George Bryan Polivka

Award winning producer turned novelist, George Bryan Polivka, attended Bible college in Alabama. He then ventured to Europe where he studied under Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland. He returned to Alabama, enrolling at Birmingham-Southern College as an English major.

In 1986, Bryan won an Emmy for writing his documentary, “A Hard Road to Glory,” which detailed the difficult path African Americans traveled to achieve recognition through athletic success during times of racial prejudice and oppression.

Bryan and his wife of twenty-seven years, Jeri, live near Baltimore with their two children.




What book or project is coming out or has come out that you’d like to tell us about?


The Trophy Chase Trilogy is in the midst of being published, with Book One, called The Legend of the Firefish now out, and Book Two coming out this summer. It’s fantasy, set in a time of swords and cannons, pirates, and of course monstrous sea serpents that can destroy a tall ship in a single lunge.

Tell us about your journey to publication. How long had you been writing before you got the call you had a contract, how you heard and what went through your head.

It’s a long story, because it was a long journey, but I’ll try to be mercifully brief. I wrote my first novel in 1981. I got my first contract in 2006. In those twenty-five intervening years, I wrote ten novels and two non-fiction titles and collected lots of rejections. I’m not good with rejection, and early on I decided it didn’t suit me. So I just kept writing, focusing on getting better, assuming that if I wrote something good enough no sane publisher could possibly reject it.

How did I learn I had a contract?


I was driving on Central Expressway in downtown Dallas on a business trip (we live in Baltimore) when my wife called me and told me to pull over. She then forwarded an email to my Blackberry (yeah, I’m one of those). It was from Nick Harrison of Harvest House. Then she insisted that I stay on the line while I read it aloud to her.

By this time, of course, I had a good idea that HH was interested in the first book, because that’s all I had submitted. That email said they wanted to sign me to a three-book deal, and publish the whole trilogy. It was an amazing moment, partly because Dallas is where my wife was born and raised, and where both my children were born, and it’s like home to me. It just seemed right. In fact, the next day there was a big story in the Dallas Morning News about some high schoolers in a Dallas suburb who had discovered the fossilized remains of a huge, predatory fish long extinct, whose skeleton was the spitting image of what I had conjured as the Firefish. In Dallas! I was, if I might say it, sailing.

Do you still experience self-doubts regarding your work?

Hah! Every artist must have self-doubts, because there is no art without taking risks. The greater the art, the bigger the risk. Show me an artist who does not have self-doubts, and I’ll show you either an arts-and-crafts professional, or a delusional egotist. Okay, that’s maybe too strong. But the answer is yes. Now, to put it in context, these doubts often come on the heels of great certainty, that elated feeling that I’ve just written the finest lines of my life. But the doubts do come, and they are very real. And the worst part of it is, sometimes they are justified!

What mistakes have you made while seeking publication?

I can honestly say I don’t know of any mistakes I’ve made in this regard. I always knew that God could get me published whenever He wanted to. That’s not just putting a good face on a long run of bad experiences.

The first novel I tried to get published made it to the final vote of the editorial board at Zondervan, back in the early 80’s. My agent (I had managed to land one at the time, which I’ve since learned is a really hard thing to do) told me it would get published, that the final vote was a formality. But it wasn’t. I was blackballed by an editor who said she “didn’t have a feel for it.” I took that as confirmation that I was good enough to get published, but it wasn’t God’s timing. And though the next quarter century would be extremely difficult in this regard, I didn’t kick against that. I tried to get each book published, and when the door was slammed shut, as it always was, I just said, “Okay, I get it. Not yet.” And I kept writing.

Rejection always drove me to write something else,
something better.

This experience with Harvest House has been so rich, so right, that I wouldn’t do it any differently, looking back.

What’s the best advice you’ve heard on writing/publication?

