Once the story board comes down, I stare out of the window a lot, turning to my computer sporadically. I gave myself one important thing to accomplish this week, among dozens of smaller tasks. Vektor’s synopsis or book blurb. This is often harder to write than a full chapter of the story itself. How do you condense the book into a summary that draws readers into the book, without giving away plot twists? You spend three days of wringing your hands over it, constantly coming back  to change a word, shorten a sentence or trash the whole thing.

I started this on Monday and have been $@#!ing around with it ever since. I think this is nearly the last iteration. Let me know what you think.

Black Flagged Vektor:

“With the recent bioterrorism threat to the United States neutralized, and Dr. Anatoly Reznikov in custody, CIA Deputy Director Karl Berg proposes a permanent solution to prevent future bioweapons attacks against the West.

A covert raid by General Sanderson’s Black Flag unit against Vektor Labs, deep inside Russia…to destroy a program that should have ended with the Cold War.

The U.S isn’t the only country looking to tie up loose ends. The sudden abduction of a CIA officer in Stockholm exposes the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service’s (SVR) ruthless campaign to discover the truth behind the massacre of an elite Spetsnaz team sent to silence Reznikov.

When the SVR investigation takes a turn that could threaten the mission against Vektor, Berg goes “off the books” like never before. Through an intricate web of unsavory alliances, deviously orchestrated political maneuvers and shockingly brutal black-ops action, Karl Berg will set in motion an unstoppable chain of events with the potential to ignite a new Cold War.

Black Flagged Vektor continues the series’ tradition of gritty, unapologetic storytelling, plunging readers even deeper into the murky, shark infested waters navigated by covert operators and their puppet masters.” 

“I was immediately hooked by Guthrie’s sparing prose and the flawless unravelling of an exquisitely layered story. He transported me right into the badlands of Wyoming and planted me firmly in the middle of a slice of Americana I didn’t know existed. You have to read it to believe it, and given the fact that the author grew up in this part of the country, I have no doubt it is authentic. The images and descriptions, all sparingly presented in a style reminiscent of  Cormac McCarthy, left me spellbound, unable to stop the roller coaster ride of twists and turns toward the conclusion. Richly drawn characters, both deeply flawed and stubbornly heroic, with fixed and shifting loyalties or none at all. Guthrie’s protagonist, Sheriff James Pruett, is a character study in contrasts and tragedy, unable to let “sleeping dogs lie” when a murder shatters the tense calm blanketed over Wind River. The results are epic.

Money Land, book two in the James Pruett Mystery series takes place on the not so distant heels of the first novel. With Wind River still healing from the shocking conclusion to Blood Land, a new threat arrives bringing murder and mayhem in its wake, forcing the different factions of Wind River to band together in the ultimate showdown against an evil empire hell bent on their destruction…led by the good Sheriff Pruett. In Money Land, the reader is taken deeper into Pruett’s past, which is full of surprises…surprises for anyone threatening the good people (and bad) of Wind River. A captivating read, with international reach, Money Land continues the saga surrounding one of the most intriguing stretches of land I’ve read about in a long time. Isolated, stark, insulated from outsiders, the Wyoming landscape is a mesmerizing backdrop for Guthrie’s no holds barred thriller, Money Land.”

The Atlas Fracture is a solid entry in the Thriller/Adventure genre, the second in Queeney’s Perry Helion series. I’ll confess that I haven’t read the first…I jumped ahead in order, however, Queeney provides more than enough backstory to keep the reader in the game.

“Tim Queeny’s The Atlas Fracture is a refreshingly sharp adventure technothriller. Set mostly in austere Antarctic environs, the story’s plot, characters and action brought excitement and ceaseless amazement to the barren landscape. Queeny reignites the action genre with a strong blend of character development, technical detail and chain reaction adventure, pitting his protagonist Perry Helion against a diabolical group of terrorists in a nearly nonstop march to the book’s finish line.

