Bill Westbrook
When Bill Westbrook sat down in December 2015 in his library at his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, to write his first novel, he didn’t have a plan. Other than he’d always wanted to write a novel, he loved history and sailing—he particularly loved sailing in the Caribbean—and he wanted to honor his close friend and colleague, Pat Fallon, who had recently died.
“I just typed a name at the top of the page—Nicholas Fallon—and I started writing,” Westbrook says. “I didn’t know what he looked like, what year it was, the decade he was alive, I just started.”
A little unorthodox perhaps. But several months and 26 drafts later, it worked—despite Westbrook’s own inhibitions and fears. After all, while Westbrook’s professional forte was writing, it was of the 60-second variety; he excelled in writing ads for television.
“I’ve always loved the written word and when I tried to start a novel several times, I couldn’t get past the 60-second mark,” Westbrook says. “I didn’t have any confidence I could hold anyone’s interest past that.”
Westbrook is a former Irvington resident and entrepreneur of advertising guru fame who aims to resettle in Irvington next year. Westbrook released The Bermuda Privateer in September. It’s a 328-page, action-packed nautical novel set in the 18th-century sailing waters of the Caribbean.
The novel follows privateer Capt. Nicholas Fallon’s relentless pursuit of the wicked pirate Jak Clayton through sea battles, a deadly hurricane, imprisonment at the hands of Spanish soldiers and, ultimately, a final confrontation with Clayton.
Westbrook remains from his youth a voracious reader, counting among his close friends Frank and Joe Hardy, Sherlock Holmes and Horatio Hornblower. He likes adventure, puzzles and intrigue and, above all, the creative leaps of an imagination. They’re all fused together in The Bermuda Privateer.
Westbrook grew up in hot and dry Phoenix, Arizona, before his dad was transferred to Virginia when he was a teenager and he experienced hot and wet. He attended the College of William & Mary as an undergraduate, majoring in sociology and anthropology.
“I didn’t have a plan, the subject was just interesting to me,” Westbrook says of his major. “I liked anthropology because I liked studying other cultures.”
He loved his time at William & Mary.
“I loved the environment of the school,” Westbrook says. “Most of all I loved the culture of the campus. I loved its reverence for history and the physical environment. My experience at W&M impacted my whole life—it was an important time for me. Frankly, it looked like my vision of a college.”
After obtaining a master’s in sociology from the University of South Carolina, naturally Westbrook went into advertising. Who better to write advertising copy than one who’s an expert in culture?
“I never put the two things together,” he says. “In fact, one of the best writers I ever worked with was a geologist before advertising. I worked with people who had majored in chemistry or math. It just turned out they had this creative side.”
And passion. Westbrook likes to quote Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote: “Ships at adistance have everyman’s wish on board.”
Since he was 16, when he first caught sight of the sea and was forever drawn to it,that ship was out there. Carrying the promise of that first novel.
Follow Bill Westbrook and Capt. Nicholas Fallon Books at nicholasfallonbooks.com.
Find The Bermuda Privateer at amazon.com and other fine retail outlets.