Spotlight On Writers
Stephen Michael Berberich
- Where do you originate from?
Several years ago, my wife and I took a long journey by train across the United States. On the return ride, we decided to each pick the most beautiful state of the many we enjoyed seeing. Upon arriving back at Union Station on Massachusetts Ave. NE, Washington, D.C. I called old Max, who ‘brung us,’ as he would say at his rural one-taxicab service. We discussed the scenery of each state over coffee while we waited. We both decided that our home state of Maryland was the most beautiful we’d seen from the train.
I grew up in a small town near Baltimore that was most conventional in every way. People were content with how things were. I still would trust anyone in that town to write a will, do my taxes, or care for my mother. However, by age 15, I yearned to escape the good and honest town and experience the dark and risky life beyond.
With my head now filled with several decades of the stories of good and bad places and people, which I published as a journalist, I am retired with my wife on a small farm in rural Maryland, not far from where the old taxicab man Max once lived.
- What do you cherish most about the place you call home?
Nature. I designed the layout of the house from blueprints my wife and I selected in a dusty paperback picture book we bought at a modest book stall in West Africa in the 1980s. I designed our home landscaping from learning gardening from my mom and my crazy, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants landscaping service, which paid for college and grad courses in horticulture. Much later, I planted fictional fantasies of that experience throughout my gardening novel, The Misadventures of Maximum Green.
Today, we live surrounded by mature, flowering crepe myrtles (gifts from research scientists I knew at the U.S. National Arboretum in D.C.). We enjoy a fishpond, shade of hardwood trees, perennial border gardens, and abundance of visitors of the animal kind. My wife has named her favorite deer Daniele who brings her new spotted fawns by the house each summer. The land is also habitats for squirrels, rabbits, skunks, foxes, groundhogs, many migrating and overwintering bird species, and occasional wild turkeys and peacocks. So isolated, we didn’t get Covid and my wife is recovering from brain cancer surgery in a quiet, peaceful setting.
- What ignites your creativity?
I saw Kurt Vonigutt on TV once respond to the question, “How do you create your characters?” I paraphrase his answer as simply, ‘My family.’ I remember laughing. Yes, I can relate. Characters based on my friends and family, passed and current, pop up in all of my six novels and a few of my published short stories, most notable was Mama Moseley on Spillwords.com. We loved that cat so much, I can’t express.
What ignites my creativity besides acquaintances? True stories. I encourage new writers to dig deep into their memories for ideas. Last week on an online group call of caregivers, I told a young man, who is caring for his young fiancée with systemic cancer, to try to write short stories. He was crying and sought outlets from the group. He spoke of his new life dominated by caregiving. I thought he was a conceptual thinker and a superb storyteller. “Think back to your most intriguing experiences,” I suggested. “And then, give the real people in those real experiences false names and let your fingers on the keyboard tell a fictional story. It takes me away from my troubles for a little while. It can work for you,” I said.
That is what ignites my creativity. My friend Rosalia Scalia, author of the short story anthology, Under the Radar, once looked at me in a newsroom as if I was bothering her with my life’s stories. She pleaded with me to write them down. I took her advice and my fiction writing life began. Over the holidays that year, I wrote the first 10K pages of my first novel, Night at the Belvedere.
- Do you have a favorite word, and could you incorporate it into a poetic phrase?
My favorite word as a fiction writer is publish, e.g.:
We’ll publish your book as is.
It could be another Le Mis
All 250 thousand words are brilliant, no doubt.
What did you say your book is about?
I did write a complete 247K-word novel that I think will never be published, because it is too long and too controversial. The protagonist is a tragic little guy I knew who was struggling to find meaning when we were in the U.S. Navy. With due respect to necessary wars and soldiers doing their patriotic duties, the story covers 1967 to 1974. I make a case that unpopular wars don’t stop hurting people on battlefields but continue to cause permanent damage to millions of vulnerable, naïve souls in the homeland.
- What is your pet peeve?
To borrow FCC Chairman Newton Minow’s famous 1961 quote, broadcasting news has become a “vast wasteland” of journalism. (Minow said television was a vast wasteland of the intellect.)
I won’t get into the outrageous expansion of opinionated newspaper reporting online. Save those tears for another day, as the song goes. But meanwhile, many “news” reporters on TV and radio no longer play it straight, that is, without bias. A quick glance is still worth checking to see if your world is still intact. Stay on a news station, however, and you must bear personal comments by anchors after every single report. “That is tragic indeed.” “Wonderfully heartening story.” “And, such a trend is happening nationwide, folks.” WHO SAYS? So, we ask why young people say they get their “news” from social media like Facebook? Tune in TV news; you’ll find out. Most of my career I covered science and medicine, which offered little room for opinions from a reporter. I also get peeved at arrogant broadcast stars who abuse others to further their careers. See my novel In a Dark Place.
- How would you describe the essence of Stephen Michael Berberich?
I am honest and caring with my readers. I want them to learn something, period. During the long winter and spring months while staying home to care for my ailing wife, I enhanced and rewrote sections of every one of my novels. With those six mysteries fresh in my mind, with lots of characters and storylines, I learned the essence of my fiction. I realized that, although I had always been diligent to keep my opinions out of my news reporting, my feelings on important issues are at the heart of each of my novels. Now I can see what I do. I relax and show concern. My first novel explores mental health, the second racism and fraud in real estate development, the third about corporate business shenanigans, the fourth about the hazards of starting a small landscaping company against all manner of local sharks and cheats, the fifth about wounded warriors panhandling, and the sixth about my peeve over broadcasting bullies I mentioned above.
- Spotlight On Writers – Stephen Michael Berberich - September 26, 2026
- A Healing Song, 9/11 - September 13, 2026
- Mama Moseley - March 5, 2026
