Category Archives: Author

February 18, 2011 · 12:23 am

Playing “What if . . . ?” With History


People just love to ask writers where they get their ideas for the novels they write.  In my case it’s simple.  I get my ideas from the ultimate idea factory—history.  There’s a lot of truth to that old saying, “There is nothing new under the Sun.”  In fact, just to point out how true that is, that saying itself originates from the Old Testament—Ecclesiastes 1:9 to be precise:

“That which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” (The Bible—American Standard Version)

So, you see, even this modern expression owes its origins to a past history that stretches back to somewhere between the second and fourth centuries B.C.

I’ve now written four complete novels, I’m currently working on another, and I previously started two others that are currently shelved but may be resurrected in the future.  Every one of those books started with an idea with some historical precedent which was then ran through a course of, “What if…?”  “What if…?” is a game all authors of fiction play, whether it’s for books, television, movies, or plays.  Indeed even William Shakespeare took past histories and played, “What if…?”  The following are three examples of books I wrote in the 1990s and plan on releasing over the course of this year:

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The History: The inspiration was John Godson’s incredible exposé The Rise and Fall of the DC-10 (©1975) and several accidents and incidents involving the McDonnell Douglas DC-10: American Airlines Flight 96, Detroit, Michigan, June 12, 1972; Turkish Airlines Flight 981, Ermenonville Forest, France, March 3, 1974; United Airlines Flight 232, Sioux City, Iowa, July 19, 1989; and to a lesser extent American Airlines Flight 191, Chicago, Illinois, May 25, 1979.  Because of several design flaws, the DC-10 racked up a pretty unimpressive safety record over the years.  One such flaw, discovered very early after it went into service, was a problem with the rear cargo door blowing out at altitude, thus causing a collapse of the passenger floor and subsequent loss of control to the tail surfaces.

So…what if someone sabotaged a DC-10 by making it only look as if the cargo door had failed?

The Resulting Book:  An On-Time Departure (Book 1 in the Ian Drake Series)—A DC-10 experiences explosive decompression and resulting loss of rudder and elevator control.  The aircraft crashes into the Swiss Alps with the loss of all lives on board.  Aircraft sabotage investigator Ian Drake initially believes the mishap was an accident . . . until he discovers every move he makes in the investigation is being watched.

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The History: Following the infamous Cerritos midair collision between Aeroméxico Flight 498 and a Piper Archer, the FAA began a crash program to develop and deploy the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS).  Problem was that the program was rushed before the software was truly ready, and the early TCAS units actually precipitated several near-miss situations rather than preventing them.  Software and hardware bugs still crop up in TCAS systems to this day.

So…what if someone found a way to sabotage the aircraft’s altitude information hoping to cause a crash short of the runway during instrument weather conditions, but before such a crash could occur the TCAS received the erroneous altitude information and a midair collision ensued instead?

The Resulting Book:  And The Games Begin (Book 2 in the Ian Drake Series)—A Gulfstream IV business jet has a midair collision with a passenger-carrying Boeing 747 near Sydney, Australia.  The 747 crashes into downtown Sydney killing everyone aboard the aircraft and hundreds more on the ground.  The Gulfstream limps back to Kingsford Smith Airport where American pilot Marla Stinson, Ian Drake’s former lover, is being charged with negligence in causing the accident.  Ian Drake takes a leave of absence and travels to Sydney to help clear her.

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The History: January 17, 1966 in the skies above Spain, a B-52 bomber carrying four MK28 thermonuclear bombs collided with a KC-135 during aerial refueling operations.  The B-52 broke apart, casting into the void all four bombs.  Three bombs, slowed in their descent by large parachutes, fell onto the small fishing village of Palomares, two of which exploded conventionally contaminating large areas with highly toxic plutonium.  The fourth plunged into the Mediterranean Sea, setting off a massive search and recovery operation that lasted three months before the bomb was successfully recovered.

So…what if it weren’t an accident and what if the MK28 that went into the Mediterranean weren’t really a bomb?

The Resulting Book:  Grand Slam (Book 3 in the Ian Drake Series)—A C-141 carrying four thermonuclear devices from the United Kingdom back to the United States is badly damaged when the KC-135 preparing to refuel it explodes over the North Atlantic.  The C-141 limps back toward the U.K. but is forced to ditch off the coast of Northern Ireland.  U.S. Navy divers discover that one of the nuclear bombs has been replaced by a disguised dummy bomb unit.  Aircraft sabotage investigator Ian Drake is sent undercover to learn how the sabotage was done, who stole the real weapon, and to locate the device before it falls into the wrong hands.

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“What if…?” is a truly fun game for any author. And if it’s done well, the reader gets the true benefit.  My current novel for sale, Decisions, was also the result of a “What if,” scenario, and it has been very well received by readers, reviewers, and even Publishers Weekly.  I hope my three previous efforts are as equally well received after they come out later this year.