Perry Helion, Tim Queeny’s protagonist from The Shiva Compression, is a hardened agent working for the Department of Defense’s enigmatic DARPA group, which is tasked with investigating new technologies and scientific discoveries for their possible military potential. When satellite imagery discovers that a scientific expedition to the Antarctic may have been wiped out, Helion is sent to investigate. It was no secret that the expedition had been drilling deep into the ice, in an effort to discover biological samples trapped miles below the surface.

What sets Helion apart from other “heroes” is his sense of humor and believable skill set. He’s handy with a weapon and not afraid of a little hand to hand combat, but he doesn’t excel in these areas like a Jason Bourne character. He’s a more rationale, analytical hero, often relying on his ability to make a quick, well-timed decision to throw off his enemies. Queeny cleverly injects this often-understated trait at critical times throughout the story, propelling the reader past some harrowing situations.

I particularly enjoyed watching the story’s progression through the eyes of antagonists. Queeny puts together an unholy alliance of twisted fiends, all hell bent on unleashing the power of the Atlas Fracture on an unsuspecting world for varying reasons. Money, revenge, scientific accolades…all combine to form a well-functioning evil coalition on the brink of imploding. Subplots and conspiracies abound within the coalition, adding to the suspense and intrigue…and the fun.

Without a doubt, Queeny did some solid research for this novel. He provided clear explanations of the scientific principles involved, without ever getting bogged down. I felt the same about his functional descriptions of the equipment and procedures employed by the different groups. I finished the novel thoroughly entertained, with an expanded knowledge of Antarctic operations.

The Atlas Fracture comes in shorter than most books in the genre, but while immersed in the story, I honestly didn’t notice the length. This is without a doubt, a complete story, with full background scenes and no plot holes on the way to the finish line. Queeny has effectively trimmed the fat and produced a rock solid adventure technothriller. I plan to read his first Helion Perry book, The Shiva Compression shortly.”

“Ian Graham delivers a slick, well-executed thriller with Veil of Civility. The novel’s plot flows extremely well, with no gaps, and just enough back story to explain the motivations of a fascinating cast of characters. There’s a lot to like about this novel, and I found myself constantly stealing time to continue reading.

Declan McIver, former IRA commando turned legitimate business owner in the United States, finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy ripped from today’s headlines. An invitation from an old friend catapults McIver into a cat and mouse chase on par with Ludlum’s Jason Bourne series. His adversaries are relentless, employing technologies and ruthlessness that will leave you breathless. Spanning two continents, the chase is brilliant and worth the price of admission alone. Graham doesn’t let McIver off easy. Not in the least. The author paints a painstakingly realistic picture of how difficult it would be to go “off the grid” with the wrong people looking for you. He kept me in suspense throughout novel, never giving me the sense that McIver could rest, or that I could rest…I had to keep reading!

Declan McIver and his nebulous former IRA unit, Black Shuck, is exquisitely crafted from what appears to be exhaustive research on Graham’s part. Linked to a top-secret (and existing) Russian spetsnaz unit, Black Shuck is a devastatingly scary and utterly enthralling concept. Graham’s research is a strong point, and as a reader, I highly appreciated the way he weaved this research into the story. Though purely fiction, he integrates aspects of history into a speculative array of back story that is so convincing, that I found myself hopelessly immersed. Graham spends considerable time delving into Declan McIver’s background, giving the reader a well-redacted history of Ireland’s turbulent recent history. I’m hoping that Graham plans to bring McIver back for future novels. He is by far one of the most interesting and crisply drawn thriller characters I’ve read in a long time.

Veil of Civility succeeds on many levels. As a political thriller, it far exceeds expectations. Behind the gut wrenching at of terrorism at the story’s core, there is a sinister plot afoot, embroiling senior politicians and law enforcement agents. With unexpected plot twists lurking everywhere, these behind the scenes manipulators nudge (in many cases push) the plot forward toward its unthinkable conclusion. This is a conspiracy of the highest order, set in motion to satisfy a powerful agenda.

Ian Graham succeeds brilliantly with his first full-length novel. He’s captured the essence the political thriller genre, topping off his effort with enough technothriller aspects to satisfy the most demanding genre readers. I look forward to Graham’s future endeavors and plan to read his collection of short stories, Patriots and Tyrants, which features characters from Veil of Civility.”

