Thank you for taking the time to read a little about me and my books. I have always loved reading military and police thrillers and action/adventure novels. When I was in high school, I was a member of the Military Book Club. I read everything I could get my hands on about military pilots flying missions in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. I also liked biographies written by and about wartime pilots. By the time I was a sophomore I had decided I want to fly in the military. Now all these years later, I’m writing the kind of novels I like to read. The kind that I think would make really cool movies. BEAR TRAP is that kind of book with tons of action and some humor mixed in. At times BEAR TRAP is vulgar and graphic. I wrote it primarily for men, but three of my beta readers were women and they thoroughly enjoyed it too. If you read the GRAY MAN series by Mark Greaney and the TIER ONE series by Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson, you will appreciate this book. It would have been available sooner if not for the prepublication review process.

What is prepublication review? Well, I’m a federal employee with a security clearance and as a condition of my employment, I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement swearing to keep classified information secret under threat of imprisonment before coming to work for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. I had to present my novel to the federal government for prepublication review before I could publish it. So, I did and then I waited and waited and waited some more.

Finally, after an exhaustive one year and four-month review conducted by NGA, NSA, FBI, CIA, NRO, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), which required numerous changes and redactions, my book has been approved for public release. And, no, I’m not bitter. Rest assured, they made me redact some pretty cool stuff. None of it was classified, in my opinion, but they definitely didn’t want it appearing in print written by a US intelligence officer. Some of the material they objected to frustrated me to no end because other thriller novel writers like Brad Thor and Mark Greaney refer to that same material frequently in their novels. For example, here are a couple of the minor issues. You know that Army Special Operations outfit books and movies are written about, the tier one group that Rangers and Green Berets compete to join, the one that comes after Charlie Force and before Echo Force? Yeah, that one. I can’t mention it in my book. If it does exist, it wouldn’t even be called by that name anymore. I can write about SEAL Team Five or SEAL Team Seven, but not, well you know.

Here’s another, remember that terrorist detention center operated on Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, the one that 60 Minutes did an extensive story on that was viewed by millions of people? It was called Camp something or other. Well, I can’t write that in my book either, but I can refer to the camp as Gitmo. The FBI really didn’t like me writing about cell site simulators, also known as IMSI catchers. Which I thought was odd because they are commercially available. City and state police agencies around the country use them every day. The funny thing is they did let me write about the black bag jobs, the FACES Services Unit, the Next Generation Identification-Interstate Photo System, electric variable window tint, and the automated license plate readers. Even funnier, the CIA asked me if Operation BEAR TRAP was based on a real operation. After you read the book, you’ll understand how ludicrous that question is.