When you shouldn’t write…

I get a lot of people inside government, the scientific community and law enforcement agencies who “tell” me things off the record. You know, “You didn’t hear this from me but…”

Well, last week I got a tip on something, I’ll call it “Installation X,” a really good piece of reality that would make a beautiful plot point and revelation. For me revelation is as important as a tight story. I use “fiction” in my books to plant a few seeds on things that governments and media soft pedal or aggressively ignore into obliteration.

So I get this information that I could center my entire 4th book on. A juicy, real, almost unbelievable fact that I can fictionalize. Except, last week I got a note that asked I forget what I was told. The reason? Apparently, it’s hotter than even the person who shared it with me thought it was.

Professional dilemma: respect my source or go for it? Well, I decided to not only respect my source but also join into the spirit of our national secrets, which is mainly to keep them secret. So I took a deep breath and moved on. This happened with my first book, when I deduced, based on available technology, a technological process that could protect the President. I “made it up” and wrote it into my story. Then a person who was a protector of POTUS asked me to “not go there.” Fair enough. I broomed it for the sake of Presidential security and my acquaintance, and the folks he works with, lives. Easy decision… then.

Two days ago, I met a guy who tells me almost the whole “Installation X” story! Now this guy is a new source. I could go with his version of the events and situation since he so far has not asked me to forget it. (He may not be as in the loop as my original source.) But that would just be a way around what I said I wouldn’t do to my original source and my own feeling of obligation to the men an women who risk their lives carrying out our nation’s security that has to be done in secret.

So no. I am still not going to go near this thing. I will however scour the Internet, go to the library and see if any of this can be open sourced. Meaning if it’s already out there and thus I won’t be jeopardizing a source or my country. Although I hope it’s not.

Chapter Preview: Hammer of God

The Hammer of God book trailer

The Eighth Day book trailer

Chapter Preview: The Eighth Day

It’s Only Fiction ‘Til It Happens

I remember when 9-11 happened, a lot of well known faces were surprised, and said, “Who would think to fly a plane into a building?”  I immediately knew – Tom Clancy.  At the end of one of his books, a Japanese 747 pilot crashes a plane into Congress during the State of the Union speech, leaving his character as the President of the United States.  It was only fiction, until it happened.

In my own experience, I had an FBI agent tell me that a month before 9-11, there was no problem with my bad guys crashing a plane into a building, and that it certainly wouldn’t give a terrorist an idea.  A month later he died.  He was the head of security at the World Trade Center.  I freaked out and didn’t write for three or four years.  I’d written about a scenario, and then a very similar scenario had happened, and a man had died along with 3,000 other innocent souls.