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After college, he spent a year in Atlanta and two months in basic training for what he calls "the draft-dodger program" of the Air National Guard. Then, in the autumn of 1960, he moved to New York, in search of a writing job. The magazines and newspapers weren't hiring, so he got a job in a training program at an advertising agency, earning seventy dollars a week. "It is a measure of my value to the company," he says, "that my secretary was earning eighty dollars a week." He spent the whole of the nineteen-sixties in New York, with the exception of ten months, which he spent in Mannheim, Germany, at the request of John F. Kennedy. The Soviets had built the Berlin Wall, and Woods, along with a lot of other national guardsmen, was sent to Germany, " ... to do God knows what," as he puts it. What he did, he says, was " ... fly a two-and-a-half-ton truck up and down the autobahn." He notes that the truck was all he flew in the Air Force.
At the end of the sixties, he moved to London and worked there for three years in various advertising agencies. In early 1973, he decided that the time had come for him to write the novel he had been thinking about since the age of ten. He moved to Ireland, where some friends found him a small flat in the stable yard of a castle in south County Galway, and he supported himself by working two days a week for a Dublin ad agency, while he worked on the novel. Then, about a hundred pages into the book, he discovered sailing, and " ... everything went to hell. All I did was sail."
After a couple of years of this his grandfather died, leaving him, " ... just enough money to get into debt for a boat," and he decided to compete in the 1976 Observer Singlehanded Transatlantic Race (OSTAR). Since his previous sailing experience consisted of, " ... racing a ten-foot plywood dingy on Sunday afternoons against small children, losing regularly," he spent eighteen months learning more about sailing and celestial navigation while his boat was being built at a yard in Cork. He moved to a nearby gamekeeper's cottage on a big estate, up the Owenboy River from Cork Harbor, to be near the boatyard.
The race began at Plymouth England in June of '76. He completed his passage to Newport, Rhode Island in forty-five days, finishing in the middle of the fleet, which was not bad since his boat was one of the smallest in the fleet. How did he manage being entirely alone for six weeks at sea? "The company was good," he says.
The next couple of years were spent in Georgia, writing two non-fiction books: Blue Water, Green Skipper was an account of his Irish experience and the transatlantic race, and A Romantic's Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and Ireland, was a travel book, done on a whim. He also did some more sailing. In August of 1979 he competed, on a friend's yacht, in the tragic Fastnet Race of 1979, which was struck by a huge storm. Fifteen competitors and four observers lost their lives, but Stuart and his host crew finished in good order, with little damage. (The story of the '79 Fastnet Race was told in the book, Fastnet Force 10, written by a fellow crewmember of Stuart's, John Rousmaniere.) That October and November, he spent skippering his friend's yacht back across the Atlantic, with a crew of six, calling at the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands and finishing at Antigua, in the Caribbean.
In the meantime, the British publisher of Blue Water, Green Skipper, had sold the American rights to W.W. Norton, a New York publishing house, and they had also contracted to publish the novel, on the basis of two hundred pages and an outline, for an advance of $7500. "I was out of excuses to not finish it, and I had taken their money, so I finally had to get to work." He finished the novel and it was published in March of 1981, eight years after he had begun it. The novel was called Chiefs.
Though only 20,000 copies were printed in hardback, the book achieved a large paperback sale and was made into a six-hour television drama for CBS-TV, starring Charlton Heston, at the head of an all-star cast that included Danny Glover, Billy Dee Williams and John Goodman.
Chiefs established Woods as a novelist. The book won the Edgar Allan Poe award from the Mystery Writers of America, and he was later nominated again for Palindrome. More recently he was awarded France's Prix de Literature Policiere, for Imperfect Strangers. He has since been prolific, writing many, many novels.
He is a licensed, instrument-rated private pilot, and currently flies a Jetprop (scroll down for a photo of Stuart at the controls!), which is a Piper Malibu Mirage (a six-passenger, pressurized single-engine airplane) in which the piston engine has been replaced by a turboprop (a jet engine turning a propeller). He sails on other peoples' boats, owns a 28-foot power boat, and is a partner in a 85-foot antique motor yacht built in 1935 and recently restored to like-new condition.
