Honestly, it can get convoluted. Some… I just don’t know. Planning Vengeance/Dig Two Graves just sort of happened. I had a plan, and it was COMPLETELY different than the story that emerged. You might think it is crazy, but the characters moved me to tell a story (which also spilled into Who, What, When, Why?) and I was along for the ride. I used to joke that I had to write fast because I wanted to know how it would turn out.

You Don’t Know Jack was a little different. I had the basis of the idea. I just had to figure out how Jack got into trouble… at the genesis of the idea, he was already in a bad place. And the end of the book… was actually in another book. But I felt it fit more with the theme of YDKJ.

Lies and Omissions was a little different. I was still “pantsing”… writing by the seat of my pants… but I had a scene that I really wanted to write. The first thing I wrote for that book was the chapter The Heather Trap. The rest of the book flowed from that chapter, although not the way I expected. I had another villain, but I just couldn’t get mad at her. The funny thing with that one, though, is that bits and pieces of a lot of the characters are people I know. They have been sliced and diced and hidden, but some friends will recognize episodes from the story.

Other stories have beginnings that are similar to that, but different. One of the ones I am working on right now, tentatively called At Arm’s Length (a title I actually like) started with someone I used to know. Everything that makes the story happen is an outlandish “what if…” but it started with that one person. Other stories have that same kernel of reality. In some cases, the kernel is smaller, others are bigger.

Most of the books, though, have a scene that resembles reality. The conversations between my father and me before he died were the basis for those between Nick Tower and his father in Lies and Omissions. They were really hard to write, even twenty-four years removed from his passing. Some of the events in volving Ed Dixon in Unknown Caller are rooted (loosely) on my grandfather and his battle with Alzheimer’s Disease and the people that were able to sooth him.

I have been lucky to know a lot of interesting and cool people, and to have vivid memories of many of them. Some of the stories, both things from novels and short stories I have on places like Vocal, are like the highlights reel from those folks… but obscured and run through a filter. Some of those highlights are embarrassing… or could be… so I try to obscure the party to whom damage might occur.

In other instances, there are allusions to things which are not real. The one that springs to mind is that a friend, upon beta reading Lies and Omissions, commented that she didn’t know I had that type of relationship with another character from the book… yes, she easily recognized a character that wasn’t her (and she REALLY recognized the part of a character that was her). I hadn’t really known the person in question all that well. But it was easy to infer I might have known her more than they thought.

So, the easy answer is that they come from memories twisted out of context, expanded until they are unrecognizable, and then filtered to remove the reality. Mostly.

I have to tell them the specific changes that have been made. So, for each change, I have to give them a “location number” (which I think might be a paragraph, but I’m not sure) as well as the nature of the change… location 5476, changed word ‘ot’ to ‘to’ or some similar.

Well… I didn’t record all of that, and it is VERY difficult to go back and figure it out, so I have had to scour my books (I have done Planning Vengeance, Dig Two Graves, You Don’t Know Jack, Who What When Why?, and Grafton. I’m in the midst of Unknown Caller, then will be doing Triple Cross and finally Lies and Omissions. That is all eight of my books. Feel free to get a few of them.

If you already have a copy, you can go into your Amazon account and look for content and devices. Then, under content, search out the book titles (I order them by author… it’s easier because they are grouped together). Under the ones that have been updated, there is an “Update Available” tag. Click it and the new update will be sent to your app or device.

A word of caution… if you have notes, they might not survive the update. I think that has to do with the changes in location that can happen as words move. This is especially true if you have a much older version of the book.

None of the changes are truly significant. I’m not changing plot points, characters, structure or action. These are changes to words or (in a few cases) formatting. Typos, wrong words (I have a couple of hanger instead of hangar that I’ve found) and similar things. They are annoyances… especially to me. The most significant changes were VERY early in Triple Cross. Right after I published it I realized I had some of the timeline mixed up. I had changed some things BEFORE publishing and didn’t catch all of the related changes. I fixed it within a few days. But… if you are the other person that downloaded it then, you might have the old version.

Do I need to say that this doesn’t work with the print versions of the books? That is one of the reasons I don’t do the print versions right away… Readers spot mistakes and tell me, and I correct them.

The common thing I see on the webs is that if I wanted there to be no mistakes, I would hire an editor… and yet, reading BIG NAME authors, I often spot multiple mistakes, especially in first editions. They have a phalanx of editors and others that go through their books with a fine-toothed comb, and there are STILL errors. It happens.

I’m just trying to fix mine.

