Del Wilber

Del Wilber's journey as a storyteller began in childhood with Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey paperbacks passed down from his grandfather, and Saturday afternoons watching Randolph Scott and John Wayne ride across black-and-white screens. That early immersion in Western literature deepened through extensive travels across Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, where he walked the trails, explored the mining towns, and absorbed the landscape that would later inform his Cord McBride series. This combination of literary foundation and firsthand experience drives his commitment to bringing the frontier era to life with meticulous historical research and authentic detail.

His maritime fiction springs from entirely different soil—twenty years as a U.S. Navy Aircrewman flying P-3 Orion aircraft on maritime patrol and reconnaissance missions across the world's oceans. He knows the weight of water, the smell of salt air at dawn, and the peculiar isolation of men at sea. That lived experience informs every page of his nautical novels, including The Weight of Water: A Novel of the Titanic's Dead and The Horn, bringing the kind of technical precision and emotional truth that can only come from having been there.

A Ph.D. in Education with extensive experience training international military forces, Del approaches his craft with the same rigor he once brought to naval operations. He builds his fictional narratives on frameworks of documented history, ensuring his readers can trust both the adventure and the accuracy.

When not writing, he operates the Silver Support Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit helping struggling seniors and elderly veterans afford essential items along the Gulf Coast. He maintains an Orthodox Christian blog and continues to explore the intersection of faith, history, and adventure in both his fiction and his life.

Del lives on the Gulf Coast, where the waters remind him daily of the ocean stories yet to be told.