Bruce Call

Welcome to my author page! I have been writing professionally for over 30 years, though most of my work has been for-hire projects for film and video. I love writing fiction, and I always follow the advice of Charles Dickens: write what you love to read.

I'm a morning writer. From 6 am to 2 pm I can churn out some serious word count. My first younger audience novel, The Treasure of Wicked King Noah (using the pen name C.C. Raubell), took me just two weeks to write, without a single word written after 3 pm.

Most of my novels written under my own name feature Jamie Beckett, a government employee with no discernible superpowers except sarcasm. People who know me ask if Beckett is really me. I tell them Beckett is who I would be if, in every situation, I could push a pause button, think of the perfect snarky comment, and push play again. I look forward to mornings I can devote to writing Beckett stuff, because, as weird as it sounds, I never really know what he's going to say next. Sometimes I actually laugh out loud as I write.

So while people who know me assume Beckett is me, people who know my wife understand he's really her. Patti is a university instructor who is not only smart and witty and quick with a comeback, but she--like Beckett--was born with grapheme-color synesthesia. GCS is a cross-wiring in the brain that causes people to see specific colors when looking at different numbers and letters of the alphabet. Because of her GCS, Patti has a photographic memory for long numbers. In all my married life, I've never had to write down or remember account numbers, policy numbers, or any other long strings of digits, because I have a wife who does that. She can still remember Social Security numbers of employees she managed in the 1980s.

So I guess Beckett has two superpowers: sarcasm and synesthesia, both inspired by my adorable wife, and both honed to perfection using my author's pause button. I hope you love Beckett as much as I love my wife (but in a different way), and if you're reading my Gray-eyed Girl books I hope you really enjoy the adventures of Haley and Pete.