About Mike Berke

Spending most of his career in equipment leasing sales, Mike Berke’s employers included Leasco Capital Corporation (now Reliance Group, Inc.), Sussex Leasing Corp., Eaton Financial Corporation and AT&T Capital Corporation.

During that time he also trained hundreds of personnel from manuals, instructional guidelines and how-to’s he wrote, additionally authoring numerous articles for industry association publications, magazines, periodicals and newsletters. He frequently performed as speaker, moderator, panelist and participant at national, regional, and local industry association conferences arranged by groups including the Equipment Leasing Association (ELA), Eastern Association of Equipment Lessors (EAEL) and National Association of Equipment Leasing Brokers (NAELB).

In 1994 he authored the 250-page text Selling Equipment Leasing, published by the AMACOM division of The American Management Association. Currently out of print, the book is still available through resale.

An avid reader, mostly of popular fiction, it was that pastime that inadvertently nudged Mike into writing fiction. A couple of years ago he mentioned to a friend, Carroll Suddath, a teacher of creative writing, that he had just read several books by well-known writers, each having seemingly far-fetched or outlandishly contrived endings. Telling her this was not only frustrating as a reader, but also upsetting because of the waste of valuable time, she replied, “You’re a writer. If that’s what you really think, write something better."

Not really knowing how to respond to the challenge and certainly never considering fiction writing as a pastime, much less a new career, Mike put a short chapter on a page or two and e-mailed them to Carroll as a lark. Asking her thoughts several days later, she said "Write some more."

Mike asked, "About what?"

"Just go on from where you left off," she replied.

Really thinking about the work for the first time, Mike continued the story which soon evolved into the semblance of a novel. Continuing to receive positive reinforcement from Carroll, adding others to a growing group of supportive readers, after several stops and restarts the work finally came to fruition.

Hopefully, Mike’s readers will agree that Hot Cole is worth the reading time and that Bobby Cole himself gets the job done and well within the realm of reality.

 

 

About Bobby Cole

Bobby Cole, a bartender in Manhattan, realizes his life is going nowhere, when suddenly two strangers enter his world and turn it upside-down. Soon Bobby finds himself working for an insurance company, providing bodyguard services for the seriously wealthy…as well as their unspeakably valuable possessions. When Bobby and his girlfriend break up a robbery attempt at a glitzy boating party, they inadvertently infuriate a leader in the Russian Mafia, who swears to take vengeance on them. Plenty of action, fights, chases and suspense ensue as Bobby tries to stay one step ahead of the mob and help police capture a dangerous criminal.