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Behind the Book

Behind the book

People often ask where I get my ideas and I tell them, “In the shower.”  And when I say that, I’m not kidding.  

My ideas come to me when I am completely relaxed.  More often than not, it is in the evening when the children have been put to bed, my wife and I have eaten dinner, and we are sitting down enjoying a nice glass of wine. 

In fact, it was during just such an evening that the idea for The First Commandment was born.

With the cliffhanger ending in Takedown, I had purposefully left behind some big questions that needed answering.  As Trish and I discussed different potential plots for the next book, she used my trick of looking at something and asking “what if?” to raise a great point.  She said, “It is the United States’ firm position that it never negotiates with terrorists.  Well, what if it did - just once?”

It was a terrific idea and my mind exploded with all of the possibilities.  

The first thing I did was to investigate whether or not there were any exceptions to the “no negotiating with terrorists” rule.  What I uncovered stunned me and became the foundation upon which the new novel was built.

I am always looking for ways to get my characters to “go against type” and do things which they never would see themselves doing.  I loved the idea of pitting Harvath and President Rutledge directly against each other.  What would have to happen for this to take place?  What would make Harvath violate a direct presidential order and by the same token, what could possibly cause the president to issue a contract on the man who had saved both his life and his daughter’s?  

Pitting the nation’s number one counterterrorism operative against the president – and having them both believe they are in the right - was an exciting plot path to tread.

A lot of people are just as stunned by the ending of The First Commandment as they were with Takedown.  Everyone seems to have the same two questions.  What do the items left on the mantelpiece at Bishop’s Gate represent?  What has happened to Harvath?

All I can say is that I am going in a very interesting direction with the next novel.  Some have even cautioned that it could be extremely dangerous.  The one thing that I know is that it will be very exciting, likely very controversial, and more gripping than anything I have ever written.

Stay tuned…