Strike Force Behind The Book: strikeforce.mp3 Writers Roundtable Interview With Dale Brown ATARI ACT OF WAR: DIRECT ACTION LINKS Dale Brown Interview With: Peter Anthony Holder When a former pilot turns his hand to thrillers you can take their authenticity for granted. His writing is exceptional and the dialogue, plots and characters are first-class... far too good to be missed.' --Sunday Mirror ‘Dale Brown is a superb storyteller’ --WASHINGTON POST ‘Dale Brown is the best military adventure writer in the country’ --CLIVE CUSSLER

Back In The Real World
by Dale Brown, 2008

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT TheBigFiveOh.com Blog @ Yahoo.Com, January 25, 2009

I finally turned in the first draft of the new book last week. I'm embarrassed to say how late it is. For what it's worth, one of my New Year's resolutions is to get #22 in on time!

I'm going to enlist your help on this. My due date is October 1 (now you know how late I was). I'm shooting for 500 pages by then. I'll let you know how many pages I have done, and you send me comments here, from readermail@dalebrown.info, or from my Facebook wall, and keep me on track. Deal?

Start the clock...NOW! How many pages have I done so far? Zero.

My other resolution (same as last year) is to blog at least every week. We'll see how THAT goes! Again, bug me. I have few excuses for not blogging. I enjoy it, and it's a good way to take a break and still be here in the office.

I wish I could write pages like I've done the past month. I guess pressure does make me work harder. My editor Henry Ferris at William Morrow was insistent but still civil: send me what you got but get the !@#$% thing done!

I know that he and his production staff will have to work that much harder to get it out on time, and for that I apologize. My only excuse is no excuse. We all know it's a creative process, but it's a business too, and deadlines are deadlines.

Since I don't play in the snow, winter is a good time to get busy. We got about an inch of snow here at lake level today, the first snow we've had in a month!

In fact I remember well the last day we had snow before today: December 22. That was the day my wife Diane and I were scheduled to take the road test for our Nevada Non-Commercial Class B license (vehicles over 25K pounds, trailers less than 10K pounds). We couldn't take it because it snowed (we still drove the RV to the test area, but it was canceled).

We rescheduled it for December 31, and that day the weather was beautiful, cold but sunny, and we both passed. I squeaked by with 20 out of 20 allowable points lost (not signalling early enough, making turns with only one hand on the wheel, took one off-ramp too fast); Diane almost aced it.

It's kind of sad to admit this, but I consider getting that NCL Class B license one of my biggest achievements of 2008. I can't believe how nervous I was. Was I that nervous when I first got my driver's license 36 years ago, or when I got my pilot's license 22 years ago? I don't remember being such a babbling wreck.

It's a little sad, but kind of cool too: for the last 4 weeks finishing the novel (I'll reveal the title after the publisher's catalog comes out) I've been so immersed in the story that finishing it and "returning" to the real world is like seeing it after being gone for a month. I noticed stuff that I see every day but didn't know it changed. My son looks older. The car needs washing. My office is a PIT.

It's cool to be so wrapped up in a world of action and conflict, even if it's a world that exists only between my own ears (and now in the pages of a book that will come out in a few months).

I have an assignment, and now YOU have an assignment: I want to be ON TIME, and I want you to help me. Let's do this thing!

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