Better known as Bobby Dee, he has spent the past 20 years serving up good food and great times at his Rock’n Chair restaurant. Now, Dee has begun a new chapter, transitioning from full-time barkeeper to published author.
This year Dee debuted not one, but two suspenseful thriller novels: “Apparition,” followed shortly after by its sequel, “Apparition: Shadow Hunt.” Inspired by thriller novels from iconic authors such as Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and David Baldacci, the lifelong fan of the genre was confident he could emulate their craft.
“I finished one of their books one day and I said to myself, ‘I could do this,’” Dee says. “Not that I put myself anywhere near those guys, but I still wanted to see if I could write a similar story. I just came up with an idea and started writing a little bit at a time.”
The “Apparition” novels tell the action-packed story of Sam Roadway, a former Navy SEAL turned NYPD detective. Roadway has a secretive past, operating numerous covert missions while in the military, but former rivals from his past life of combat reemerge and wreak havoc in his present career as a New York cop.
“Sam was probably the first character that I came up with,” Dee says. “He’s one of the main characters, but there are actually a couple of stories within the story. There are different doctors involved, and they may not be good, but they end up trying to be good, and it kind of turns the whole plot around. There’s quite a bit going on.”
The two-part fictional tale follows heroes, villains, and characters who toe the line between good and evil. “Apparition” is a roller coaster of nonstop twists around every turn, with skilled assassins and mercenaries competing to outsmart one another. Trusted allies become foes, antagonists switch sides, and loved ones make the ultimate sacrifice in this pulse-pounding duo of novels.
The fictional “Apparition” universe is the culmination of eight long years of writing and rewriting for Dee. At first, he could only find time to write during his few winter months spent in Florida. Any time he was back in New Jersey during the summer months, he was fully entangled in his multiple business ventures, so telling Sam Roadway’s story hit many roadblocks over the years.
The writing process was also a grueling one for Dee, as at the time he found it easier to handwrite the entirety of his two stories onto yellow legal pads and later type them onto his computer. “I would never do that again, of course,” he admits. “I’m not the fastest typist in the world, so that obviously took a lot more time.”
Dee’s authoring hit its stride two years ago when he and his wife, Gina, expanded their offseason at their winter home of Marco Island, Fla., to seven months out of the year. “The last two winters, I put a lot of time into it, and said to myself, ‘I’m going to finish this. I want to be done.’”
He put so much time and effort into “Apparition” that he ended up with too many words for just one book. Thriller novels typically run about 90,000 words, but Dee had written an astounding 300,000. “I guess I probably should have Googled how many words are actually in a normal fiction book,” he says.
Not long after finishing what he thought would be a single novel, Dee knew he needed help trimming things down. He enlisted the help of a freelance editor on the internet who helped him cut the copy down to 200,000 words, construct some of the chapters, and decide where to split Sam Roadway’s story into two separate books.
“It was a process,” Dee says. “I’ve never written a thing in my life, so it was a learning experience. Everything just took a little bit of time, because it was all new to me.”
Through this process, Dee also learned how to self-publish and make his books available for sale on Amazon in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle formats. “Apparition” hit virtual bookshelves and the Rock’n Chair host table on Aug. 4. Family, friends, and restaurant regulars quickly became fans of his work.
“Many of our customers who bought it and read it, couldn’t put it down,” Dee says. “A couple of people bought it the day it came out on Kindle, and they read it in like two days.”
The Sam Roadway sequel, “Apparition: Shadow Hunt,” was released shortly after on Sept. 4. While Dee does plan to continue the “Apparition” story somewhere down the line, he’s already moved on to his next writing venture, which is unrelated to his existing stories.
“It’s completely different,” he says. “It’s more of a mystery. It’s similar with detectives involved, the feds, a different chemist, and people running for president, things like that. We’ll see how it comes out. It’s a work in progress. Then maybe once I finish that, I’ll go back to the ‘Apparition’ books and make a third.”
What comes next for the budding author remains unwritten, but whatever Dee publishes next will be out of pure passion for writing rather than chasing a check.
“I didn’t do it for the money,” Dee says. “I could care less about what it makes or doesn’t make. It was more just to see if I could do it. If nothing else, I would just hand the books out to my friends and family. The goal was just to see if I could actually do it.”
And now, he has.
“I don’t know if I’m a great writer, but I think I’m a pretty good storyteller,” Dee says. “I think the story in the book is pretty well done. Don’t ask me where that came from or how I got it, maybe it was my mother, I must have got creativity from somebody. I guess I was probably a little more creative than I even thought I could be.”