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Read the teaser for Trace Conners 5th adventure: Mine Games

I wrote ‘Wet Work’ because the original technical idea seemed like nobody had thought of it and I was a big fan of Eric Lustbader’s “Nicholas Linnear” series. Surprisingly, I came up with the initial idea twenty-five years ago. The first 20 pages were written and then the project got put on hold while I raised a family, moved to the mountains, ran a dojo, started a few businesses and just tried to survive. My regular job is as a general building contractor. In late 2018, I laid off all my employees and went back to a one-man shop. That winter was exceptionally cold and snowy, so I had a lot of days stuck inside but didn’t have to worry about keeping employees working. This finally allowed me to pull “Wet Work” back out and finish it. I had never stopped thinking about the story and had it all worked out in my head. It was time to actually write it. Turns out that writing a book takes a lot more time than a few weeks of snow days. Good thing I don’t sleep a lot!

Trace Conner was envisioned as a more sarcastic, not so serious Ninja. I love all kinds of action books. “Mitch Rapp” by Vince Flynn, “The Gray Man” by Mark Greaney and many others. I wanted to introduce a character who didn’t have a military background and was a little more fun. There are many former military in my family, some are serving right now, so I have nothing against them, just wanted a different character.

For those of you who are in the International Bujinkan and are wondering why I didn’t use our terms like “Soke”, “Shihan”, “Sakke” and so on, this was simply a matter of respect to Hatsumi Soke. I never asked his permission and to the best of my knowledge, these and others were not widely used terms in other Japanese martial arts. If I felt a word was primarily a Bujinkan term, I didn’t use it. Many of the techniques described in the book come directly from training I have done in the Bujinkan.

I hope you enjoy the story.

Thank you again.