If you ever find an error, please let me know. If it is an old edition, there is a good chance I’ve found it, but if not, I will fix it for future editions. Because of the way Amazon does it, there have to be a bunch of changes to trigger an update, though.

I offer an ebook called Escape for subscribing to my blog. You can get the whole thing free… or you can catch Escape on Vocal and read the first three chapters. You can click from one to the next at the end of each segment.

If you want to catch a little of Planning Vengeance (which has just had an update on Amazon…) then there is this clip available on Vocal. Or you can get the whole book for just THREE BUCKS. If you are a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can read ANY of my books on Amazon for free… all are enrolled in KU.

The next one (chronologically on Vocal) is an excerpt from Lies and Omissions. So, you can pick up a clip for L&O on Vocal or buy it on Amazon.

Triple Cross was the next one that I set up to have an excerpt on Vocal.

From the book Who, What, When, Why? I included a bunch of clips. All of the Vocal links (a couple are multi-part, so the first one is linked) are as follows. The Cliff The Angel The Busboy

From the book Grafton, I included a clip from Melody on Vocal. I really ended up liking her backstory. She doesn’t get enough play in the mainline books… at least not befitting how important her character is to the stories. But here she was able to shine. I think she was pretty good in the other Grafton stories, too.

Finally, Unknown Caller. There is only one excerpt, but I did a bonus story ONLY on Vocal. So, the excerpt on Vocal is here, but the bonus story about Colt on Vocal is here…

As he looked around, he noted that the attacking forces looked more like a trained insurgent militia than an untrained Azerbaijani mob, and they certainly didn’t act like a random mob.  “They’re using squad tactics and know what positions to try to hold.  They are ripping apart the Armenian civilians whenever they try to break out.”

“Punch some holes for the locals, then, Bobby.  Do whatever you need to do to help out the civilians.  But be quick, we still have to get to the pinned down UN forces.”

Gunny backed the APC right up to the doors of the building with the UN Peacekeepers on the roof. 

“Hold ‘em down, Bobby.  Ronny and I are gonna see what we have up there.”

Gunny Grafton and Ronny Torres exited the back of the APC and headed up to the roof of the building.  As they went up the stairs, they started finding evidence of the fight that had taken place in the stairwell.  The first casualties they ran across were the hostile fighters that had been attacking the UN group.  Then they started running across UN casualties. 

“This isn’t good, Ronny.  Any of these guys alive?” Gunny stated.

“Not that I’ve found yet, Gunny.  This was brutal,” the medic said as he knelt next to another fallen UN soldier.  “If they had anyone that was injured, they likely dragged them up the stairs.” 

In the background he could hear the machine gun firing from the APC outside.  There were short bursts followed by the tinkling sound of the casings bouncing off the side of the armored vehicle.  Obviously, Bobby was getting some hostile activity.  He was holding off the attacking force, pinning them down with sporadic fire from the turret.  Hopefully, some of the civilians that were pinned down in the square would be able to get away from the area.

As they got to the top of the stairwell, Gunny radioed back to the American Colonel that had called him in to rescue these soldiers.  “Colonel Bryce, pass along that we’re here and don’t want to get shot coming through the door, Sir,” he said.  A moment later a woman carrying an HK MP5N opened the door and ushered Gunny and Ronny inside. 

“You in charge?” Gunny asked.  She didn’t understand, so he repeated the question in German.  Then she took him to Gefreiter Richter.  As he looked at the injured German soldier, recognition flooded into him, “Rolf?  Is that you?” Gunny said, kneeling beside the man on the ground.  “Ronny, get over here,” he yelled. 

“These guys are all in rough shape, Gunny, what’s up?”

“This is Rolf Richter.  He’s a friend, a Scout.  I haven’t seen him in over six years.  He used to date Nicole and he’s a friend of Jack’s.”

Ronny started checking the man over to see what injuries he had.  He immediately saw that he would be losing his left leg, if Ronny could even keep him alive.  And he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do that. 

Gunny looked around on the roof.  There were dozens of civilians, mostly women and children.  A few were injured, but the real damage had been done to the soldiers.  There were only a handful that were even able to stand. 

“One,” Bobby said over the earpiece radio, “it’s getting hot down here.  How much longer are you going to be?”

“It’s bad up here, too.  We’ve got maybe a hundred civilians to try to evac, as well as eight UN soldiers that are still alive.  When we get them down there, can we get these people away from the heat down there?”

“I guess we have to, Boss,” he replied.

