Mesa author's former careers mesh in novel

Jun. 8—With a 26-year career in the Air Force and a 25-year career as a librarian, Mesa resident Adrienne Miles Bengtson is using both careers to fuel her life-long passion for writing.

Her first novel, Spider's Wyrd, will be published by Mesa publishing company Brick Cave Media late this year or early next.

After joining the Air Force in 1979 as an air weapons controller, Bengston later transitioned to work in intelligence support for flyers.

"If you've seen the movies of people on the ground talking to the pilot in the sky about where the bad guys are, that's what I was," recalled Bengtson.

While working as a briefer for fighter pilots at Bitburg Air Base in Bitburg, Germany, First Lt. Bengtson met her husband, a fellow serviceman.

The Air Force eventually stationed the couple at Davis — Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, where they settled down and started a family.

"While we were both on active duty, we barely saw each other, so we left because there was too much travel," said Bengtson.

After leaving active duty, the pair pursued jobs that allowed them to work together again.

Adrienne took a position as a librarian at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, where her husband worked as an adjunct professor.

Thinking her days of intelligence dissemination were behind her, an unexpected happenstance spurred Bengtson to enter the Air Force Reserve.

"The head of the Embry Riddle math department saw a picture of an F-16 on my office wall, and it turned out he was in the Air Force Reserve," said Bengtson. "He told me his 944th Fighter Wing was transitioning from helicopters to F-16s and urged me to apply."

She served in the Reserve for 20 years, of which many were spent managing the dichotomy of life as a librarian and as an asset to the 302nd Fighter Squadron and the 944th Fighter Wing.

"I would go from being in this exotic place where you need to be aware of what was going on to being in the library. It was some major code-switching," said Bengtson.

Nevertheless, Bengtson used similar skills while working amongst the books and in the field.

"The military sounds like it would be very different from being a librarian, but intelligence analysis in support of a particular mission is not that different," said Bengtson.

"When doing reference work, I had a pile of information that I had to sift through and figure out what was useful. Then, I had to make sure the people who needed that information got it. I was using the same skill set, just in very different environments."

In 2006, Bengtson retired from the reserves as a lieutenant colonel.

Despite the oscillations between the library and the military base, writing was always a constant in Bengtson's life.

"My father taught English at a university in West Texas, and many of his friends wrote," Bengtson explained. "I had a friend who was the preacher's kid, and they always spoke about the stereotype of them being the wildest in town.

"I was the professor's kid stereotype. I took English and did well at it."

She started the manuscript for Spider's Wyrd in the 1990s but put the pen down during hectic deployments.

The aspiring novelist revisited her manuscript during the pandemic, eventually diving into her story's world-building and character development.

Spider's Wyrd is inspired by Bengtson's time in the service and tells the tale of a quasi-fighter pilot protagonist navigating a planet on the brink of interstellar war.

"When I started writing Spider's Wyrd, the Department of Defense was going back and forth trying to decide if they could send women to combat," she said. "I wanted to write a female protagonist because that's my brain."

Bengtson is already working on a sequel to Spider's Wyrd.

Readers can find information on Bengtson's book at the website with her nom de plume: adriennemiles.com