[from the stabenow.com vaults, 2007] March 19 XO Steve Rothchild says our forecast is 4 to 7 foot seas. That’s been our forecast ever since we left port. I look over the side and I’m no expert but I’m thinking those hardly deserve to be called waves, never mind four foot ones. Temps everywhere coming…
[Luncheon speech for the Poisoned Pen Conference, July 13, 2012] Sometimes research is easy. When I lived in Anchorage my house was right under the traffic pattern to the seaplane base of Lake Hood. One day my father was helping me with something in my back yard and a Cessna 206 was taking off with…
[from the stabenow.com vaults, 2007] March 18 In the back of the bridge is a stack of cardboard boxes. This morning the captain materialized in the middle of ENS Dan Schrader’s OOD (Officer of the Deck) training watch to toss one of the boxes over the side for a simulated man overboard drill. We go…
[from the stabenow.com vaults, 2007] March 17 A little before nine a.m. I felt the ship turn hard right rudder, so I went up to the bridge. We spotted a fishing boat on the radar. The captain says that drug smugglers often use fishing boats as mother ships for go fasts. The go fasts will…
[from the stabenow.com vaults, 2007] Friday, March 16 Hello Danamaniacs, Coasties, friends and family! Once again I write from on board a Coast Guard cutter underway. Man, I love my job. Last time it was 16 days in the Bering Sea on board the USCG cutter Alex Haley, a 282-foot medium endurance cutter out of…
Second of the guest blogs I wrote for 49 Writers, No Moose in June. — The absolute best part of a writer’s life is the research. I’ve written two thrillers, Blindfold Game and Prepared for Rage. For both novels I went on patrol with the US Coast Guard, first on Alex Haley for 16 days…
For those of you who have already read Prepared for Rage, you know “gators” is slang for interrogators, and that I’m referring to Bob and Mary in the Gitmo scenes. I was not, repeat not looking forward to writing those scenes. Not big with the torture, nope. I love Jack Bauer but I cringe and…
I was interviewed about Prepared for Rage this morning by a very nice woman named Diana, which interview is to be broadcast on the approximately one thousand (my editor said) radio stations served by Westwood One continually for a month. I’m told this is a satellite broadcast heard all over the West Coast, so everybody…