Gunny turned around and looked out at the civilians gathered on the roof.  Then he looked over the side of the roof at the square below.  The protestors were gone, and it was nothing but the counter-protestors, the ones they were pretty sure were Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or some similar force.  Bobby was doing a good job pinning them down, but it was going to take more than that to get the civilians out. 

“Who is in charge of comms here?” Gunny asked.

Soldat Schmitz raised his hand, “I am, Sir.”

“We need evac.  If they can’t do it, we might have to camp here until I can get my own assets here to get these people out.  Your unit has done everything it could to keep these people alive, but if we can’t get some help, we’re all going to have some more work to do.”

“Yes, Sir,” Schmitz replied.  He then got on the radio and raised HQ to try to get help with the civilians.  At the same time, Gunny called his UN contact to plead the case for getting more help with the civilian evac. 

“Gunny, Rolf doesn’t have much time.  I need to get him to my big bag in the next few minutes, and then we really need to get him to a hospital.  We can’t afford to wait for the UN.”

As much as Gunny hated the choice he had to make, he knew what he had to do.  Rolf wasn’t going to make it through a delay.  His squad couldn’t hold off the forces in the square, and the civilians were dead without the UN forces and Gunny’s small force.  “I need some people to help carry these soldiers down to our vehicle.  And we ARE going to get you out of here,” Gunny said to the gathered Armenians.  A group of women came forward and offered to help, while several of the older men and young boys scattered in the crowd took up rifles.  Without getting word back from the UN forces about reinforcements, the crowd started making their way down the stairway, Gunny and Ronny in the lead, the injured UN soldiers being carried right behind them. 

“Four, this is One, are you ready for us?  We’re coming out.”

In response, Bobby launched a few rocket-propelled grenades at some of the places that were being used as cover by the suspected IRGC fighters.  He followed that up by saturating the areas around them with the Zastava 7.62mm machine gun.  Gunny added to it with the M249 SAW, Squad Assault Weapon, making sure that any resistance was suppressed. 

One of the locals ran up behind Gunny, “I know a way out of here if you can get us around the corner.  There is a subway station, and we can use the tunnels to get away.”

He took Gunny over to show him the subway station entrance.  The former Marine took a few minutes to make sure the station was clear, at least as far as the platform, before coming back over to the waiting APC. 

He stepped inside the back of the APC, “Bobby, we need to keep their heads down while we sneak a hundred people into the subway.”

“On it, Boss.  I’ll light ‘em up.  Give me a ten count and then make the move.”

Gunny quickly stepped out of the APC and got the locals organized.  The people carrying guns were assigned to the front and back of the group, with the bulk of the group unarmed in the middle.  Ten seconds later Bobby threw everything he had at the hostiles across and around the square.  Everything that he had seen move in the last few minutes took fire from him.  Gunny fired a few RPGs at areas he thought might be providing cover for the insurgents. 

As the attack reached a crescendo, Gunny led a group of Armenians toward the subway entrance.  There was no resistance inside the tunnel.  After getting everyone down into the subway complex, Gunny returned to the APC to make a run through the insurgent fighters, making sure they were suppressed, then they would drive to the next station just to be sure no bogies were able to get down in front of the civilians in their escape. 

Ronny was working furiously on several of the injured in the back of the APC.  He was doubtful that four of the nine would make it to the hospital.  Rolf was on the cusp.  The other four were in better shape.  Luckily one of the civilians was an Emergency Room Nurse and she stayed in the vehicle to help Ronny with the injured soldiers. 

“How far from the hospital are we Irena?” Ronny asked the nurse in German.

“Maybe fifteen minutes,” she replied, knowing that every minute made a difference. 

“Gunny, you better step on it.  Rolf doesn’t have fifteen minutes.” 

Bobby came back down inside the vehicle to help Ronny.  Meanwhile, Gunny pushed the armored vehicle as hard as he could through the pre-dawn streets of Yerevan.  It took him eleven minutes, but he pulled up in the ER portico at Yerevan Medical Center.  The nurse jumped from the back of the APC and ran through the door to get a stretcher and help as Ronnie readied Rolf and the six other remaining soldiers to transfer.  Two had passed away from their injuries on the drive to the hospital. 

Ten minutes later three of the soldiers were in surgery, including Rolf.  He’d lost consciousness before being carried to the APC and hadn’t awoken since. 

Gunny took his small team back out to the armored vehicle and set out to find the people that they’d put in the subway tunnel.  He wanted to know that they had made it safe out of the tunnel and back to friendlier territory. 

the logistical challenge of getting fourteen backpacks down the cliff face.  The boys had redistributed a lot of their stuff to other boys in their patrols, so they weren’t carrying tents, but they did have sleeping bags, clothes and other essentials.  The packs were mostly about twenty pounds or so. 