I was recently interviewed by Randy Powers, creator of Practical Tactical, a prepper based  blog focused on passing “practical” information on a wide variety of survival, prepper and every day situational awareness. His collections of interviews and articles is diverse, entertaining and not what you’d expect. One in particular was eye-opening and education. Al Bartlett’s talk on Arithmetic, Population and Energy. Read the article once and you’ll become smarter. Read it twice and you’ll surpass 99.9% of the population in terms of understanding statistics…very practical statistics, and how you can apply them to debunk much of the nonsense you hear on the television today. Al Bartlett’s Talk.

As always, I digress a bit. Randy’s interview was by far the most comprehensive to this date, showing an in-depth analysis of The Jakarta Pandemic and the situations the unraveled throughout the story. Since initial publication, The Jakarta Pandemic has reached over 50,000 readers. The most common theme brought up by readers in reviews or emails is that the story made them think about their own situation in a similar crisis. Randy really took this to a higher level in his interview, cherry picking what he interpreted to be the most important lessons for readers and asking me to expand on my thought process while creating specific scenes or characters.

Enjoy the interview and by all means check out Randy’s posts and articles. If you have any questions at all about home defense, prepping, self defense…whatever you can think of in this arena, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Randy. He is a wealth of information.

INTERVIEW with STEVEN KONKOLY 

For those of you than really know me, you know I don’t take what happened in Benghazi lightly. At all. However, the political crap storm  has reached its limit, and here’s why. Exhaustive investigation and “interrogation” has determined that there really was nothing the military could have done “reactively” to better the tragic outcome that night, so in my view, there is no “smoking gun.” I have no doubt it will continue, but I’m done listening to the politicians. There’s nothing useful to learn anymore about “who knew what.” There are real issues and problems buried in this tragedy, and if you pay attention, the lessons can and will save lives in the future.

Could the administration, more specifically the State Department, have taken “proactive” measures to prevent the tragedy? Hell yes! Once again…and this is not a theme confined to the Obama administration, the Force Protection (what we called it when I was on active duty) stance at the Benghazi consulate was disgustingly inadequate. Same with the 1979 U.S. Embassy storming in Tehran (Carter), the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983 only six months after the embassy in Beirut was bombed (Reagan), the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996 (Clinton) and the crippling of the USS Cole while refueling in Yemen (Clinton). There are so many more, but I list these because basic force protection procedures could and should have prevented them, just like the Benghazi attack. Were the other attacks investigated? Sure. Were the investigations pushed like the Benghazi Hearings? No. Why? Politics…don’t switch channels yet, this is not the Republican’s or conservative’s fault. Not by a long shot.

Politics have always been contentious. That’s simply the nature of the system, especially the two party system, where you are either “with us or against us.” They entered a new era of hostility after George Bush took office in 2000. Admittedly, the circumstances surrounding the recount vote in Florida was tenuous, but the law was applied and followed, yielding George Walker Bush as our president. The Democrats had much to complain about, and damn did they complain. Not only that, they initiated an era of political ugliness that has only worsened since the 2000 election. From what I remember, nobody blamed Reagan for the Beirut bombings…they blamed the Palestinian terrorists. Tehran? It’s not like the situation suddenly exploded overnight. Carter wasn’t blamed for the seizure of the embassy. Islamist activists and the subsequent “government” was blamed. And on and on, until 2000.

So, who’s to blame for Benghazi? A bunch of fundamentalist Islamic hoodlums assembled outside of the consulate! That’s it!

Did the administration mishandle their public relations campaign surrounding the incident? Yes, they did, but keep in mind, every administration does this, for every thing that happens world-wide. Every time the White House press secretary steps up to that podium…his or her notes have been revised for the public consumption. That’s the way it works, and if you think it stinks, guess what? You’re right. It took them a full day of back and forth between the CIA, FBI, White House and State Department to come up with talking points that should have taken about thirty minutes to craft. 

