Category: Avitabile

Marginal Notes on Benghazi

On page 130 of my novel, The Hammer of God, the Ambassador to Egypt is kidnapped. This becomes the center issue of a dramatic debate, which is, I am sure, as old as terror and as fresh as yesterday:  Do you negotiate with terrorists?

As I was writing the scenes that take place in the Oval Office, the words got heated between the Secretary of State and the President. Both entrenched in their diametrically opposed positions, with the President not wanting to accede to the kidnapping and thereby instantly create an open season on US Ambassadors worldwide, while the Sec State wanted some back channel trade to release a mastermind terrorist that America was holding – in a super-max in the middle of the country.  To help me keep the beats of this ethical dilemma straight, I made a note: “The President is saving all future Ambassadors, the Sec State is trying to save the current one.”  This sub-textual motivation helped me keep the arguments between my characters aligned.

Yesterday, I was cleaning my desk, and found my notes from the blog I wrote, “Benghazi and Impotence”. Posted on September 15, 2012, when I ran across something that, even though I had seen, had no meaning on Sept. 15th but I believe does today.  I will attempt to retype it as I wrote it in marginal chicken-scratch of my early 2010 draft of my novel (pictured below).

The writing process: Plot twists and chicken-scratch.

“DS inside plot SS .  Take Amb, trade Sheik, back ch.  B&R disobey ‘unmolest’. Start real FF w/Friendlies.” Bring back CS to unc? Does JeA have GF?”

Okay, so that’s how I really write (misspellings and all) and it even took me a minute to decipher what I jotted down two years ago, here’s the handy-dandy index:

DS inside Plot SS – The kidnapping of the Ambassador was a plot hatched within the Diplomatic Security Service at the Direction of the Sec State. The plan was to force to force a back channel, out-of-the-news prisoner exchange of the Ambassador for a terrorist mastermind Sheik who was caught and held in America.

Continue reading “Marginal Notes on Benghazi” →

Tell Us Which Hero You Honored On Election Day

Join me on my Facebook page to record the name of the person you honored on Election Day.

Take a Hero to Vote

Pirates: The Sequel- Send in the Marines!

I’m pregnant.

I’m in the last trimester of the birthing of The God Particle. And even though this is not a biological condition, I still can’t see my toes.

I suppose that’s better addressed by diet…

The principle opening action and much of the theme of one of the plots of the book concerns Somali pirates who have gone high tech. (It’s only fiction… ‘til it happens.) A large part of the storyline is focused on defining and then effectively combating this new piracy.

Pirates were the biggest problem the world faced two hundred years ago. Thomas Jefferson, in his 1801 State of the Union speech, assured America that everything was fine, that we were at peace everywhere in the world — save the Barbary Coast.

He was referring to the fact that the Barbary Coast pirates, who had, up until 1801, been happy to receive a stipend of $25,000 a year to NOT board and plunder American flagged ships, had upped the ante. They had gone high tech, too — better boats, faster boats, and they felt that, because they could flex more of a threat, that the price for protection against that threat should also go up.

Jefferson was having none of it. So, he calmly told the American people in the State of the Union address that the unrealistic demands of the pirates had left him but one answer. He create the Marines, he put them on boats, and said, “Go kill those guys.”

…to the shores of Tripoli

It’s embedded in the Marine Corp hymn, but it’s also testimony to the fact that one of the greatest fighting forces on earth, that played a huge role in defeating the Empire of Japan, and has been a top echelon military fighting force, had its birth in the eradication of pirates.

I could use a few Marines to help me find the a-hole who’s figured out how to pirate my book, and I would imagine, the work of even bigger authors. ‘

Semper Fi!

The Marketplace of Not-So-Free Ideas!

Readers and fans often ask, “How do you get your ideas?”

Well, at the risk of being thrown out of the Thriller Writer’s Guild, (we take an oath not to reveal the secrets of our craft), I will let you into the rat’s nest of mis-wired synapses that are my brain.

The Internet being a wonderful thing, I often listen to a small radio station out of New Hampshire.  In the old days, it’s A.M. signal probably didn’t make it to Vermont on a windy night, but with wi-fi, I get it in New York better than those folks on the west side of the medium sized New England town.  

The station has about 5 sponsors.  Within an hour, you’ll hear the same 5 spots twice. Plus a whole lot of ‘Free’ Public Service Spots (a sure indicator that they are filling unsold time.)

