Tom Kirkbride Bullet Biography

Tom's Narrative Bio

My parents were born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. They met on a blind date at a high school party in 1935. My dad walked my mother home that night and never asked another girl out. What really sealed the deal, according to my mother, was my grandmother’s cooking. They quickly had to find another chair at the dinner table for my dad. No one could make an apple or boysenberry pie like my grandmother. Her crusts were so delicate; an angel couldn’t walk on them without breaking them. No one knows if my dad graduated from high school or not, but the Marine Corps didn’t seem to care in 1938 when he joined. They were married a year after that when my dad returned home from Peking, China. Then the war broke out, and it wasn’t until ten years later that I came along.

I was born on the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton, California, very early in the morning. My first recollection of a home was a prefabricated semicircular structure called Quonset hut off the Main Gate. It wasn’t much by today’s standards, but to a 3 year old boy who only cared about the next meal and his dog, it was paradise. You could see the beach a mile away, too. For the next six years our small family traveled between Camp Pendleton, Long Beach and Hawaii. Most of the time wherever the Marine Corps sent my dad, my mom and I were able to go, too. Living in Hawaii was great fun. The water was always warm and that is where I learned to swim. Who could ask for better conditions? When I was nine years old, we moved to Long Beach, California where I lived through my high school years and two years of college. When I was twelve we almost moved to Camp Lajeune, North Carolina. But my dad nixed that. While they were lying in bed my dad cried out, “Phyllis, I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to pack us up and move another 3,000 goddamn miles!  We’re staying put, gawwwwwdammit!!” That was his favorite expletive. Although he never hit me once, try crossing a 250 lb., Bronze Star recipient, Marine and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Whenever I did get out of line, a barking order was quite sufficient.

My early years were filled with sports, primarily baseball and swimming. Living so close to the ocean, water and the waves were always a part of my life. When I wasn’t swimming, I was playing baseball. I started out with Little League, earning an All-Star position on every team I played on since I was eleven. Unfortunately, none of my All-Star teams went very far in the playoffs but my individual teams did quite well and I was lucky enough to be a part of many winning teams. When I reached high school, I was one of eleven players to make the team that first year out of over a 130 players that tried out. I played varsity baseball my junior and senior years. At one time I had aspirations of playing professional baseball, but a motorcycle accident broke my right collar bone so that cut short my dreams of playing beside Mickey Mantle. When I wasn’t playing baseball, I was surfing with my best friends, Dennis DeHaas and Jerry Stein. They were my neighbors across the street. One of my fondest memories were the  summers when my Dad was stationed at San Onofre in Camp Pendleton. He would go to work at 4:00 a.m. and take the three of us, with all our surfboards, and they were big, 9 footers in those days, and our German Shepherd dog, Champ, in his Mini Cooper to the surf beach just north of the Nuclear power plant not far from where he worked. All day we got to surf one of the best breaks on the planet for a whole summer. After he was done working, my dad would stuff us back into his Mini, along with my dog, and then we got to do it all over again the next morning. Man, that was heaven for us!

For most of my childhood we lived in a wonderful, middle-class, neighborhoods. There seemed to be an endless supply of kids to play with, but Dennis DeHaas was my closest friend. To this day, we talk often on the phone and see each other as much as our busy lives will allow. Dennis lived across the street and three houses down. He was eight and I was nine when we first met. I’ll never forget that day. He was riding his bike with his thick black hair and easy smile as he rode up to my door wondering if the new kid on the block would like to play. We’ve been playing ever since; surfing, scuba diving, skiing, camping, building secret forts in the backyard tree, playing guitars, and sharing our first Playboy magazine together. We’ve done as much as two boys could do growing up. Dave Zatz, my other best friend, came along in high school. Dave didn’t live across the street. He lived across town but we were old enough to drive when we met so it didn’t make any difference. Dave and I traveled a lot. Our first trip was to San Francisco during the hippie days. After that it was south of the border in my Volkswagen bug during our first college break. While everyone else went to Palm Springs, we did the cool thing with a trip to Acapulco! The next trip took all summer long across the country, ending up with a 10-day detour to Jamaica. What a time we had driving around the tropical island in a dune buggy. We would have spent more time driving around the States but I learned of Dennis’s mom dying in a car accident and had to get home. That was the first time in my life I ever lost someone close to me. She was not only a great lady but my second mom. Then in 1969 my dad passed away; a strong, funny man who could sing the Marine Corps hymn as well as Pavarotti.  I played my best baseball when he was watching me.  I was always proud to be his son. When he walked into a room in his uniform with medals dangling from his chest, you should have seen the guys’ mouths drop open in awe. “Yeah, that’s my dad,” I told them, grinning pompously. I miss him dearly.

My next great trip was to Europe in 1972, the year I graduated from college. Dennis started out with a fraternity brother of mine, Fred Nichols. The three of us traveled to England, Belgium and Holland before Dennis had to go home. Fred and I spent three months driving everywhere in Europe in the Volkswagen van we bought for a song in Amsterdam. It took us ten thousand miles and we only had to replace the starter and battery. Europe was where I started to become really interested in the arts. Seeing the statue of David in Florence, Italy inspired me to try my hand at sculpture and oil painting. I’ve never taken an art class, per se. I tried one, but they were too confining and rigid. Besides, when I painted, I worked long hours until was done. Working a couple of hours a day, just wasn’t fun. Immersing myself in my projects has always been my way of creating my works.

