SKYBIRD: Dale Brown’s Ops Report Copyright © 2003, TDPI

SKYBIRD: Dale Brown's Ops Report
October 2003
Copyright © 2003, TDPI

Welcome to Autumn 2003 in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. It’s the best time of the year to be here: the summer crowds are gone and the winter ski crowds have not yet arrived, so it’s very quiet, and the weather is ideal—cool in the evenings, pleasant and sunny in the afternoon. This is considered the “shoulder season,” so hotel rates are down and availability is pretty good.

It may not be swimming weather for most of you, but the beaches are still nice, the hiking and biking trails, casinos, and restaurants are uncrowded, and air fares are relatively cheap. Be patient with service at restaurants and hotels: the summer beach help is taking a break before ski season starts, so service is sometimes slow as the staff dwindles or while new help undergoes training.

Don’t wait for the snow to start flying to visit, though—once it does, the pace picks up again and it’ll be back to almost impossible hotel room availability, long lines, and crowded restaurants.

Sound like an unusual way for me to start off the newsletter? Maybe it is—but believe me, you feel differently when you finish a novel! Number sixteen was sent on to Henry Ferris at Morrow a few weeks ago. Although I didn’t fulfill my wish to have the summer months off to spend with my family, I’m really enjoying the relief of finishing a big project and waiting for inspiration to hit so I can begin the next.

Funny how you reflect more on the world around you—the REAL world, not the world I examine in my novels—when the pressure is turned down a bit. But no sooner is one project done and I’m ready to start the next. There you have it--the three stages of producing a novel: inspiration, perspiration, and exhilaration. Or, as we used to say in the Air Force, “It feels so good when they stop beating you that you start looking for more.”

MISSION PLANNING: Upcoming Events

More:

Upcoming Events

TACTICAL DOCTRINE: The United Nations’ record on Peacekeeping

If you read the 23 September issue of USA Today, you’d think the Bush Administration was completely incompetent, not having the slightest idea on how to proceed in Iraq after successfully invading that country and toppling Saddam’s regime. All they can do, Barbara Slavin suggests, is to stumble and bumble their way to eventually letting the United Nations take over for U.S. troops, and the sooner the better.

More:

The United Nations’ record on Peacekeeping

SITUATION REPORT: Are we failing in Iraq?

My youngest brother Jim is back in the Middle East, stationed in Baghdad for another six to twelve months. His previous assignment was as an adviser to the Saudi Arabian National Guard on armored tactics, a one year unaccompanied assignment in Riyadh.

More:

Are we failing in Iraq?

COMBAT CREW REST AND RECUPERATION: Redefining “fun”

The AirBattleForce.com Bombers finished with a 3-9 record, including three forfeits. I stopped keeping stats on my own performance, invoking the old “if you can’t stand the answer, don’t ask the question” idiom.

More:

Redefining “fun”

Have a good October! GBA, Dale Brown…

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Air Battle Force (MAY 2003) Maverick Pilot Patrick McLanahan Takes aerial warfare into unknown territory in a heart racing new adventure. Still smarting from recent losses, the brilliant but unpredictable former USAF Major General is accepted back into the fold and assigned a simple task: devise and build the air combat unit of the future. McLanahan's answer: the Air Battle Force - a rapid-response team of elite commandos protected by state-of-the-art body armour and supported by an armada of anmanned planes. His idea is soon put to the test when the oil rich Republic of Turkmenistan becomes a battleground between Taliban insurgents, former Soviet overlords, Iranian opportunists and American oil companies and politicians. But can a handful of commandos half a world away, aided by an unproven force of robot warplanes, fight and win a war in which semingly everyone - even 'friendly' forces at home - want them to fail? 'Whe 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

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