Then something political happened last week.  One presidential candidate suddenly surged ahead in the poles.  And now the local plumber who’s spot featured his kid saying, “My Dad’s the best ‘Pulumber’” is gone and non-stop, wall to wall, political ads, attack my ear buds.  

Pop quiz!  What’s the biggest Political Action Committee in America? Hint, it has 3 letters and it starts with an N.  (Insert Jeopardy countdown theme music here for 10 seconds.) If you said NRA (National Rifle Association) you are wrong.  Try this one, NAB! The National Association of Broadcasters.  If you doubt their clout, research how many times Presidents, from both parties, make sure they speak at the annual NAB conventions, usually held in Vegas in the spring.  Why? Money!  

This election year the estimates of how much will be spent are up to at least a billion and probably twice that much.  Did you ever stop to think where all that money goes? The lion share, by far, goes to TV and Radio time purchases.  This is true for every election year, but really a Broadcaster’s payday in a Presidential election year!

Okay, so where’s the plot?  What idea has this obscure and not too interesting fact sparked?

We would all be surprised at just how small, relative to the U.S. population, the sample size of “national polls” are. To a lesser degree, on a percentage basis, state-wide polls may be somewhat larger but usually still not more than a few hundred.

So it could come down to 30 people who might say, ‘I like the challenger’ where before 30 others have said ‘I like the incumbent.’  In a sample size of 300, that means the challenger just shot ahead by 10% in that state.   Campaigns usually freak-out at anything over the margin of error (3-5% nominally) So what happens? Millions in ad dollars flow in to the “battle ground state”.  Which may not have been a battleground before, but now that there is a big separation in the polls, it’s now considered in play!

That being the mechanics of the scheme, my plot goes like this, most of the polling is done by colleges and/or professional polling services, many pollsters are part time and most interviews are done by phone.

In the plot, I’d focus on the owner of my little A.M. station, which is just barely making enough ad revenue to pay commissions to their salespeople and squeaking by on the electric bill to power the transmitter.  I’d give him a son in college. Guess what, he’s a poli-sci major, and guess what-what? He’s got a part time job for $12 dollars an hour being a pollster.  He makes 50 calls a day.  One day he skips the calls and just checks off the challenger on about 30 forms. Boom! The polls change, the campaigns freak. Millions of campaign dollars now flow in to New Hampshire’s TV and Radio… and DAD!

It’s the perfect crime, there are no regulations or laws regulating polls so nothing is illegal here.  Junior’s little 12 bucks an hour job is leveraged to $300,000 in new income to the station.  

In the book, I’d probably make the father the owner of a group of stations across the state, maybe 10, so we are talking 3 million here.  And I’d have the son get into a fight with his dad and threaten to go public with his dirty deed. When the son shows up dead. When the political windfall is revealed, suspicion falls on the father and a big court case ensues. The above NAB/Elections ‘corruption’ is stumbled on and brought in by the Prosecutor.  All of a sudden, high-priced, superstar, New York lawyers descend on this little town. They are being paid tons representing the big networks, who are protecting hundreds of millions in political ad revenue. Spoiler alert!  In the end, the killer is found to be the owner of 5 TV stations in the state, protecting his $15,000,000.00 additional income.

Okay so maybe it’s a subplot, set against a larger story, but hey, it’s an idea born out of an observation from everyday life.

In The Eighth Day, I have the greatest rigging of a Presidential Election ever.  And, it to, is also a subplot that dove tails into the main plot in a big way!  

Don’t forget to vote Nov 6th!

Benghazi and Impotence

I received many E-mails the night of September 11th and Wednesday morning, most from fans and readers, but a few from friends as well. They all pretty much echoed the same theme… Did you see where they kidnapped an ambassador, just like in your book?

Even though this blog is called “It’s only fiction ‘til it happens,” I hate when something as God awful as this happens. I have been lucky enough to know a few ambassadors and my thoughts immediately went to them and their families.

When I wrote The Hammer of God, I thought that the taking of ambassador would be the high level type of offense that would serve as a prelude for my President Mitchell to send in Special Forces… Those forces then stumble across a dastardly plot to kill millions of Americans and so my plot had its inciting incident.

The last ambassador to be attacked was back in the late 70’s. In the early hours of the morning of September 12th, the grim reality was very soon revealed when the kidnapping became murder. We found out that our Ambassador was brutalized and killed along with 3 other Americans. I only wish it were fiction.

