Mission Beach-based author Lee Silber’s latest novel titled, “Harper’s Bay: Rebuilding an Inn, and a Life” is a mystery.

You can tell just from the front cover, which shows a couple strolling along the tropical surf with their child, who is in the process of disappearing.

A 25-year Mission Beach resident, 59-year-old Silber said of the beach community, “It’s one of the few places in California where you can afford to live close to the water and not be a bazillionaire.”

A motivational speaker who has written 26 books in 26 years, given over 2,500 speeches to more than a million people, and is the founder of five companies, Silber has also captured 11 awards for literary excellence.
“I try to do a book a year,” said the author, who is also a musician. An avid surfer, he moved to Hawaii for a time in his early 20s. His latest book reflects that experience, set in remote Kauai in a rundown inn on an isolated beach. He added this novel was based on a real home he discovered in the “middle of nowhere” on that island.

Pointing out in the promotional materials that he likes to start his novels by asking “What if?,” Siber noted of Harper’s Bay, “In this case, it was what if you lost your only son in a tragic accident, what would you do? The answer drove the start of the story. And then the book took on a life of its own.”
The path to becoming an author for Silber has had a lot of interesting twists and turns. For one, he started in an unrelated field as an entrepreneur establishing surf shops in Scripps Ranch and University City.

Eventually, even though he’d been successful, Silber said it became time to move on from surf retail to other pursuits. “I wanted to teach, and speak and help other people,” he said adding, “Someone told me, ‘If you want to be asked to give speeches, you need to write a book. Then people will ask you to speak.’”

So Silber began writing non-fiction and how-to titles such as “Dating In San Diego,” and “Successful San Diegans.” To his surprise, those early books worked out. “The books did well, and that launched everything,” he said, adding that “took him to the next level,” which he noted was signing with Random House to “write a series of books about creative types such as ‘Career Management for the Creative Person’ and ‘Time Management for the Creative Person.’ I won several awards for that series.”

Silber talked about his next step up the writing ladder. “I thought, ‘Let’s try fiction, and if I don’t suck, I’m all right,” he said elaborating, “Now I love writing fiction. But the pattern for my whole life has been to start small, and then build. So the next step was a full-length novel and I wrote a book and it was a runaway best seller.”

“Are you kidding me?” was Silber’s reaction before realizing, “I’m on my way.”

Over the years, Silber has written books about highly successful people and even one based on a friend who died from cancer.

Silber intends to continue riding that literary wave of success wherever it will take him. “Sometimes the book finds you,” he said of the literary process adding he’s already at work on his next novel, which he got the inspiration for while hiking at Sunset Cliffs.

“I spotted this house that doesn’t look like it belongs there,” Silber said. “So I thought, ‘What if, underneath this house, there is something secret buried?’”