Jack Stewart Author
Naval Aviator

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.

What a great question!

(And a great choice! Ray Porter’s narration in Project Hail Mary is incredible!)

There are several books I’ve read or listened to multiple times, like Patriot Games by Tom Clancy, Flight of the Intruder by Stephen Coonts, and Red Metal by Mark Greaney. But there are very few books I return to time and time again.

If I had to pick just one book that I’ve found myself returning to over the years, it would be Annapolis by William Martin—a sweeping historical novel that follows several generations of the Stafford and Parrish families as they fight wars around the world and shed their blood for the Navy and the city that was its mecca.

Come to think of it, it’s probably time I read it again!

The short answer is no.

The longer (and slightly more detailed) answer is sort of.

By that, I meant that nobody will ever read Direct Action and think it was written by W.E.B. Griffin or Pressure Depth and think it was written by Tom Clancy. The best I can hope for is to evoke the same emotions in the reader as the originals.

When I set out to write Direct Action, I wanted to honor the legacy of W.E.B. Griffin by structuring my story like the first book in the series, By Order of the President. In many ways, that book was the “origin story” of Charley Castillo, and I wanted mine to be the same for Pick McCoy. I also wanted to bring back legacy characters as the connective tissue between the original novels in the series and the reboot. Based on the response from fans, I think I succeeded.

Likewise, when I started writing my first novel in the Jack Ryan, Jr. series, I wanted fans to feel familiar with the themes present in most Tom Clancy novels. I wanted it to be technically accurate and driven by a cast of characters that have been around since the original novels as well as ones added by the authors who followed, including Mark Greaney, Grant Blackwood, Mike Maden, Don Bentley, and M.P. Woodward.

My stories are uniquely Jack Stewart, but they shouldn’t be a jarring shift from the previous books. Because, in the end, I want the reader to enjoy the ride!