The threat matrix against which my stories are set is often deemed exaggerated or indeed a work of fiction. Then something as horrible as this happens to real people, real Americans and it makes me feel angry and impotent. The angry part of me wants to fly to Libya find the bastards that did this and deliver swift justice. Then the reality of my civilian impotence sets in and I realize that the closest I’ll get to avenge this act and assuage my anger is this keyboard and the creation of another cautionary tale wrapped up as fiction for people to read and sense the threats – between the lines.

To my friends and readers; although in Hammer, it is the American Ambassador to Egypt that is kidnapped, the reality of this real act of war, which played out in Libya this week, does not follow my storyline.

I extend my deepest sympathies to the families of those slaughtered. They were dedicated professionals, who in the end, were representatives of diplomacy. Diplomacy being the last step before hostilities, these radical fools may have just killed, along with the Ambassador and his staff, their best chance, to avoid being ‘terminated with extreme prejudice’, and talk their way out of this. At least I hope that’s the way this story ends.

In The Hammer of God, Bill said to Janice upon learning the news that an ambassador was kidnapped, “…This is just a guess, but I’d say there’s a Delta Force or SEAL strike team warming up the coffee right about now…” I hope that bit of ‘Fiction’, happens.

And the Winner is…

CONGRATULATIONS

Having never won anything in my life, it’s interesting to be on this side. I
am so glad for Rachel Robertson  and I hope the luck continues… So Rachel if I
were you I’d go buy a lottery ticket!

The Jersey Shore and a Million Dollar Pair of Nikes

This Labor Day weekend, spontaneity ruled the day.  Without planning or intending to, I found myself on the Jersey Shore close to New York City on a peninsula called Sandy Hook.  I write a lot about America and defending her.  Admittedly, I look for the more non-traditional methods to fuel my novels.  On this beautiful late summer day, I suddenly found myself looking at two Nike Missiles.  Surface to air, interceptor missiles that fortunately only played an active role in the black and white science fiction movies of the 50’s, as the best defense we had, being vaporized by the flying saucer’s death ray.  (See Earth vs. The Flying Saucers and the like)

As the day unfolded, I was surrounded in cold-war iconology.  To say I was astonished is to minimize the impact this discovery had on me. I never knew that 17 miles away from Midtown Manhattan, was a nuclear missile base. Part of a defensive shield, a blanket of comfort for the Dashing Dan’s of the 60’s (See Madmen) who just wanted to win the American Rat Race and make a better life for their kids.  I was one of those kids, ducking and covering under my school desk, trusting the old guys on TV in Washington D.C. to protect me from the ‘Sireen.’  The siren in my neighborhood was atop P.S. 76 and in that school we practiced air raid drills weekly. The nightmare we lived under was, if it started wailing, we would be bombed into ashes, leaving nothing but shadows on walls and sidewalks. (See Hiroshima) Everyone, flash immolated, except, for some reason, those of us that were hiding under our desks facing away from the glass windows.

The Nike’s are rotting away now, you can see huge chunks of metal eaten away in the launch rails.  Some might take comfort in this; that this missile shield was now a relic, a remnant of a mentally tortured childhood and, to some, a comfort that those days are behind us.

Bullsh*t!  The Nike’s and everything else in the DEW line, defense early warning system, didn’t go away because the threat went away. The new technology of extreme mass destruction, just made them obsolete, the nightmare is still in play.

Today, there are less warheads, not because we did something good, but because the new warheads are 1,000 times more accurate. So they need less weapons to do the exact same job. The numbers are smaller but the mega-tonnage yields are 10,000 times higher.

We have improved our technology to the point where there is no defense. No longer are missiles, like the Nike, needed to shoot down Russian or Chinese long-range strategic bombers because those bombers are obsolete. Multiple re-entry warhead tipped, Inter-continental Ballistic Missiles and similar sea launched rockets are more efficient. Satellite eyes and the men and women in our Silos and Nuclear Subs (Boomers) are the only calculus a would-be attacker has to roll the dice against.

In part of my third book, The God Particle, we go inside the nuclear submarine SSBN-739, the U.S.S. Nebraska, America’s current random chit in the highest stakes game of total nuclear destruction that we still play today – albeit without the air raid drills and nightmares, but even more deadly nonetheless.

Today the Dashing Dan’s clutching their Fedora hat’s have been transformed to telecommuters, the dutiful secretary is now the virtual assistant, the duck and cover drills have gone the way of dodge ball and the Nike’s are rusting in National Parks, but the Madmen still have their fingers on their button, so our nation must remain vigilant.