Gunny oversaw the rigging of a system to tie a couple of packs together and lower them down.  They had to do it four times to get all fourteen packs down, and it was tough work.  The adults went first, lowering their packs and showing the boys the system.  It took over an hour to get all the bags down. 

Then it was time for them to start going down.  Two of the adults led off and rappelled down the face.  When they got to the bottom, they signaled for the first of the boys to come down.  Jack was in the second to last pair of boys to go down, and he was starting to get nervous.  He’d been to all the training rappels, but none had been this high.  As he stood looking out over the scene in front of him, he could see for miles and miles.  Off in the distance, he could even see the patchwork of farm fields.  In another situation, he would have marveled at the incredible view.  But at this moment the only thought that occupied his mind was that he was standing near a cliff… hundreds of feet from the landing below… and he was preparing to step off.

“Jack, look at me,” Gunny said to him as he held Jack’s shoulders.  He walked Jack backwards toward the cliff, the rope already set up on his carabiner.  Gunny was tied off to a tree, so he backed Jack right to the edge.  “You can do this Jack.  You’re out over the edge now.  Lean back… just the way you did in training.”

“Yes, Sir,” Jack said quietly.

Gunny made sure, for at least the fifth time, that Jack was holding the ropes correctly and knew the procedure. 

“Just lean back and walk backwards down the face.  Look up here to me until you get comfortable.”

Jack stepped off the cliff and started walking slowly backwards down the cliff face.  After a few feet, he came to a little shelf, and he had to jump to get over it.  It took three tries to get the timing right, but he jumped and let out rope at the same time and easily slid down about ten feet.  Getting the hang of it, he got more comfortable. 

Gunny stepped over to the other boy that had yet to go.  His name was Randy, and he was new to the troop.  He was almost fearless as he went over to the edge and started working his way down the cliff.  Soon he was lower than Jack.  But as Jack got down to about fifty feet from the bottom, he caught back up to Randy.

“I’m stuck, can you help me?” Randy asked. 

“What is it?” Jack asked. 

“It’s like there’s a knot in my rope.  It’s jammed.”

“Can you pull yourself up and undo it with the other hand?”

“No… I tried.  But I can’t hold myself up with one hand.”

“What’s goin’ on down there, guys?” Gunny yelled from above.

“Randy’s stuck, Sir,” Jack yelled back up. 

Gunny yelled down the same instruction, and Randy yelled back up that he couldn’t. 

At the top of the cliff, Gunny let out a sigh.  “It was all too smooth,” he said to Jim Davis and Charlie Jackson.  “There has to be one.”

Gunny walked back over to the cliff edge, “Jack, keep going down.  Mr. Jackson is going to come down your rope and see if he can get it undone,” he yelled down.

“Yes, Sir,” Jack yelled back as he continued down the mountain.  A few minutes later his feet were on solid, almost horizontal ground.  He unhooked his rope and waved his arms to let them know at the top he was off the rope. 

Partway up the mountain, Randy was starting to get nervous.  He was yanking on the rope to try to dislodge the snag and it wasn’t working.  A few times, while he was struggling with the rope, he lost his footing and smacked into the cliff face. 

“It’s ok, Randy,” Charlie Jackson said as he started down, “I’ll be there in a little bit.  Just hang out and enjoy the view.”

Charlie kept making his way down the face, knowing that hurrying would be more dangerous than taking his time.  But as the moments clicked by, Randy became more and more panicked. 

“Ok, Randy, can you pull yourself up to take pressure off the part of the rope that is snagged,” Mr. Jackson asked him.

He tried, but he couldn’t hold himself up enough for Mr. Jackson to do much of anything, but he tried for ten solid minutes to untangle the boy’s rope. 

“Charlie, hang out there for a minute.  I’m going to bring him up,” Gunny yelled down.  “Randy, when you feel me start to pull you, just walk up the mountain… like Batman, got it?”

“Yes, Sir, Gunny,” he responded, though still not sure how this was going to work out. 

Gunny told Jim to wrap the rope around the stump between the two men.  “Keep pressure on the wrap.  If I slip, you have to hold up Randy.  That kid probably weighs one-fifty, but with the wraps, it shouldn’t be too bad.”

Gunny double checked his safety line, then walked back over to the cliff.  He picked up the rope and started hauling it in, hand under hand.  “Keep walking, Randy,” he said as he brought the boy back up the cliff. 

