THANKS, DAD: THE GENESIS OF AN ACTION AUTHOR

My father is inadvertently responsible—or to blame, depending on your wording of choice—for making me the writer I am today. You see, when I was 16, Dad and I stopped at a hole in the wall bait shop that looked like it belonged in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie to buy some worms. That ramshackle bait shop boasted a counter overflowing with dog-eared paperbacks for a buck apiece. Amidst the chaotically-stacked, multi-genre mess—Stephen King mixed with Grace Livingston Hill mixed with Louis L’Amour mixed with more bodice-ripping romance than you could shake a stick at—I stumbled upon The Executioner #128: Sudan Slaughter. With a picture of a rugged hero wielding a submachine gun on the front and a tagline promising that “hellfire explodes in northeast Africa,” it snagged my teenage interest almost as easily as a picture of a nude woman might have. (I said “almost.”)

I devoured the book and rapidly became enraptured by the hardcore action and graphic violence. Heads exploded! Brains sprayed! Blood spurted! Guts spilled! It was, in a word, wicked awesome. (OK, that’s two words, but that’s how we talked in 1989. Everything was wicked this and wicked that. And the music was way cooler too, but I digress.)

Over the next year, I immersed myself in action-adventure fiction like an alcoholic turned loose in the Jack Daniels distillery. The Executioner, Phoenix Force, and Able Team were my staples, but I devoured pretty much anything that fit into the guns ‘n’ guts genre.

It soon became apparent that all the books pretty much adhered to a formula. At that time, I knew nothing of stable writers or publishing house demands or any of that stuff—heck, it took me years to realize the Executioner series was no longer written by Don Pendleton. I just knew that after reading hundreds of action-adventure books, they were starting to feel pretty same-y. When I lamented this fact to my father, he replied:

“If you think you can do better, go write one yourself.”

And so I did.

It was called “Delta Force” and it was 3 pages long. Basically just one scene of the elite anti-terrorist team storming a hijacked jet. I wish I still had that short “story,” because I guarantee I set a new world’s record for amount of gore spilled in less than a thousand words. Those terrorists—as well as a plethora of hostages and several Delta Force commandos—died damn hard. Yeah, I had a bit o’ the ol’ literary bloodlust in me. Still do.

That one time was all it took. The writing needle had been injected and I was an instant addict. I wrote ceaselessly, often banging out a story a day. I wrote Mack Bolan fan fiction. I created my own series—Death Dealer and Warlokk—and before long my 3 page action vignettes turned into legitimate short stories which in turn evolved into novellas. I wrote a short story about my uncle, Green Beret Sgt. Leonard P. Allen, who died in ‘Nam by heroically sacrificing his own life in order to save his men. I entered it into competitions and won, resulting in a huge surge of confidence. The writing bug had bitten hard and suddenly my dreams of becoming a cop were eclipsed by my desire to write action-adventure novels.


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That dream took longer than expected, backburnered by the demands of college, career, family, life, etc. But thanks to Kindle Direct Publishing, that dream finally became reality on December 11, 2013, when I published my debut action-thriller, The Assassin’s Prayer.

I don’t know if I wrote a better action novel like my father told me to, but I did write one, and judging from the sales and feedback so far, people seem to like it. If you happen to read it and enjoy it, you can thank my dad. And if you hate it and think I should have avoided writing action fiction like a vegan avoids beef, well … you can still thank my dad.