In essence, the advice was in three parts: (1) You are clearly a professional author, and this is of publishable quality as such; (2) the borderline genre material — a pilot who may or may not have had a UFO encounter — can be fleshed out further, allowing cross-marketing to be considered in the P&L; (3) all your
characters are losers and, at best,
anti-heroes: try contrasting them with one single Winner, say a corporate big - wig, or a Howard Hughes
type both wealthy and connected to aviation.