He is a born-again bachelor who shares his life with a Labrador Retriever named Fred (like all his dogs) and lives in Key West, Florida, on Mount Desert Island, in Maine, and in New York City. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
exciting action-packed thriller,
This review is from: Hothouse Orchid (Holly Barker) (Hardcover)
After another futile run in with former CIA Technical Service Department agent turned international terrorist, Special Agent Holly Barker's superiors decides she needs extended down time away from the job, Teddy and the bad publicity. Teddy is a lethal person who kills right wing extremists he believes is dangerous to his beloved United States. That is no longer important to a distraught Holly who heads home to Orchid Beach, Florida, where she once was chief of police chief in what seems like a different life. At the same time Teddy rents a house in the next town.
To her horror she learns the new chief is James Bruno, her commanding officer who tried to rape her when she served in the military. He succeeded in raping then Lieutenant Lauren Cade who is now with the State Police. Someone is killing young women and leaving them where they can be found easily. Holly and Lauren believe Bruno is the culprit, but lack proof. Lauren becomes involved with Teddy, who uses a disguise to watch over her as sets a trap to catch the serial rapist killer. Stuart Woods writes thrillers in which Teddy comes across as an avenging angel while the killer is the monster; though some will challenge and others agree with Teddy's the end makes the means acceptable with the predators he dispatches. HOTHOUSE ORCHID is filled with plenty of local color, eccentric characters, and plenty of twists and surprises. Holly is coming back to life at home, but can't wait to return to work at the CIA while she is sure of her new lover, who ironically applies for a job with the Firm mostly to be with her when he assumes she returns. Although the coincidence of Teddy next door is a stretch longer than the Florida Turnpike (I didn't say I 75 which is longer), fans will relish Holly Barker's latest thriller. Harriet Klausner
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
This book needs an editor!,
By Janice (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hothouse Orchid (Holly Barker) (Hardcover)
After taking a hiatus from Stuart Woods' books, I decided to see if anything had changed. This book encouraged me to take a permanent vacation from Mr. Woods poor writing. The plot (which other reviewers have described) is superficial and unrealistic. Mr. Woods continues to assume everyone has sex at the drop of a hat, serious relationships develop as soon as people of the opposite sex meet each other, and most people own and fly airplanes. Character development is non-existent (who is Jimmy? Who is Hurd? Who are the victims?).
Even if you are only skimming this book, there is an obvious need for an editor: irrelevant information is repeated throughout -- sometimes on the same page (e.g. the last few sentences of chapter 20 include "Holly was more excited than she had been since she had started training at the Agency's Farm" AND "She hadn't been this excited since she began training at the Agency"), characters names are confused (e.g. beginning of chapter 61 ... "Holly isn't hurt" should be "LAUREN isn't hurt"), potential clues that could have helped develop the plot are abandoned (e.g. whatever happened to the DNA analysis of those cigaret butts?). The same arrogant 'Author's Note' continues to appear in Mr. Woods books. Thank goodness I didn't pay money to read this book! I'm off to read better stuff ('so many books, so little time'); don't waste your time on this one.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
3.5 Stars For Hothouse Orchid,
By C.M. Hogan (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hothouse Orchid (Holly Barker) (Hardcover)
I have to say that, as usual, the basic premise of this Holly Barker story was well done and compelling. You can reference the other reviews for more in-depth details, but here is the base storyline. Holly Barker, a high ranking CIA employee and former military officer and Orchid Beach police chief, is sent "on vacation" by her current boss and she returns to the house she still owns in Orchid Beach for a month's leave. However, Orchid Beach currently has a serial rapist/killer on the loose. Holly almost becomes a victim of the killer and later teams up with an array of law enforcement associates to determine the identity of the killer and bring him to justice. There is also another plot line involving a rogue former CIA employee.
The thriller/mystery part of the story was fine. It was the secondary romantic relationships that I found to be a little far-fetched and, in some instances, a bit icky. I understand that Mr Woods was probably trying to lay the groundwork for another installment in this series, but I think it could have been done in a more believable manner. If you can overlook the life-changing "relationships in less than thirty days" parts of this book, this is a good story that many Holly Barker fans have been waiting for.
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