I was taken back to my military days in grand style this weekend by a couple of remarkable events. I had the honor of attending the retirement ceremony for Brigadier General Robert Enzenauer, MD and then the annual dinner for the 19^th Special Forces Group as his guest, where the featured speaker was SF legend and author of Hunting the Jackal, Sergeant Major Billy Waugh.

This week I'm hoping for a little six-degrees-of-separation magic in locating the right Ronald Noble in the UK. Ronald was kind enough to write his first Amazon review after reading Betrayal, and it was a nice one: "Best book I have ever read top marks." Unfortunately, he made the not-uncommon mistake of assuming that 1 was "top marks" when it came to Amazon's star system (where 1 is actually the worst, and 5 the best.)

I'm sure Ronald would happily correct this, something that's easy to do, but he's unaware of the error, and I have no means of contacting him. So I'm hoping that through the power of friend-of-a-friend communication we can find him.

Last week was a first for me, I ran a free book promotion. I was nervous that people would value all my hard work commensurate with the price, and braced myself against whiplash. I was plesantly surprised. The quality of the reviews and direct reader feedback via email has been fantastic. I'm so touched and grateful!

There are a couple of stories behind Betrayal, the novel I chose for this promotion. The first involves the plot, which I'll summarize here by saying that it involves some venting from this Special Forces vet and former Blue-Chip exec. The second involves the process of Betrayal's publication, which I won't go into here.

In retrospect I shouldn't have been surprised that this resonated. Acts of betrayal

A couple weeks ago, COERCION appeared beside THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN on Amazon's Best Seller List at the same time my wife Elena was reading it beside me in bed. I did a cutsie Facebook post on this, and enjoyed my moment next to Paula Hawkin's sunshine.

Today, I woke up next to TGOTT again. This time on LAZY DAY BOOKS weekly review. This week's COERCION followed last week's TGOTT. Both were very thoughtful reviews, so my hat's off to the team at LAZY DAY BOOKS, and to fate for bringing us back together. You can check them out here.

Ever wonder what goes on behind the fiction? Flora at Books Chatter just published an in-depth and insightful interview we had a lot of fun with. It includes everything from music to a bedroom scene. She also did a lot of homework, including digging up the 2013 photo below (no, I'm not wearing makeup!) My beret's off to her for doing such a great job. Check it out,