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February 9, 2011 · 7:16 pm

DECISIONS on Kindle in the Wind


I just received word that tomorrow Decisions will be spotlighted on Kindle in the Wind, a blog site aimed at highlighting eBooks.  Many thanks, Lee Niles.  Really appreciate the boost.

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February 9, 2011 · 1:25 pm

A Tale of Woe and Misfortune Unlike Any Other


Ever wonder why authors are such a disillusioned lot? Ever ask yourself why so many of them resort to self-publishing what is obviously some really good stuff . . . often better than the stuff garnering traditional publishing contracts nowadays?  To those who are fans of tragedy, drama, woe, and misfortune I offer up this very instructive tearjerker.  You are hereby forewarned:  Get out that box of tissues before getting to the dénouement.

The year was 1995. My second novel, The Kai Tak Cataclysm, was represented by Christina J. Brady at the now-defunct Anita Diamant Literary Agency (Ms. Anita Diamant Berke passed away in January of 1996 at the age of 78).  Christina greatly believed in that novel and worked diligently trying to find a home for it at the traditional New York publishing houses.  Alas, Christina moved on to other things, the job of marketing my novel fell to another in-house agent, and that agent did not have the same enthusiasm for the project.  Anita Diamant and I parted company shortly thereafter.

Then came a new agency, and a new agent. I shopped around for another agent and found one later that same year.  Henry Morrison read and fell in love with The Kai Tak Cataclysm, and he agreed to represent me despite the book having already been shopped around the various publishing houses by my previous agent.  We changed the title to The One That Wasn’t There and Henry started sending it out in early 1996, but after a few rejections Henry opted to go on a different tack.  Instead of attempting to sell the novel directly, he decided to offer up the dramatic rights first knowing that publishing houses would come knocking on his door once a movie studio was firmly committed to the project.  So, with my concurrence Henry passed along The One That Wasn’t There to the team of Howard Sanders and Richard Green at the United Talent Agency.

Within a matter of days Henry and I were call-conferencing with Howard and Richard, who were incredibly enthusiastic and supportive and very sure they would have little difficulty finding a studio willing to purchase the movie rights.  It was Spring by now, sometime around mid-April in 1996.  The manuscript went out to twenty-two studios, three of which came back and told Howard and Richard they were definitely interested . . . but there was a problem.  The One That Wasn’t There is a story about the sabotaging of a Gulfstream IV business jet that subsequently collides with a passenger-carrying Boeing 747 in the skies above Hong Kong.  The crew of the Boeing 747 is incapacitated.  The jumbo jet crashes into an apartment complex, resulting in the deaths of nearly 18,000 people (bear in mind that this story was written some six years before the attacks of September 11, 2001).

So, what was the problem? Control of Hong Kong was slated to transition from Great Britain to the People’s Republic of China on July 1, 1997—not enough time to film on location.  The studios asked if I could change the story’s setting.  “Not a problem,” I replied.  “How does Sydney, Australia sound?”  Why Sydney?  Because I like to write about locations I’ve actually visited and with I am thus familiar.  Howard, Richard, and Henry were all in agreement that Sydney would be perfect.  And so I began a three-month rewrite that entailed not only changing the locale, but also much of the plot.  Now, instead of an apartment building in Hong Kong, Sydney Centrepoint Tower and the Hilton International Sydney were ground zero.  Bad guys changed.  New motivations were devised.  Old plot elements were discarded and new ones added.  Finally, in mid-July, an almost entirely new manuscript titled And the Games Begin was shipped out to both New York and California.  Calls came back about a week or two later and Howard gushed that the revised story was even better than the original.  And the Games Begin would go up for auction in early September.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the auction. Another author, very famous and whose books were frequently the basis for blockbuster movies, decided to change genres and dabble in the field of aviation.  His novel was slated for publication release in December, but the movie rights were being auctioned three months earlier, sight unseen, to an ever-eager Hollywood set.  So powerful was this novelist that no studio, even those that bid unsuccessfully for the rights to his much anticipated aviation thriller, dared to acquire the rights to anything deemed to be in competition lest that studio be barred from bidding for the rights to his future works.  At least that was the word from a dejected Howard when he called me with the bad news.  Oddly enough, our books really weren’t in competition, but nobody knew that because they were bidding on a project they hadn’t even seen and which wouldn’t be revealed for another three months.

The dramatic rights for that movie went for an (at the time) unheard of eight million dollars.  But don’t waste your time trying to figure out who this author is, what book I’m talking about, and then try to put the movie into your Netflix queue.  It was never filmed.  But by the time this project died, so had interest in mine.  Yes indeed, tragedy on an unprecedented scale . . . at least for me.

I may eventually get around to putting this book out—Book 2 in the Ian Drake series on aircraft sabotage investigation, but it will require yet another reworking before I do.

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