Operator Series

I decided to depart from science fiction and write my take on the military/spy genre.  I always had an interest in the early terminus stories.  “Karen and the Boys” is about a bartender and two special operators in an unconventional relationship.  The idea of turning the traditional relationship on its side and having one woman with two men in marriage felt like it would only happen in a world with zombies.  

I was surprised when most people never second consider unconventional relationship.  As a new writer back then, I was nervous.  What if someone misunderstood?  What if they judged me for this?  It was ultimately stupid.  Writers make things up.  We read things that are not what we see daily because that is interesting. 

That led me to attack the spy genre by looking at the background characters in every spy story.  Who are the people that show up in combat gear and take up positions as snipers, kill a dozen people, and walk away?  What are they like every day?  What are their relationships like?

I was stationed at Fort Bragg in the late 80s, and I am sure my neighbor was a Delta Force Soldier.  I could list a dozen meaningless esoteric things, but when you add them up, he was not a soldier.  He was not Special Forces.  He was something else.

I wanted to write a story for what I thought that something else might be.  I will state clearly here that I know only the regular Army.  I know Artillery, Ordnance, and Signal Corps.  I have one friend in special forces, but I know only the stories he told and none of the truth.  If you have been around soldiers who tell stories, you need to know this universal truth:

“The difference between a War Story and a Fairy Tale is there is a small amount of truth in a Fairy Tale.”

I got that from a special forces soldier.  

The stories in the Operator series are complete works of fiction based on other fiction and a tiny grain of truth.  Are they based on real people?  No one in particular, but based on people I have worked around or read about.  

If you read this series for anything other than entertainment, you have wasted your time.  The stories could be based anywhere and on anything.  They have more uncommon with John Wick than the US Army.

They are currently being edited, and I expect the first three novellas to be released individually and combined as one novel by the End of summer.  The fourth story is already being mapped out.  When it is done, I will likely take a break and return to science fiction unless Tom Cruise decides to option the Operator stories for a movie or Apple TV Series.