After watching Goodfella’s one night and thinking about ‘rats’.

My wife and I were having lunch the next day at a diner and discussing what happened to the narrator. The Witness Security Program has a very high recidivism rate for criminals; around 95%. It’s hard for criminals to stop being criminals.

Seems like a waste of taxpayer money. I work under the idea if you can think of it, someone has done it. So what if someone in the program decided that those who’d finished testifying and had nothing more to offer were made to really disappear? Like forever?

This became the ‘original idea’ for my fourth novel ever, Cut Out, also the fourth book in my Green Beret series. I’m going to eventually blog about the original ideas for all my books and let me say there are no truly original ideas. Pretty much every idea has been done. The change comes in the translation to story.

I was reminded of this book the other day while in the Smokies biking, because the climactic scene of the book takes place there, around Clingman’s Dome. I was living in Clarksville, TN at the time and drove across to research in the mountains. I never thought I’d be living here in Knoxville, not far from them.

So. Free today. Cut Out (The Green Berets)