Born to Be Wild
Barry Bowe stands for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. He became a writer at forty-five after being fired from a lucrative sales management position. He moved to St. Croix and vowed to never again work in the corporate world, to chase the muse, and to learn the craft of writing. He taught algebra, geometry, and trigonometry at Country Day School and worked as a bartender while taking correspondence courses. He landed a sports writing job with the territory’s Daily News. He broke his cherry with “A Taste for Revenge” in the men’s magazine Cavalier. He made daily commutes by air to a screenwriting workshop conducted by Jurgen Wolff on St. Thomas. Advised he could make it in Hollywood, he quit his job and moved to Venice Beach. He wrote a TV pilot, but the production company ran out of funds. Unemployed, he returned to the islands and became a freelance writer. He found a niche in detective magazines and wrote more than 100 true murder stories. He returned to the States and pitched the concept of Born to Be Wild to Connie Clausen, a literary agent in Manhattan. She liked him, liked the idea, and auctioned the book to nine publishers. Warner Books made a preemptory bid and he accepted. Born to Be Wild was originally published by Warner Books in 1994 and consisted of 80,000 words. The 2014 version was bumped to 124,600 words. Born to Be Wild became a Main Selection of Doubleday’s Book of the Month Club and was translated into German under the title: Der Wilde.--This text refers to thePaperbackedition.