As I have said elsewhere, my career has been full of happy accidents and undeserved good fortune, and perhaps the best example of that is this book, “The American Fire Engine.” It sold many thousands of copies, made me a lot of money, and is still in print thirty years after publications.

My editor at MBI at the time was Greg Field who called with an offer of a contract for a book on fire engines. Now, there are some guys who are fascinated with fire engines (and fire trucks, a different breed), but I am not one of them. “No, thanks,” says I.

“It’s got a $12,000 advance,” Greg replied.

“Sure, I’d LOVE to do a book about fire engines!” I said, and the contract arrived soon after. Well, I didn’t know a thing about fire apparatus at the time but trotted down to the local Barnes & Noble to see what they already had on the shelf. Turns out there were lots of books about these vehicles. I had no intention of doing the same book that other people had already done and instead started thinking of doing a book about fire-fighting and how vehicles have been used and developed for that purpose.

I called up my local fire department and ended up talking to Capt. Dennis Madigan, the public information officer at the time, and he took me under his proverbial wing and started teaching me what I needed to know. Not only that, Dennis sent me to Supply and I got issued “turn-outs,” a helmet, boots, and a pager. If I was going to tell the story of the fire service, I needed to go to fires.

Most books on fire engines and trucks are what I call “library books,” their authors went to the library and rewrote what other books have been published previously. My approach is based on documentary film techniques and I try to become part of the community I am describing. That’s why Chapter One of this book tells the story of San Jose Fire’s Engine 8 and being “first due” at the big “Five Wounds church fire” that I told because I was there and on the fire ground. This book is different from the competition for many reasons, one of which is that it has a recipe for meat loaf in the first chapter.

So what makes a book a best-seller? When the publisher decides to promote it, to spend money on it. Without an investment in promotion, without the attention from reviewers, no book is going to sell in large numbers. I have done other books just as good or better that sold maybe 10,000 copies without promotion that might have done ten times that had the publisher invested in advertising.