The press and Congress can continue to press this issue all they want, but it doesn’t change what happened. All that we can hope to gain from this is the knowledge to prevent such a disaster from occurring in the future. Oh, in case you were curious, this was already accomplished immediately after the attack, under direction of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. You can read the 39 page report HERE. It pretty much throws the State Department under the bus. Pretty transparent. What I’d like to know is…WHAT HAS BEEN DONE TO IMPROVE SECURITY AT CONSULATES WORLDWIDE SINCE THE ATTACK? Are security cameras still sitting in boxes, uninstalled, because tech support hasn’t come by to install them? Read the report above…cameras that could have detected the growing mob outside of the embassy were never installed. 

Speaking of transparency, the only positive aspect of the administrations handling of the tragedy is the fact that key figures have testified in public hearings. Huh? You say. Hold on a second. Have they testified willingly? Not really, but the information is flowing.

It’s certainly flowing a lot better than the information from senior administration officials in the aftermath of a slightly more important attack against U.S. interests, eleven years prior to the Benghazi attack on the same date. Does anyone remember President Bush and Vice President Cheney testifying about their knowledge of the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks? Nobody does, because they testified behind closed doors to the 9/11 Commission and their testimony was sealed! Can you imagine Obama or Hilary telling the American public that they’ll be glad to testify, in secret and in private. Our citizens wouldn’t stand for it, and nor should they.

Wake me up when the State Department has upgraded embassy and consulate facilities worldwide to meet force protections standards required by statute to protect our emissaries abroad, and when we are willing to immediately deploy our Special Operations units to execute the missions they are trained for. That’s the lesson learned here. Plain and Simple. 

I have been watching this issue for years with a detached interest. There is truly nothing earth shattering (hint) about the accusation that China continues to systematically prosecute economic espionage operations against the United States or the West. This is not a new theme out of Asia. The Japanese were accused of conducting industrial and corporate espionage in the 80′s and 90′s, which purportedly launched several of their high-tech companies far beyond the reaches of American counterparts. Most American electronics brands never recovered from the supposed theft of billions of dollars in research and development information, leaving Japanese brands to dominate the market. So, what is different about the current Chinese brand of economic espionage? China is a rising superpower and competitor, with much greater aspirations than dominating the world electronics market. Think military, then think beyond.

Can China, or any nation ever surpass the United States in terms of military technology, power and the ability to project that power? Not in my lifetime, or my children’s…thankfully. We have cornered the market by spending trillions and developing a robust military-industrial complex. The Soviets tried to compete with us directly and it tore them apart. The Chinese won’t make that same mistake. Think more subtle, then think massive scale.

What are they really doing? Stealing military secrets is part of it, but the persistent, widespread cyber-attacks indicate something deeper.

I have been thinking more about this lately, because the concepts of Cyber and Asymmetrical Warfare will be featured prominently in the sequel to The Jakarta Pandemic, setting the stage for a complete shut down of the United States. I just hope the Chinese don’t shut us down before I launch the novel. 

Take a look at this article, which does a great job explaining what has been capturing U.S. officials’ attention: Asymmetric Warfare article 

The drone controversy

I won’t get into all of the specifics and relive the drama here, but after a few emotional days of listening to both sides argue over this, I decided to weigh in a little on Facebook. I can’t help myself sometimes. At one point, I stated that I couldn’t foresee the need for any administration to use drones to kill ANYONE on U.S. soil. After all, we have law enforcement agencies that can hopefully contain and defuse most crises. I started to get riled up by the partisanship, really buying into my own assumption that many of these politicians were grandstanding…and many of them were. I kept finding myself asking if these people really believed that drones could be used to hit a Starbucks? OR Take out Jane Fonda? I heard both of these mentioned by Rand, in addition to a dozen other scenarios that spiraled into the stratosphere of ridiculous. So I thought.

