by Jack Slater
I’m writing this message at the very start of 2021, and the past 12 months has been as strange for me as I’m sure it has been for all of you. Except any of you lucky suckers living in New Zealand or Taiwan! I get the odd email from that side of the world, and it has made me very tempted to visit whenever I finally can.
And the truth is, there have been many times over the last few months where I haven’t really wanted to do much writing. And usually what picked me up in those moments was a kind email from someone who’d just finished one of my books. It really does mean a lot, and I thank everyone of you for that.
As it stands I’m planning to take a little break from the Jason Trapp series. It will be in the order of months, not years, and don’t worry Jason will definitely be back before too long. I’ve wanted to mix things up for a little while now, and I’ve already started work on another series which I hope to start releasing sometime in the spring of 2021. They say that a change is as good as a rest – and I’m sure that will be the case. The new books will be espionage-focused, and set in the context of a rising China. I’m setting it in the same story “world” as the Trapp books, so you should see a few of your favorite characters cross over.
And hey, Jason might just find himself a cameo role… He normally sniffs out danger one way or another.
If you enjoyed The Apparatus, please do leave a review. As I am sure you’ve heard me say before – they really are what get me out of bed in the morning. Writing is a solitary business, so it’s good to get a reminder from time to time that someone is out there reading what I’ve put on paper.
The idea for the Apparatus – the organization, rather than the book title – came when I was reading the Wikipedia page for the real life intelligence group known as “The Activity”…
Otherwise known as the Intelligence Support Activity.
Or Mission Support Activity.
Or the Army of Northern Virginia.
Or Task Force Orange.
Or the Field Operations Group.
I could go on…
For a thriller author, there’s probably nothing more interesting than coming across a real-life secret organization like this. And it set a spark in my mind that ended in this book.
My personal favorite of those names is the Army of Northern Virginia. Sounds like something right out of the Civil War!
The Activity, as General Caldwell explains in the book, was founded in order to provide intelligence for US Special Forces. It was created just after the disaster of Operation Eagle Claw – the failed attempt to retake the US Embassy in Tehran – so that such a catastrophe could never happen again. It’s probably one of the most secretive, least known, and consequential intelligence organization in the whole alphabet soup.
And it got me thinking. Let’s be honest, the US has a reputation for half-baked military and intelligence schemes. Whether it’s Iran-Contra, adventures in the Middle East or attempted coups in South America, American fingerprints are all over it. That’s kind of the price of being a world superpower.
But what if there was one organization whose sole responsibility was to dream up these crackpot schemes?
And that was the genesis for the Apparatus. What if instead of building fences on the border and searching every ship, truck and submarine that tries to make it into the US for cocaine, we just went right to the source instead, and seized control of the drug cartels? Since our approach for the last 50 years to the War on Drugs hasn’t really worked, it sounded like as good an idea as any.
And what if the very person who was tasked to dream up the plan decided to take it freelance when his superiors in the military failed to go through with it?
Well, it would probably end in disaster. Sometimes out-of-the-box ideas are best packed away for good. And that’s what Warren Grover never understood.
Thank you as always for reading, and until next time.
Jack.