many good reminiscences of the forties!
Thanks once again and good luck with His Edge: Three Women, Three Mentor
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