Since every idea has been done, a job of the writer is to absorb as much idea and story from the world around them. Not to plagiarize: it’s research. It’s our job. In the evening, my wife and I, and our dogs, pile into bed and watch TV. My wife always has the remote and she’s always right about what she chooses to watch. The range is eclectic. Sometimes I think she’s the only one who has found certain shows, like the time we watched a documentary on barges– which turned out to be a fascinating study on character.

As you see, I easily digress. My wandering brain which is on the autism scale– my wife also made sure I got it tested a few years back because she was trying to figure me out. They used to call it Aspergers but now its high functioning. I think you pick up on that via these posts.

Sometimes, in the dark of night, I wonder if she had me go get tested for other reasons. Redrum. Actually, a number of people in Special Operations are a bit off on the old bell curve. As the sergeant major yelled at us one day in formation in 2d Bn, 10th Special Forces: “what do you guys think you are, special?”

Anyway. Back to Goodfellas. We watched that one night many years ago and the next day were discussing it. And one of us, probably her, wondered what if they simply got rid of people in the Witness Protection Program? That’s because most of them revert to a life of crime.

And that was the heart of my fourth book, Cut Out. A somewhat better title than my first four, although I doubt many people know what a cut out is in covert operations: a person who knows both sides but both sides never meet or know the other? It’s a way of keeping both sides safe.

This was the fourth book featuring Dave Riley, the protagonist I began with my earlier books. I just wrote Dave into a future book, New York Minute, which is set in 1977 when Dave is only 17 and getting ready to go into the Army and meets his older cousin, the protagonist of this new series, Will Kane, to ask about Special Forces.

And once more I digress.