Practise makes perfect as they say and as many writers will attest, the more you write the better at it you get.

When I first started writing and taking it seriously it was something I never considered, not consciously at least. What I mean by that is that I never wrote something and thought, ‘well it doesn’t matter, the next one will be better’. I did realise though that I tried different things, adding more development to both characters and plot, and in doing so I could sit back, look at it and think that it was better than last time.

As time goes by and you write more you sort of get caught up in the story and how it develops, especially when you write series like I do. You can take the time to develop characters over a longer period than with a stand alone book and still developing skills as a writer. With every book I send to my editor I always get the same sort of reply when it comes back, that my writing is improving and this week the same thing happened with my latest effort under the pen name of Jack Dillon.

I sent her the third book in the ATLAS Force series called Pray for Death. I’ll freely admit that this was my most ambitious project to date and I was a little worried that I had overstretched my writing muscles on this one and it would make no sense to the reader. It made perfect sense to me, but it should do, after all I did write the thing but the writer always knows more of the intimate details of a story than the reader does, it only works well if it can be transferred from the writers imagination onto the paper. I was worried that my vision of the book, although extremely engrossing and making perfect sense in my mind hadn’t transferred like that to the reader.

You can imagine my relief when I read the email from her telling me she had completed all the edits and that it was my best book to date. She also remarked at how much I had improved as a writer and how much she had enjoyed the book.

The book is the third in the ATLAS Force series and features Colonel Jack Flynn along with Colonel Mary Qui from Med Division. in this book the two of them have to chase up the single lead given to them of who was behind everything they had faced before, that lead was simply a name, the Brotherhood. At first they draw a blank finding no clue to them or their activity anywhere. Then seemingly out of nowhere, a facility deep in the mountain range close to the Mongolian border is attacked and destroyed. An agent of ATLAS had been seconded to the CIA had been investigating said facility and him missing his check in with his handler brought it to the attention of the CIA who then informed Director Colclough at ATLAS. When Mary and Captain Jean Jacques Wolf investigate while Jack is still recovering from injuries sustained in WIRETap they learn that the facility had been experimenting with the program that produced the Transgenic soldier, Dorian Ryder. It turned out that they had stolen the program from another facility in the US run by the Brotherhood and the latter learned of this and sent in a team to retrieve it and send a message to the owner of the facility. What they hadn’t bargained for was the owner was a Chinese businessman with ties to a cartel with greater influence than even the Tongs. This set in motion events that would bring the two massive organisations into conflict with ATLAS right in the middle. Jack and his team learn that the Brotherhood stretch back as far as records go keeping secrets from Mankind and will stop at nothing to remain so. Isaac Boseman is the head of the Brotherhood, his family had lead the shadowy organisation for generations and he declares that whoever was responsible for the hacking of his facility will pray for death on their next meeting. Caught between an unstoppable force and an immovable object ATLAS is unable to prevent to oncoming conflict and when the dust settles who will be left standing because things will never be the same again.

You can check Pray for Death out here