I've read a lot of suspense thrillers where they make a big deal about the author's bio -- they've run guns in some third-world hell hole, smuggled, worked for the CIA -- but when it comes to their books they are literary girlie men and froo-froo women with limp, timid prose and characters so weak they couldn't go mono-a-mono with a third tier character in a Jennifer Weiner novel. I've had my fair share of adventures. My grandfather was in the CIA and spent some time in a Guatemalan prison, my dad planned to take over an island in high school, I've worked as a journalist and corporate spy who has travelled the world. Yet, I hope what ultimate sells me is my stories, odd-ball characters, and clever turns of plot.
This first book turned out to be a little ahead of its time in the sense that it foresaw the American haughtiness that got us into Iraq. My second book, I believe, has done just as well in foreseeing the new world of private militaries. Mercenarys Cookbook is about a private chef who used to deliver aid to a country torn apart by civil war. When she hooks up with the head of a private security company hired by a Biblical Archeologist to obtain a descendant of the Tree of Knowledge, she signs on to deliver supplies for the operation and gets a chance to return to the country settle some old scores.
As with Taking Over, this book has parallel storylines set in the past and present that work off each other (much like Lost), and I thought it might be a chance to exploit some of the advantages of something like the Kindle that, so far, have gone overlooked. I find that some of my favorite aspects of DVDs are the DVD extras, in particular a movie like Momento, where the movie went backwards chronologically, but you could choose to watch the story with a forward trajectory on DVD.
In the electronic format, it would be possible to read each person's story individually, rather than in flashback, as short stories and novellas or chronologically, and I have written it with an eye towards making it feel as a "whole" story from whatever angle you approach it. You could even have "deleted scenes" you loved but just didn't make the cut, or give people the chance to click on commentary about certain passages.
Having just completed that novel, I have 200 pages of a Michael Chricton style SF novel about a meme simulation that allows nefarious forces to construct perfect "memes" -- ideas that spread like viruses. Such technology takes opinion-polling to the next level, where an idea is guaranteed to takeover. You decide the fads, the Presidents, mold public opinion to your interests.
Future projects involve the odd new world of modern piracy, taking place off the coast of Africa and the Malacca Straits. A few high-profile incidents have made the news, but the Law of the Sea is actually a fascinating experiment in Libertarianism -- governments have no jurisdiction, making it a free-market no-man's land where anything can be bought and sold without breaking any laws. Few people realize the sea is the last Wild West.
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Dylan Otto Krider "Download an excerpt of my novel TAKING OVER at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00122GTOQ" sent the following posts to customers who purchased Taking Over
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