Archive for the ‘ Informants ’ Category

Even blogs need a vacation!

Author: rja

Jun 1

I’ve been blogging here since mid-March but beginning today I’m switching to an abbreviated summer schedule. Instead of daily blogs, I’ll post news and information irregularly but at least once a week during the months of June, July and August. I’ll switch back to a more regular schedule on September 1st, just in time to follow the 2010 Baja hurricane season. If you’ve been following my blog, I suggest you subscribe to the RSS feed (the sugar packet just left of the coffee cup on the main page) so you’ll receive the new content whenever I post it.

Good news for Parallel Ops fans! Over the long Memorial Day weekend I completed two more chapters, so now I’ve finished Chapter 10 of each of the first 3 books: The Scientists, The Informants and The Guardians. Beginning today, my goal is to write 2 chapters per week until I finish all 3 books. Then we’ll publish and then I’ll start the 4th and final book in the series, The Teachers. Writing 3 books at once is turning out to be an interesting experience and I’m already considering ways to “pimp up” the Book 4 experience. One possibility is to let readers of the first 3 books take part in developing the story line for the series finale!

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Filed under: General, Guardians, Informants, Novels, Parallel Ops

Waiting in the Wings – Supporting Cast of the Future

Author: rja

Apr 10

If you follow this blog, you know I’m writing the first three novels of my new Parallel Ops series simultaneously.  I write a chapter of The Scientists, then a chapter of The Informants and then a chapter of The Guardians. Last night I completed chapter 10 of The Scientists which means I’ve now completed 28 chapters of my project. While I still have a long way to go, many new characters have already been introduced. Here’s a small sample of those you will meet in Parallel Ops:

Sophie Hoffman is a graduate student and self-proclaimed social activist currently working on her doctoral thesis in Northern European Languages at the Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich, Germany.

Sgt. Danny Miles is a young Marine assigned to the security detail of a major U.S. government research facility. A martial arts expert since he was six, Danny is a real life saver (literally).

 
 

Max Becker is a special agent with the BKA, Germany’s version of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At the orders of his boss, the notorious Colonel Wilhelm Kruger, Becker is on a mission he is sure will end in failure and embarrassment.

Javier Reyes is the same character you met in Triangle, the final book in the Seeds of Civilization series. This time he’s back as a major player. If you’ve read Triangle, you’ve probably already figured out which new book he’s in, but you won’t guess where he is!

Carlos Gonzales is a semi-retired underwater videographer and a volunteer with Sea Watch, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the oceans and their marine life. Carlos also served in the Mexican Navy and his experiences there prove to be a valuable asset.

Carley Quinn was born in a remote Mennonite community in the Orange Walk District of Belize. When she married a British construction worker her family disowned her and she hasn’t spoken with them since. After her husband’s untimely death, she spent three years fighting with the rebels in Guatemala.

Rob Jefferies was born in Gresham, Oregon and graduated from Oregon State University with a degree in Computer Science. Before retiring to the Caribbean in 2005, Rob owned a successful software development company that specialized in banking and credit union applications.

Erik Mueller served as a decorated member of the U.S. Army Green Berets during the Gulf War but gave up a promising career in the military to become a ruthless soldier of fortune for a paramilitary group known only as The Six.

 
 

And, finally, there’s Michael “Buzz” Edwards. He makes appearances in all three books of the Seeds series and he’s already mentioned in each of the first three books of Parallel Ops. In Seeds we never really knew which side of the fence he was on but in Ops there will be absolutely no doubt!

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Filed under: Guardians, Informants, Novels, Parallel Ops, Scientists

Linda McBride – Just the Facts, Ma’am

Author: rja

Apr 7

This is the third of a 4-part series in which I hope to (re)introduce you to the main characters in my Seeds of Civilization and Parallel Ops series of mystery/adventure novels.

    

Although Linda McBride is introduced early in Tractrix, book 1 of the Seeds series, she doesn’t become a “main character” until she’s reintroduced in Chapter 26. By this time Frank, Tony and Jim are working together as an informal team and Frank asks Linda to join them as their principle researcher.

Linda becomes a much more prominent character in Tsubute, my second novel, when she’s inadvertently stranded on a remote beach in southern Japan and must make her way back to civilization through an underground cave system. She plays an even larger role in Triangle, the third book, when she and a Mexican national named Javier Reyes are asked to sneak into Cuba undercover and investigate strange happenings on the northwestern tip of the island. Later in Triangle, Linda finds her soul mate and her life forever changes.

