C.B. Bernard

@cbbernard.com

1006 Followers 1271 Following

Novelist (ORDINARY BEAR, SMALL ANIMALS CAUGHT IN TRAPS), nonfiction writer (CHASING ALASKA). Pacific NW/Alaska expat in Rhode Island exile. Dogs, books, boats. Feet in the ocean, head in the clouds. Find me at www.cbbernard.com.

A cream colored dog lies on a cream colored rug, ignoring the people calling her name.
A stainless steel shrimp vessel hung with colossal shrimp.
Nessie, an English Cream Retriever, looking proud of herself in front of a green background after a needlessly expensive vet bill.
"This appears to be a long document. Save time by reading a summary using AI Assistant."
"A River Runs Through It" turns 50 this month. In getting to its exalted place, the book had to navigate a tricky set of rapids. Though it sailed through them, a question lingers half a century later: Would a book like this, with its regional setting and its male and outdoorsy focus, face different challenges in today's publishing world?
Two copies of Evan Morgan Williams' new story collection, THE DIVIDE, on a dark stained desktop.
Two copies of Evan Morgan Williams' story collection, THE DIVIDE, sit on another writer's desk, making his own manuscript a little sick with envy.
Nessie sitting for what looks like a studio portrait but is really just her waiting for me to finish writing so we can go for another walk. (A white English cream retriever looking somber against a dark background.)
The Pentagon had demanded the AI company loosen ethical guidelines on its systems or face severe consequences.
Is there a Fiat buried under that snow?
A young boy whose mother has dressed him so egregiously that she should have an appointment at The Hague pecks at an old typewriter. His hair looks like a horse has been chewing at it.
A notebook titled PEOPLE I WANT TO PUNCH IN THE FACE.
A black and white photo of the writer Jim Harrison, looking weathered, pensive, and old, with a cigarette in his mouth and a cloud of smoke rising like doves above his head.
A woman sits on a porch with a coffee. The headine says "Is it Monday? I"m not really into these things."
STAINS OF UNCERTAIN PROVENANCE 1 THE BEAR STOOD ON FARLEY’S SOFA RIPPING FOAM FROM THE CUSHIONS, day-old seal blood crusted on its jaws and chest. The sofa—a shade of green not readily found in nature—had belonged to an oil company investigator named Hennessy. When Hennessy left Alaska a decade earlier for Sand Point, Idaho, to marry a Russian woman he’d met online, Farley inherited the sofa along with his job, his company house, and the rust-hollowed Ford F-150 he drove. Some days Farley thought he’d inherited his lingering existential ambivalence as well. Too big for the house, the sectional extended the length of the living room and angled into the galley kitchen like a threadbare peninsula, blocking the fridge from opening more than a foot. It looked tiny beneath the bear, which dug through the cushions with a kind of joy, throwing stuffing behind it like snow. The real snow had melted early this year across much of the Arctic. The pack ice too. Watching from across the dump, Farley wondered if the bears had resorted to trying to make their own in the face of climate change. This fucking world, he thought. Not for the first time.
A flier promoting a conversation between novelist C. B. Bernard and Drinks in the Library host Gigi Howard on the EveryLibrary Live podcast, Wednesday, Nov. 12 at 7 PM.
Statue of a man dressed like Thurston Howell III, holding a martini glass, towering over the bluffs of Newport, RI.
Plastic tiny styles car on display.
Man stands in a field with his hands in his pockets, staring at the mountains. It says "Never miss a good chance to shut up."
A sitting U.S. congressman (guess which party) losing his mind in public about a chain restaurant's rebranding. He even gave his life to Christ in the parking lot.
A screenshot of a column by Washington Post book critic Ron Charles announcing the end of AP book reviews.
A notebook labeled "People I Want to Punch in the Face." It's very full.