A combination of thoughts and FB posts jarred me out of this reverie. A good libertarian friend reminded me that “from order comes chaos,” and that “if the capability is there, eventually it will be used.” We all know that the use of technology or available resources expands, never contracts. So, if the government starts using drones for routine surveillance of suspected terrorists, where could this go? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask the question, though I can’t imagine Hellfire missiles hitting Starbucks. If a terrorist is ordering a triple shot, caramel latte, and we have the kind of pinpoint intelligence that puts him in that Starbucks, I’m sure the feds can arrange for a few agents to arrive on scene, instead of an 18 pound high explosive warhead.

But what about a terrorist compound in the middle of say, West Virginia? A hidden, inaccessible compound so heavily fortified that conventional law enforcement methods would certainly result in fatalities on par with the Waco, Texas raid? What if that terrorist group posed an immediate threat to the population? Would a drone strike be acceptable then? What if the terrorists were U.S. citizens? All interesting questions for sure. Sounds like a crazy scenario, right?

This is where the hypocrisy thing comes into play. The scenario described above occurs in my latest novel, Black Flagged Apex, written well before the most recent controversy reared its ugly head. When and if you read the novel, you’ll be shocked by the methods used to deal with the terrorist compound. My imagination went well beyond drones, and if I can think of this stuff, I’m sure some much brighter individuals in a government sponsored think tank can do the same. Drones are probably the least of our problems. So while I criticized the Starbuck’s drone scenario, there are hundreds of other scenarios apparently more farfetched, and I created one of them. Hypocrisy exposed.

I did some research into the Insurrection Act, and the powers it grants to the Executive Branch. I suggest you do the same, because the use of drones, special forces, and artillery that I put forward in my novel is not exactly off the table in a time of domestic crisis. Define domestic crisis? The Insurrection Act uses terms like militia, insurrection, domestic violence and conspiracy in a manner that makes the 2nd Amendment look crystal clear. Maybe my Libertarian friends have the right idea. The more transparency the better.

I just submitted a $1500 donation to The Wounded Warrior Project, which will be matched by my employer, yielding $3000. Everyone of you have contributed to the success of my books, and in turn, to the money donated to our nation’s heroes. CONGRATULATIONS and THANK YOU!

A special thank you goes out to Greg, Murray and Nancy for their generous individual contributions to the campaign. Your commitment to our veterans is inspiring to say the least!

Now, I need to turn my day’s efforts into preparing for a possible power failure. Weather officials have predicted up to 60mph winds, 24-30 inches of snow, and temperatures in the teens. FUN TIMES AHEAD!

I felt that an Ice Cube reference was in order. Here’s why. I waited around the phone yesterday to find out if December 21st would be my first day as a full time writer. I decided to time the launch of my new book with this phone call, in case I received the thumbs down. Regardless of what happened, I’d have good news. Fortunately, my company decided to keep me in place. Not all of my colleagues had a good day, which made my news bittersweet to say the least.

Before I share the details of Black Flagged Apex, I need to acknowledge two people who made it possible to launch this book before Christmas. Felicia A. Sullivan and Stef Mcdaid. Felicia has been my editor from the start and very generously agreed to meet my Christmas deadline for a 170K word novel. A few days ago, she probably wondered if I had hidden the total word count from her. I know she worked her @#! off on this one and the result is simply awesome. Thank you, Felicia! Stef provided an equally quick turnaround with the formatting, taking my messy document and turning it into a polished, sharp looking ebook. If you’re a writer looking for editing and/or formatting services, please get in touch with me. I will put you in good hands.

Alright, here are the details and links for Black Flagged Apex:

1. Black Flagged Apex is available as a Kindle ebook. The hard copy version is on it’s way. You can grab the ebook here: Black Flagged Apex 

2. The Donation Campaign was decided by all of you. Proceeds will go to the Wounded Warrior Project. You can see the update and details here: Apex Donation Campaign

THANK YOU for patiently waiting! Black Flagged Apex is considerably longer than the first two books in the series, which is why it took longer to publish. I think you’ll find it to be well worth the wait. Black Flagged Vektor won’t take as long…I’m already 20K words into that one (and it will not be 170K words). ENJOY the new book and if you would, please leave a review on Amazon when you finish reading it!