Don J. Bewley Profile

I was an electrician for most of my adult life until becoming bored and going to college at the age of forty-eight to earn an AAS in Laser Electro-optics. Went to work for a defense contractor as a physicist’s assistant doing optical splicing experiments for a fiber optic gyro initially developed for the SDI ‘brilliant pebble’ orbital anti-missile missile. Loved the work but twenty plus years as a union electrician ill prepared me for the corporate shark tank and I returned to my previous specialty of automation and motor controls. A series of unforeseen events wafted me to Maui where I went to work as an electrician at the Air Force observatory on top of the dormant volcano Haleakala. A great job around highly intelligent people at one of the most beautiful places on the planet until a stroke brought an untimely end to it along with sport flying, riding motorcycles, playing pool and sex. (I truly could not tell you which I miss the most because at the age of seventy the latter is not near as important as once it was.) Thankfully the stroke had no effect on my cognitive abilities so I was able to shift my artistic leanings from pen and ink art to creative writing which I found to be more addictive than nicotine (though I do have to type one handed.) My eclectic reading preference, A lifelong passion for science and technology and all things related to aviation and space, added to short term exposures to flight simulators while in the Air Force, shrimp boats, and oil field tankers provides me with a wealth of experiences to draw from when arriving at ideas for stories or creating characters. Whether or not I have the talent to make proper use of them remains to be seen. It is my hope this community can nudge me along the path to that end or, at worse, possess the honesty to suggest I back away from the keyboard and return to the drawing table.