That’s two questions, and I have two answers. For publication, the best advice I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard it from many sources, is, focus on writing, not on being a writer. I’ve heard of people who come up with an idea, or an outline, or a couple of sample chapters, and then spend years trying to get a contract so they can write the book. That is just beyond comprehension to me. Those people need to look hard in the mirror and recognize that they aren’t writers. A writer writes.

And the best advice I’ve heard for writing is, just write the good stuff. Don’t put off a scene you’re really excited about because there’s all this build-up that has to happen first. When you can see it in your mind, and feel the excitement in your chest, write it. You can go back and fill in the other stuff later, if it’s necessary. Often, it’s not, and you find out it only needs a line or two for continuity.

What’s the worst piece of writing advice you’ve heard?

I don’t know that I’ve ever had someone give me bad advice about writing. I have generally steered clear of writing classes and workshops, preferring to read and study great literature and hope I could absorb something. The advice I’ve often gotten and mostly ignored, though, is that I should write for a well-defined audience in a particular genre.

The idea of writing for publishers, to give them something safe that they will publish, just never sat well with me.

I don’t know why, because as a professional in entertainment, and then in online education, that’s all I have ever done… create quality products for specific audiences that I’m sure will sell. But somehow when it comes to writing, that approach never motivated me. It’s the one area of my life where I can go where I want to go, or where I feel drawn to go, without worrying about making a buck. Or keeping my job. I want to take audiences with me, not go where there are.

What’s something you wish you’d known earlier that might have saved you some time/frustration in the publishing business?

Time is something I don’t think I could have saved. I wasn’t ready to be published for 25 years, and I’m okay with that. But frustration? I could have done a better job of remembering that God works on his own timetable. I wouldn’t even call what I went through frustration, really. Frustration is when you can’t get to a meeting on time because someone tried to make a U-turn in front of three lanes of traffic. In my lowest times, what I experienced was much more like a deep, abiding pain. Not to be melodramatic. But it hurt, deeply, and for a long time.

Is there a particularly difficult set back that you’ve gone through in your writing career you are willing to share?

Nothing I haven’t already spoken about. Just to give you an idea of the pain of being an unpublished author for that long, I went from talking about my writing, to never mentioning it, to describing myself, finally, as a failed author.

I mean, when you’ve written a dozen books in 25 years and never gotten one of them published, even your family starts thinking maybe you ought to hang it up.

It starts to seem a little crazy, and I don’t mean just goofy.

What are a few of your favorite books? (Not written by you.)


I love talking about this. I have a long and eclectic list, but to keep it somewhat short… A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, The Path Between the Seas and The Great Bridge by David McCollough, Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney (no other will do), War in Heaven by Charles Williams, and of course, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien and The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. I also love Lewis’s Perelandra.

What piece of writing have you done that you’re particularly proud of and why?

In The Legend of the Firefish there are a couple of scenes that I really like, but I’m most pleased with the character development. Particularly the supporting characters. There are two sailors aboard the Trophy Chase in whom I delight, and readers seem to share that opinion. One of them is Smith Delaney, a simple man who sees no shades of gray even where it is quite obvious that there are many. His forthright, uneducated but bluntly wise comments always make me smile.

His companion, a very young sailor named Marcus Pile, is similarly uneducated, but almost painfully earnest in his faith. When he prays out loud, I feel like he taps into all the fears and hopes of believers, with all the doubts and questions intact, but none of the self-consciousness.

It’s the kind of honesty that is a breath of fresh air. Not to mention, quite humorous. And then there’s the Firefish. We get into the beast’s head, and know its thoughts, its rationale for all it does. The fact is, it gets most everything wrong, thinking for example that the rowboat it seas from beneath the water is some kind of shellfish, its oars tiny, inadequate little fins. But this skewed world view does not diminish the fearsome quality of its predatory instincts; rather, it somehow makes it more frightening. At least to me. Sort of like the madman whose wild theories drive him to murder. I’ve finished writing all three books now, and I have to say it was sad to write the last words spoken, or thought, by these characters.

