Q & A
You Don't Know Jack
Easy. I had to believe in myself.
If I’m being honest with myself, I’m my harshest critic. I doubt myself in everything I do. I compare myself to others. I find ways to hold myself back to avoid being disappointed by the criticism of others.
But then I realized… I’m my harshest critic! Why worry about the criticism of others?
So, I put aside my doubts and just started writing.
Every other hurdle is insignificant in comparison.
This is a great question! The short answer is that I’ve always known I wanted to write. I lived in libraries and book stores as a kid and dreamed of one day writing a book that I would find on their shelves.
As I grew, that dream became just another “one day” goal that most of us have. “One day, I’ll restore that car”, “One day, I’ll quit smoking”, or “One day, I’ll lose that weight.” The problem with those goals though, is that most of us never reach that “one day.”
While on my last deployment with JSOC, I decided to stop putting it off. I turned “one day” into “today.” I started writing my first novel (a spectacular mess that will never see the light of day) and finished it five years later. As I wrote, a couple strange things happened:
First, I realized that writing a novel wasn’t as daunting as I originally thought. Hey, I wrote one… why can’t I write another?
Second, I realized that I have way more stories in me that need to be told.
Less than three years after Unknown Rider came out, I will get to see my eighth published novel (and the first in the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan, Jr. series) on the shelves of libraries and book stores. I think that’s pretty cool…
I know thirteen-year-old me would be tickled pink!
That’s a really good question! The short answer is yes.
But the longer answer should be a warning to anybody who stretches themselves too thin. When I was a new Reservist in the Navy, a senior pilot in my squadron told me that being in the Reserves involved juggling three competing priorities: your civilian job, the Navy, and your family. At any given time, two were going to be upset with you. The key was in rotating them around.
I think the same can be said for anybody who pursues their passion while also having a full-time job and a family. But I think the advice I’d been given as a Reservist wasn’t quite accurate, because there’s a fourth priority that gets overlooked all too often: your health. Without your health, you can’t be the husband or father your family needs, and you certainly can’t fulfill the requirements of your job or meet your publisher’s deadlines.
So, while I still juggle competing priorities, I’ve learned to put myself first. I make sure I get adequate sleep, workout on a regular basis, and fit in writing or traveling to book stores in between flying a full schedule with my airline. But I’ve also had to learn “balance.” I’m not the writer who gets up before the sun or stays up into the wee hours of the morning just to reach a word count goal. I’ve learned to set aside dedicated time for my wife and kids.
But it’s a work in progress… even with the best of intentions, sometimes I need to remind myself to throttle back and coast.
And, yes, sleep. Eight hours a night.
They say you have your whole life to write your first book, and that was true for me. I had always dabbled in writing short stories or the beginnings of novels. But I never finished them. To me, the idea of completing an entire book just seemed too daunting.
But after my last deployment in 2016, I decided to finally achieve my life-long goal of completing a novel. It took me another four years to finish it. I thought it was the greatest thing ever, but it was nowhere near ready to be published. The scores of rejections were proof of that.
So, I wrote another. And another. In all, I wrote five full-length novels before my first agent signed me on an uncompleted manuscript. It was in January 2022 when he read that first chapter and told me, “This will be your first book.” Phew. I’d done it. “Now, when you can you have it finished?”
I finished it in March. But he said it wasn’t ready.
I re-wrote it and gave him another version in May. It still wasn’t ready.
I re-wrote it again. In August, he said it was (finally) ready.
We sold Unknown Rider to Severn River Publishing in a four-book deal, putting me under deadlines for the next three books in the series.
They say you have your whole life to write your first book and something significantly less to write your second. For me, I had six months to turn in Outlaw. But all the rejections and revisions were worth it to experience holding my very own book in my hands in November 2023.
Now, on to the next one…
Honestly, I ate whatever was available. The wardrooms aboard aircraft carriers have specific hours for each meal of the day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and mid-rats), so I ate whatever was being served during the hours before my flight. Fortunately, I’m not a very picky eater, so I always found something that kept me satisfied for most shorter missions.
On my first deployment aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, we were the designated night carrier, meaning that our missions were flown from sunset to sunrise, wreaking havoc on our internal clocks. The carrier CO wanted to make that shift easier on aircrew, so he swapped the meal hours. Instead of serving dinner at 6 pm, they served breakfast. So, I had a belly full of eggs, bacon, and sausage before most of my combat missions.
While pre-flight meals often varied on my deployments aboard the USS Enterprise and USS Abraham Lincoln, there was one constant that held true: nothing tastes better after a night trap than a Barney Clark at mid-rats! (When my wife visited me in Hawaii on a port call, I think I made her go with me to Denny’s in the middle of the night, just so I could have a burger with a fried egg on top!)
As far as snacks go, many of my missions over Iraq and Afghanistan lasted anywhere from six to eight hours. Yes, I absolutely carried snacks with me. In addition to the water I carried in a CamelBak (or in bottles in my helmet bag), I also brought along PowerBars, granola bars, and my personal go-to, Uncrustables.
Grape was my favorite.