I attended Long Beach City College right out of high school.  Not knowing yet what I wanted to be when I “grew up.” I only knew that I didn’t want to work for anybody. I had seen too many times how unhappy my parents were coming home at the end of the day, depressed about their working, my mother more so  than my dad. My dad genuinely loved being a Marine. I didn’t like the idea of my dad being ordered around by anyone I felt was inferior to him. I promised myself I would never hold that position in life. I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t a very good student. I managed to squeeze by with a 2.0 grade point average, which was just enough to get me into San Diego State. In those days, as long as you were breathing, and had a 2.0, you were accepted. My roommate, Steve Zieg and I had a great two bedroom apartment right on the beach on South Mission. It was only $175 a month, and furnished, too. The only problem was we had to give it up during the summer for the weekly rentals that were way above our pay grade. Like Hawaii, the summers in San Diego were paradise. I joined the San Diego Lifeguard service as a seasonal guard in my junior year of college and continued guarding even after college for several seasons. Being a lifeguard on the ocean in La Jolla is everything one might expect of a cool job. Kids smile at you, guys envy you and the women . . .  Well, everything you’ve ever heard is true. This was also the time I was doing my sculptures. The guards had seen some of my surfer sculptures and ask me to do one for the Lifeguard of the Year Trophy, which I did, and it is still used today as the permanent trophy at their annual awards ceremonies.

Still not knowing what I wanted to do when I “grew up,” I went on to study law at a small school in Fullerton, California. It took me two years to figure out law wasn’t for me, either. So I earned my teacher’s credential and substituted for another year before I moved from San Diego to Park City, Utah. I spent six fun years there, learning how to ski well and build custom homes. One might think that living in Utah, seeing nature, and a riot of crystal clear stars at night, is where I first began to write. And you would be right. The stars are incredible and Southern Utah, where I’ve camped many nights, is truly one of earth’s natural wonders.  It was then I began writing my first novel called The Find. It was the story of  a dying boy who, along with his lifelong buddy, find a spaceship in the middle of the Utah desert that saves his life. The ship takes them to a distant world where he meets a woman that he saves from someone who would rather see her dead than with anyone else. The story had potential, but structurally my writing was terrible. Maybe I’ll revisit it someday and try to publish it.

In the mid-80's the real estate market tanked in Park City, so I moved back to Long Beach and began buying apartments with what little money and credit I had left. I never stopped writing and getting rejections, however, and signed up for a novel writing class taught by the best and my only writing professor, Frank Gasper. His approach was simple: “Write every day and sooner than you realize, you’ll have your novel. A day without writing is a day lost. You can’t get it back.” I cannot imagine a writing instructor that was better than Frank. My only caveat to that is “never re-write Chapter One until the last chapter is written.” That was 20 years ago and I still see many of my classmates to this day. Darlene Quinn, Susan Posner, Bob Telford, Evelyn Marshall, and a new writer and author to our group, Kathy Porter, I rely on heavily for their input and opinions and will always do so. Without their help and support, I’m certain my books would not be what they are today. It is with this small group of thoughtful, intelligent friends that my Gamadin series took its eventual course. My first draft was in 1986. Then it was simply called: Gamadin.  There it languished for a number of years because I got married in 1987 and became the father of a wonderful baby girl we named Lara Allison. The marriage ended a short time later but I refused to have my daughter cared for by anyone but myself or her mother. My writing, then, had to take a back seat to my responsibility of being a father. In the beginning I had visions of writing while my daughter was taking her afternoon nap or sleeping at night. I soon discovered how naive that vision was. Parenting is tough work.  More often than not, I found myself sleeping right along with her. Changing diapers, feeding and cleaning was exhausting. When she slept, I slept. Then as she got older, it was piano lessons, soccer and softball. Drive here, go there, pickup this or that. I wrote only now and again, but like Frank said, you need to write every day to get anything done. But if I had it all to do over again, I would not change a single fatherly moment with my daughter. Seeing her play the piano, kick the ball into the goal, hit a triple to win the game was no greater thrill for me. Everything else will be second compared to those moments with her. She’s off to college now, enjoying her college days like I did. The time went by so quickly. It seemed like only moments ago I was rocking her to sleep in my chair. Now that she’s away, writing every day is a no-brainer. It wasn’t until 2003 that I revisited my Gamadin manuscripts and began writing daily again. In October, 2007 I received a call from Greenleaf Book Publishers, saying they had accepted my manuscript. The caller’s name was Candice. I told her it was so nice to hear from a real live person who wanted my book instead of a form rejection letter. So if she heard dead silence on the other end of the phone, not to worry, I was trying to breathe. Hooray! After all this time, Book I was finally published last October, 2008.  I have also completed Book II in the series called Mons and Book III, Distant Suns. Both of which are ready for the editor. By the end of 2008 I completed the outline for Book IV, Gazz. How far will the Gamadin series go? Well, I'm not sure. But I do know that Book V is going to the galactic Core, it's a working title. And wherever Harlowe Pylott and his friends travel, I can thank my parents, my daughter, my writers group, Frank, all my pals, and now a very special person in my life, my fiancee, Francesca -- whose invaluable assistance to me has been a godsend -- I would be just another hack writer, for they are the ones that have given the Gamadin series life!