When I set out to write Ronin, the first book in the Col Sec series I never envisioned it to be a series, I always thought it would be just a book that I wanted to read. By the way that is the best advice I ever received about writing and for the life of me I can’t remember who it was from but they said that if I was struggling to find the book I wanted to read I should go ahead and write it myself, and that’s exactly what I did.

Having written the book I then wrote Omega which didn’t feature the main character but another from the same book and this was only because I hadn’t decided what to do with him. So once this second book was coming to a close I had an idea what I wanted to do with Kurt from Ronin and I wrote a small scene at the end of Omega where he is seen, or it might be him, it was left in doubt until Discovery, book three. This starts with that scene at the end of Omega but from Kurt’s perspective which ties the two books together nicely and answers the question what was he doing during the action that took place in Omega.

I approached writing all the Col Sec books in the same way, as if I was writing a modern day thriller they just happen to be set in the mid twenty fifth century. Of course there is technology in these books that isn’t around yet, but since starting the series I have noticed certain things cropping up in news reports or articles of some of the things I use in them. One for example is the Neural Interface. I can’t say for sure whether it’ll happen but there have been tests done to see if it is a viable option. The super soldier program is a staple of both sci fi novels and comic books alike and is something that DARPA among others are actively working to achieve whether it be by using exo suits or genetic manipulation, who knows! They are working on something though, when it’ll be used is anyone’s guess. All this technology caused more of a problem than I would like to admit. At first I thought that no one will read it anyway so just make some stuff up. Who cares if it’s silly, no one is going to call you on it. Then as I started to write I became fascinated with the subject a little more than I thought I would so I ended up doing research to make sure I got what facts I could as correct as I could. I still kept the science to a minimum as my brain would explode if I tried to delve into quantum mechanics or quantum physics or any of the other subjects most other sci fi writers talk about in their novels. The other great advantage for me to set it in the future was that I could set the location anywhere and no one could contact me to say that that street you mentioned on page 234 doesn’t turn left there it goes straight on. You know what I mean, there is a certain type of reader who revels in picking fault with every word you write scrutinising it down to the finest detail. Well that doesn’t apply with me as all the locations and settings are fictional and have no place in the real world. All the details are exactly right because I’m the only one who’s ever been there, in my head of course.

So if you like a good old fashioned action thriller, but with a twist then check out the Col Sec series, you never know you just might like it. You can find my Amazon page here