Do you have a pet peeve having to do with this biz?

I’m new to it, after all these years, and it’s quite exciting for me, so there’s nothing I could say that peeves me. But there does seem to be a lot of focus on writing and being a writer, instead of on the content and meaning of what’s written. That has sort of surprised me. There’s a lot of theology between the lines in my books, and few seem to want to address it directly. And yet, that’s the important stuff. What does it mean? I’d love to see more dialog in the industry around that question.

Take us through your process of writing a novel briefly—from conception to revision.

Conception takes a long time. I tend to mull basic stories and settings, looking for an intersection. I would love to write a story set in the time of my childhood, the late 50’s and early sixties. I started one once, but I’m not sure it’s the right plot, or the right characters. All those things have to come together. The main thing is that there needs to be a significant conflict between and among the protagonists and antagonists that doesn’t have a ready solution. It has to be something that will take a lot of time and different situations to work out. I’ve started novels, written fifty pages, and had the whole thing resolved.

The actual writing is just taking the time to work on it. I write early in the mornings, and when I’m on a roll I’ll put in 15-20 hours a week, mostly between 5 and 7 AM. The hard part comes deep into the book. If I need to set it aside for a week or more, which sometimes happens when you’re married with kids and have a demanding career, then I have to go back to page one and start reading again, to rebuild the momentum. I’ve written a book every two years or so on that schedule. Of course, with the Trophy Chase contracts, I had to write two books in just over a year, which was quite a strain all the way around. But the process is no different.

Do you have a dream for the future of your writing, something you would love to accomplish?

I would love to sell enough books that Harvest House is content to keep publishing other books. That, and I’d like to change the world. Just those two things.

Was there ever a time in your writing career you thought of quitting?

Yes! I gave it up once. Lasted maybe a week.

What is your favorite and least favorite part of being a writer?

Favorite part is the actual writing. Least favorite part is trying to get published. I have new favorite part, though, which is reading nice things people say about my books. That’s quite satisfying, at least for a few minutes. It’s icing on the cake, and like icing, it creates a sugar rush that crashes pretty quickly. Thankfully. Writers with big heads don’t write well.

How much marketing/publicity do you do? Any advice in this area?

I don’t do nearly enough. I mean well, but I’m such a rookie, and until a couple of weeks ago I had to focus on getting the books written. Or that was my excuse. And self-promotion is not something I’m comfortable doing. Planning these things, trying to get on radio shows and the like, just feels like scheming to me. So I tend to put it off. But I realize it’s important. Ask me in a year, hopefully I’ll have some advice to offer by then!

Have you received a particularly memorable reader response?

Yes. I’ve been blessed with some really humbling praise, but here’s the one that sticks in my mind, posted to
http://www.christianbook.com/:

“Before Firefish, I had been looking for a good piece of Christian fantasy. Something with the vivid descriptions of Tolkien (by whom I compare all other fantasy novels), the clear, profound messages of Lewis, and plenty of adventure. And that's when I found this book. Polivka takes a stunning message of hope and faith and puts it into an adventure like no other. By the first chapter I was hooked, by the fifth I didn't want it to end. I felt so deeply for the characters - even the ones which I would normally be disinclined to like. No other author I have seen has ever done that. Packer and Panna captivated me; they're real people who learn and grow spiritually, without seeming perfect or ‘preachy’. I recommend this book highly, for readers of any genre.”

Parting words?

If you’re a writer, trust God, and write. Get good at it, and He’ll take care of the rest. If you’re a reader, and you read something you really like, tell everyone you know. Post reviews. Help promote it. Put the link to the bookseller of your choice in an email. It’s hard to sell books, and it mostly happens by word of mouth.

So don’t wait for the book to take off before you talk it up, or worse, don’t wait for someone to make it into a movie. That won’t happen without book sales. Help out us poor souls who can maybe write, but can’t promote themselves. And, thanks for asking.