Blackmail

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I hope you enjoyed reading Blackmail as much as I enjoyed writing it.

This was the most enjoyable book for me to write thus far. My first book—The Trident Deception—was tortuous, as I was still learning how to write, and it went through many revisions before reaching the final version. (Over two hundred pages ended up on the cutting room floor, and the ending is quite different than the one my publisher bought. It’s a long story, but the short version is that in the original novel, everyone died at the end — Wilson and Christine included. However, my publisher wanted a sequel, and that’s hard to do if everyone dies. So I resurrected Christine and Wilson. If the scenes in The Trident Deception where it appears they die come across as convincing, that’s because they originally died in those scenes.)

Each book continues to be a learning experience as I get feedback from readers, gaining a better understanding of what works and doesn’t from a thriller reader’s perspective. Due to how early my publisher requires my manuscripts (Empire Rising was turned in before The Trident Deception was published), Ice Station Nautilus was the first book where I had a chance to incorporate reader comments, and Blackmail incorporates additional feedback. I hope you like how it turned out.

I enjoyed writing the Russian paratrooper chapter in Blackmail, drawing on my personal experience. I’m a submariner who also happens to be a qualified paratrooper — I earned my wings at Fort Benning, Georgia. I was planning to go Marine Corps at the time, but for several reasons ended up going submarines. I wore my jump wings on my uniform for a few years, garnering quite a few odd looks and questions. A paratrooper aboard a submarine is obviously an odd lash-up.

Also, the usual disclaimer — some of the tactics described in Blackmail are generic and not accurate. For example, torpedo employment and evasion tactics are classified and cannot be accurately represented in this novel. The dialogue also isn’t one hundred percent accurate. If it were, much of it would be unintelligible to the average reader. To help the story move along without getting bogged down in acronyms, technical details, and other military jargon, I simplified the dialogue and description of operations and weapon systems.

For all of the above, I apologize. I did my best to keep everything as close to real life as possible while developing a suspenseful (and unclassified), page-turning novel. Hopefully it all worked out, and you enjoyed reading Blackmail.