Written in Partnership with Mark Hoffman
Possessing multiple talents while specializing in a particular field can have a variety of benefits. The contemporary business environment typically requires people with multiple talents and skills sets in addition to individual specialists with specific skills for particular tasks. Multitalented people typically generate more income and success than people with a limited single skill or popular specialization, usually because the multiskilled person can work and function effectively in several fields. Multitasking also comes with the territory because multitalented people can efficiently work on more than one task at a time. Specialization is vital for succeeding in a particular field. However, it is somewhat rare to find people who have acquired multiple skills apart from specializing in a particular field, which broadens their potential. J. Luke Bennecke is one such person. As a multitalented civil engineer who honed his skills in several fields, he is also an accomplished real estate developer, philanthropist, software developer, philanthropy, and best-selling novelist.
Jason Luke Bennecke is a prominent thriller novelist and civil engineer who started his professional career in 1991 as a student assistant at the University of Nevada, Reno. He worked at the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) from 1992 to 1995. Bennecke completed his bachelor of science degree in civil engineering from California State Polytechnic (Cal Poly) University, Pomona, in 1996 and started working for the County of San Bernardino Transportation Department in 1996, where he worked until 1998. He returned to Caltrans in 1998 and, after passing all three of the California Professional Civil Engineering examinations the first try in 1999, worked as a project engineer until 2003. Bennecke’s multitasking abilities enabled him to complete his master of business administration degree in corporate management from California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB), by taking evening classes from 1998 to 2001, all while working full time at Caltrans.
Bennecke passed the California real estate broker exam in 2002 and quickly established a real estate company to help clients buy, sell, and finance properties. Bennecke left his job at Caltrans to work full-time growing his real estate company to over fifty staff when he sold it in December 2006. The financial crisis struck in 2008, adversely affecting millions of Americans due to unemployment. However, Bennecke returned to his civil engineering profession, where he became an early partner at Southstar Engineering & Consulting, working as executive vice president. He co-founded Red Apple Reading with his wife in 2011, which as of early 2023, has helped over 65,000 children in 38 countries learn to read American English using a combination of whole language and phonics instruction with over 1,000 educational videos and games. The Red Apple Reading Scholarship was offered for six years at Bennecke’s high school Alma Mater, San Gorgonio High, giving away over $18,000 in college funding to scholar athletes. He also worked as a consultant project manager at Caltrans, delivering over $500 million in freeway interchange and transportation projects, until 2014 before starting to focus on writing in 2015.
Jason Luke Bennecke started his writing career in 2015 by writing thriller novels, screenplays, and books in various genres. He released his first thriller novel, Civil Terror: Gridlock, based on the Jake Bendel character in 2018, which quickly became a bestseller on Amazon. Bennecke subsequently wrote the Civil Terror: Gridlock screenplay in collaboration with prominent director/writer John Wesley Norton. The second Jake Bendel novel by Bennecke, Waterborne, came out in 2021 under the Black Rose Writing banner and also became an Amazon bestseller. Bennecke won the American Fiction Award in 2022 for Waterborne, while BestThriller.com Book Awards recognized the novel as the best medical thriller of 2022. In 2023, both of Bennecke’s published novels were awarded prestigious Feathered Quill accolades (Waterborne won Silver in Mystery/Suspense category and Gridlock won Gold in Best of Backlist). The author has three more thriller novels in various writing, editing, and publishing phases.
Thriller novels are Bennecke’s primary focus revolving around fast-paced and intriguing storylines that keep readers on edge. Three of his novels set for future release include Blackout (Book 3 in the Jake Bendel Series), Echo from a Bayou(a mind-bending psychological thriller), and BakTrax (a sci-fi thriller). Blackout focuses on future technologies and the risks from a lack of privacy or ethical considerations in technology. The novel revolves around domestic terrorism plots, drones equipped with bombs, power grid failures, and real-world issues with the ailing electrical grids. The Echo From a Bayou is a story that taps into the eerie, actual phenomenon in which children have memories of their previous lives. Bennecke’s third upcoming novel BakTrax centers a storyline based on physics, time travel, and conspiracy theories.
Jason Luke Bennecke is a thriller novelist with several prominent bestselling novels that entertain readers with intriguing and compelling storylines. Bennecke’s novels offer examples to many budding and emerging writers who want to write in the thriller genre. Authors starting out in their careers can read and be inspired from Bennecke’s stories while learning how to develop their own unique tales that appeal to the masses to reach bestseller status. Emerging writers can also take note of how to develop interesting characters and write stories based on a particular genre revolving around those characters. J. Luke Bennecke is a multiskilled civil engineer, real estate developer, software developer, and thriller novelist, inspiring emerging writers with his bestselling novels.
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