In the Parallel Ops series, Linda is the main character in The Informants where her newspaper background becomes her new team’s weapon in their efforts against The Six.

To help you better understand Linda, here’s her back story prior to the Seeds series:

Linda McBride attended high school and college in Seattle’s prestigious East Lake area. Although Linda studied journalism at the University of Washington, she was more interested in investigating than writing and after graduation she took a position as a staff researcher with Seattle’s largest daily newspaper. In 2001 Linda was asked to assist Frank Morton and Tony Nicoletti as they investigated mysterious artifacts near Las Vegas that seemed to originate in Mexico’s Mayan ruins. When Frank formed a non-profit group to investigate other archaeological anomalies, Linda immediately signed on and remained an active member of NWIDI until its dissolution.

I’ll see you tomorrow with a little about NWIDI’s “Chief Science Officer,” Professor Jim Barnes.

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Filed under: Informants, Novels, Parallel Ops, Seeds of Civilization, Tractrix, Triangle, Tsubute

The Informants – A Peek Under the Cover

Author: rja

Mar 29

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m currently working on a 4-book series called Parallel Ops. POps, as we call it around here, is a follow-up to my first series, Seeds of Civilization, which ends with an event that sends the series’ four main characters in different directions. In POps, each of the 4 novels follows one of the characters as they attempt to understand the significance of the event and what to do about it. It’s difficult to write about POps without “spoiling” Seeds for those who haven’t yet read it, but over the course of this week I’m going to try to introduce you to each of the first three books. Next week I’ll (re)introduce you to the 4 “stars” of my novels and provide a little of their back story that you may not know, even if you read the Seeds series.

The Informants features Linda McBride, one secondary character from Triangle, the last book of Seeds, and an entirely new supporting cast. In her life before Seeds, Linda was a staff newspaper researcher and that’s part of the reason for the book title. Throughout the novel Linda is restricted to Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, south of California and west of the Mexican mainland, but The Informants has my usual secondary plot so other characters will take you to Seattle, the Bahamas and more interesting places.

The “informants” (Linda and her friends) inadvertently tap into a stream of messages between a group known only as “The Six” and its eastern Pacific operatives. Suspicious of the group’s intentions, Linda and friends feel compelled to make the information public but must do so without revealing their own location or identities. What follows is a game of cat-and-mouse with a group so powerful that they control a private fleet of commercial cargo ships used to cover their activities around the world.

And here’s a little secret you’ll only hear on this blog: The Six show up in Book 1, The Scientists, when Professor Jim Barnes is handed a file by a stranger and they appear again in Book 3, The Guardians, where Tony Nicoletti is trying to distract them away from a site he’s sure they want to find.

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Filed under: Informants, Novels, Parallel Ops

Writing a Novel x3

Author: rja

Mar 16

As many of you already know, I’m working on a new, four-book series called Parallel Ops. This series is a follow-up to my Seeds of Civilization series and begins five years after the conclusion of Triangle, the final book in the Seeds series. The concept of the new series is that there will be a book featuring each of the main characters from Seeds as they each, in their own way, try to make semse of the event that took place in the final pages of Triangle.

Three of the books take place along the exact same timeline (hence the series title Parallel Ops) so I decided to write all three at the same time. I write Chapter 1 of Book 1, then Chapter 1 of Book 2, and so on. When all the Chapter 1s are finished, I go back to Book 1 and start Chapter 2. It’s a ”novel approach” (no pun intended) becasue I have to keep three story lines going in my head but it’s also fun becasue I get to shift characters and geographic locations every few days.

You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t mentioned Book 4 yet – that’s becasue not much is known about Book 4, even by me! I haven’t decided whether Book 4 will chronologically parallel the other three or whether it will overlap and/or follow them. I may even leave that decision up to those who read the first three books! The one thing I do know, is that Book 4 will not be started until the first three are on their way to the printer.

I keep referring to the books of Parallel Ops as Book 1, Book 2, etc. but they do have names, so here’s the run-down, including the Seeds character featured in each:

Book 1 – The Scientists – Jim Barnes
Book 2 – The Informants – Linda McBride
Book 3 – The Guardians – Tony Nicoletti
Book 4 – The Teachers – TBA

If you’ve read the Seeds of Civilization series, you’ve probably already guessed why Frank Morton is the “star” of the mysterious Book 4!

Well, the cup is empty, so that’s it for today. See you again tomorrow?

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Filed under: Guardians, Informants, Novels, Parallel Ops, Scientists