Why do I write?
My mother loved to read; anything and everything. I was about eight or nine when she allowed me to read Ian Fleming’s From Russia with Love and Alistair MacLean’s Ice Station Zebra. In different ways, both authors left a mark on me. We were in West Germany, my father was in the Air Force and we lived six miles from the East German border. East German MiGs would sometimes fly over our house before American jets chased them away.
I built airplane models, read as much Fleming and MacLean that I could sneak into my bedroom, and wore out the pages of the family dictionary. I built a spy kit from a discarded cigar box and filled it with the tools of the spy from the eyes of a third grader. During the years we lived near Kassel, I learned new names, terms and spy words: Gary Powers, U-2, and surveillance. Then JFK was killed in Dallas and the term “communist” was tossed around the dinner table like throwed rolls at a family reunion. Another new term, communism, worked its way into discussions between my parents, and I listened closely and wondered what that stuff was all about.
It wasn't until I was twenty that I began to figure some of it out. It wasn't until I became a college professor that I realized what should have been obvious: nearly all the espionage novels have this confrontation between communism and freedom. When I started reading books from those men and women who escaped socialist and fascist regimes, to come to America, I realized I might have a few stories in me.
And it is more than just good guys against the bad guys. So my main character, as my family has known, Duncan Hunter, is a composite, an extension of me. The political awakening of a man who finally sees the world for what it really is--a hostile place where evil men just want to take away your freedom and your things, and you and your family and your life are irrelevant. We even flew the jet from our childhood dreams. Arrogant? Nahhhh. Just the luckiest guys we know.
My Bill McGee character is the ultimate freedom warrior who has always fought and killed the enemies of America. My Nazy Cunningham character is the ultimate escapee from a fascistic religion who finally figures out that the system she is in is too oppressive and will either break her or kill her if she stays in it. And my Greg Lynche character is the ultimate spy who has been fighting against communists and Islamists as a member of the intelligence community while being drawn a little to the dark side. Life is never cut and dry. Lynche's liberalism is a counterweight to Duncan Hunter's conservatism. See! Fair and balanced. (Or not!)
Maverick out!
My mother loved to read; anything and everything. I was about eight or nine when she allowed me to read Ian Fleming’s From Russia with Love and Alistair MacLean’s Ice Station Zebra. In different ways, both authors left a mark on me. We were in West Germany, my father was in the Air Force and we lived six miles from the East German border. East German MiGs would sometimes fly over our house before American jets chased them away.
I built airplane models, read as much Fleming and MacLean that I could sneak into my bedroom, and wore out the pages of the family dictionary. I built a spy kit from a discarded cigar box and filled it with the tools of the spy from the eyes of a third grader. During the years we lived near Kassel, I learned new names, terms and spy words: Gary Powers, U-2, and surveillance. Then JFK was killed in Dallas and the term “communist” was tossed around the dinner table like throwed rolls at a family reunion. Another new term, communism, worked its way into discussions between my parents, and I listened closely and wondered what that stuff was all about.
It wasn't until I was twenty that I began to figure some of it out. It wasn't until I became a college professor that I realized what should have been obvious: nearly all the espionage novels have this confrontation between communism and freedom. When I started reading books from those men and women who escaped socialist and fascist regimes, to come to America, I realized I might have a few stories in me.
And it is more than just good guys against the bad guys. So my main character, as my family has known, Duncan Hunter, is a composite, an extension of me. The political awakening of a man who finally sees the world for what it really is--a hostile place where evil men just want to take away your freedom and your things, and you and your family and your life are irrelevant. We even flew the jet from our childhood dreams. Arrogant? Nahhhh. Just the luckiest guys we know.
My Bill McGee character is the ultimate freedom warrior who has always fought and killed the enemies of America. My Nazy Cunningham character is the ultimate escapee from a fascistic religion who finally figures out that the system she is in is too oppressive and will either break her or kill her if she stays in it. And my Greg Lynche character is the ultimate spy who has been fighting against communists and Islamists as a member of the intelligence community while being drawn a little to the dark side. Life is never cut and dry. Lynche's liberalism is a counterweight to Duncan Hunter's conservatism. See! Fair and balanced. (Or not!)
Maverick out!
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