After about fifteen minutes of pulling, including a couple of short rest breaks, Randy scrambled over the side at the top of the cliff.  He looked up at the Assistant Scoutmaster that had hauled him a hundred feet up the side of the mountain.  He was sweating and flexing his hands, but he barely looked winded. 

“What now, Gunny?” Randy asked.

Gunny picked the rope back up and undid the tangle.  “I don’t know how you managed that one,” he said to the Scout.  “Are you ready to head back down the side?”

“Do I have to?” Randy asked, looking rather nervous.

“That or make the run with Mr. Davis.  And he runs fast.  I’d rather go over the side.

Gunny checked over the rope and tossed it back over to allow Randy to try it again.  He rigged the youth and sent him back over the side.  This time he made it all the way to the bottom without incident. 

“After I get to the bottom, Jim, you can drop the ropes and head down the path.  We’ll wait for you.”

“Ha, I’ll wait for the hikers.  I’ll catch them before they make it to the trailhead.  It’s only ten miles and almost all downhill,” he laughed. 

Gunny shook his head at his friend and fellow scout leader.  Then, he walked over to the side, checked his rigging again and stepped backwards off the cliff.  He made it down the hundred and fifty-foot face in just a couple of minutes, bouncing down twenty or thirty feet on each leap. 

Just after he unhooked from them, the ropes dropped to the bottom and Jim Davis took off on his run.  The boys picked up their packs and started the rest of their hike.  The cliff had cut six miles off their ten-mile hike down. 

***

That was some story last night at the campfire, Gunny,” Ed said as the two men drove back to Hampton in Gunny’s truck. 

“Like that one?”

“Lots of details left out, but quite a story.”

“Think how fun it would be to tell the real one, Ed.”

“Jack wouldn’t believe it.  Heck, I barely believe it and I was there.”

“I know what you mean.”

***

Gunny’s pick-up truck pulled into the church parking lot that evening after their long ride back.  The van was already there.  The boys unloaded and were talking excitedly about the trip with their parents.  Randy’s mother walked over to the truck before Gunny could get out. 

“Mr. Grafton, I’m Elise Roberts, Randy’s Mom.  He told me what happened.”

“Please, Ma’am, call me Gunny, everyone does.”

“Well, be that as it may, I’m still a little concerned that a child could have been stuck on the side of the mountain,” she continued, with a bit of exasperation. 

“Ms. Roberts, my name is Ed Dixon.  I’m a parent, like you.  I was at the bottom, watching, when it happened.  The rope tangle was a freak thing.  Gunny and I, and a few of the other adults there, have done this for decades and never had a rope tangle like that.  But I can tell you that in no way was Randy endangered because of that.  We had several options to handle the situation.”

“Mom,” Randy said from behind her in an almost whiny voice, “it’s not their fault.  I think it was mine.  I was whipping the rope around behind me and I think I made the tangle with my foot.  And while I was stuck, I was scared, but Mr. Grafton and Mr. Jackson got me down.  They weren’t going to leave me,” he said, stretching out the word “leave” to three extra syllables. 

“This is a dangerous activity.  Is it really appropriate for these children?” she asked.

“Ma’am, it absolutely is dangerous.  Your sixteen-year-old son stepped off a hundred and fifty-foot cliff and rappelled down it.  Almost twice.  His harness and rigging were checked multiple times and by multiple people.  The young men that were allowed to rappel were all over fourteen and, like your son, not small guys.  I have been rappelling since I was a Scout, and I’ve NEVER had a person in my care, or with me, that had a serious injury from the activity,” Gunny said, flashing his best smile.  “Please excuse me for a minute, I need to unload the packs from my truck.”

Gunny turned and walked to the back of his pick-up truck to help get the packs distributed.  He reached in and grabbed several of the packs in each arm and pulled them out for the boys to grab and distribute.  A few moments later the back of the truck was clear, and parents were starting to leave with their sons. 

“Mrs. Roberts, did you have any other questions,” Gunny asked.

“It’s Miss Roberts, but please call me… Elise.  I would like to talk about this sometime, though.”

“I’m here every Monday.  I can usually break away to talk unless Mr. Holloway isn’t around, and then I might have some Scoutmaster duties.  Otherwise, I’m pretty easy to catch.”

She thanked him and turned to head back to her car.

“I think she was flirting with you, Gunny,” Ed said, smiling.  “At the end, anyway.”

“Ya really think?” he responded.

“Yep-  ‘but please call me-’ dramatic pause- ’Elise’,” Ed said back in a falsetto voice, “but whatever.  She is pretty, though.”