Nessie the English cream retriever, raised on The Tragically Hip and pea meal bacon, rolls on her back after a Toronto Maple Leafs' loss.
Rain falls on boats at Stone Cove Marina in Wakefield, RI.
Netflix banner advertising something called "Trainwreck Poop Cruise," showing a cruise ship on a brown wave breaking out of a toilet.
Sign says Anti Putin, Pro Poutiine at today's No Kings Rally in Providence, RI.
An angry hemorrhoid, red with irritation.
An ad from Chirp showing the audiobook covers for the novels ORDINARY BEAR and SMALL ANIMALS CAUGHT IN TRAPS, by C. B. Bernard.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt releasing a schoolie striper on Cape Code.
Tired wooden plank shelves bowing beneath the books they carry.
Sign in a houseplant saying "I'm staging a comeback, please say nice and encouraging things."
White dog in a purple harness on a brown lawn.
The cover of Ron Currie's THE SAVAGE, NOBLE DEATH OF BABS DIONNE, showing a crow staring down at a smoking cigarette butt with a lipstick stain on the filter against a green background.
Mt. Edgecumbe last erupted April 1, 1974—or at least that’s what Sitka residents thought when they woke to funnels of dark smoke lofting from the cone. That morning, a local joker named Porky Bickar hired a helicopter, dropped a stack of oil-soaked tires into the basin, and set them on fire, a joke he’d planned for years waiting for an April Fool’s Day with clear skies. “Just don’t make an ass of yourself,” his wife told him when he got out of bed that day. Porky’s patience and resolve met with great reward. The legend of his prank spread. In 1980, he received a card in the mail from a stranger in Colorado with a newspaper photo of Mt. St. Helens erupting and a short note: “This time you’ve gone too far.” A section from C.B. Bernard's CHASING ALASKA: A PORTRAIT OF THE LAST FRONTIER THEN AND NOW
Meth-head and "musician" popular with "the youths" wears a gaudy, America-themed athleisure suit in the Oval Office (at least it's not beige) while grinning next to a bag of demented Cheetos.
A notebook labeled "People I want to punch in the face," filled with the names of my sworn enemies real and perceived.
Orange president rants about buying Teslas for Elon.
An English Cream Retriever lying on the kitchen floor looking sad and sweet.
A banner showing the cover of the C. B. Bernard novel ORDINARY BEAR with text announcing it as a 2025 Bary Award nominee for Best First Mystery Novel.
A story in The Guardian shows an image of a brave and noble Canada goose with the stench of poutine and Moosehead on its beak slaying a ridiculous American Bald Eagle, a trash-eating bird that thinks it's tall because it was born in a nest high atop a tree.
Sad, lonely copies of the novel ORDINARY BEAR sit on a bookshelf, waiting to be adopted into loving homes.
A copy of Margot Douaihy's detective novel SCORCHED GRACE.
Ralph Kramden threatens his neighbor, Ed Norton, "Bang, zoom, straight to the moon."
A never-not-hungry white English cream retriever lays waiting to shed an entire new dog's worth of hair all over a kitchen, smiling at the camera with pleasure at the knowledge that she rules the house.
A Bookseller's Favorites shelf for 2024 books showing C.B. Bernard's novel ORDINARY BEAR on a shelf with other great books.
70s man in Tom Selleck mustache, cutoff jean shorts, and dark socks rides a Pee Wee Herman bike looking moped on the wet sand of a beach at low tide with a shirtless and barefoot elderly man on the seat behind him.
Screen cap from an article interviewing people about their hopes for 2025 in which Colson Whitehead says what we're all thinking.
Two bottles of Japanese whisky wishing me a merry Christmas.
The cover of Irish novelist Elaine Feeney's HOW TO BUILD A BOAT.
A Shaolin monk does a handstand split while another swings a bat at his groin.
Andy Anderson's stark black and white photograph of writer Jim Harrison, smoking a cigarette and showing the years on his craggy face.
A hardcover copy of Tim Lane's THE NEIGHBORS WE WANT.
Nessie the dog holding a treat to donate to the shelter.