AuthorMikeBennett.com

The story of the how the Warlock series came to be can now be told; it is fairly simple and straightforward.  I loved reading as a child and young adult-- still do.  Love of literature is what sent me to college; originally, I had intended to teach.  In my senior year in high school, something happened that profoundly shaped my worldview: the Iranian Hostage Crisis.  To a degree, I buried that a bit, and off to school I went.

Later, another thing happened.  President Reagan was shot.  The final nail in the coffin was the US invasion of Grenada.  All these finally fully awoke a brewing Patriotism; as it erupted within, I found a calling to serve.  I followed that calling and performed my duties in the US Army, both enlisted and officer, in Active duty and Reserve, and I followed that path for 30 years.

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Still, the nagging desire to write persisted.  Following my stint in the Army, like many military folk I of course had to continue to work.  Mortgages and other realities, you see.  But then, a different reality smote my life-- the imminent and looming death of my Mother.  Over the years as I gallivanted, her health worsened, and this is a cautionary tale to you smokers.  One day, after many months, I finally concluded my brother was overwhelmed with caretaker duties and it was time for me to return home.

To do my duty.

So I quit my job and packed my shit.

Months passed, and they were not pleasant months.  While keeping my memories of the good times foremost, I pledged to place into my mother's hands a book I had written before she passed.  So, I finally sat down behind the keyboard and wrote 'Las Vegas on Twelve Dollars a Day'.  She had been stricken with that most horrible disease-- dementia.  Paired with COPD, it was horrible, but at 81 years old she had lived her life as she and God wanted: fully.  

Two days before Christmas of 2020, while COVID raged, I placed the book into her hands.  I cannot express the look of amazement on her face as she clasped it and as innocently as a child said, "You wrote this?  Really?" On New Years Eve, she passed.

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A few months later, I got itchy as I was now retired 100% and a bit bored.  I thought, well...why not another?  At some point, I had conceived the idea of the Warlock, so that concept appeared first in 'When Towers Fall'.  And thus, I wrote:

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"Since the first Reagan administration, there had always been a Warlock.  Simply put, the Warlock was a position occupied by a person of special trust and whose name was irrelevant.  The Warlock was not in command but had immeasurable power and influence.  With that power came equal responsibility, and the position was only filled by someone of unquestionable integrity.  More than anything else, the Warlock made plans, plans that were intended to change the course of the world."

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When I finished that book, I had already thought of a general series and the sets of villains contained within-- China, Russia, Iran and Turkey. I then wrote a book focused on diminishing an enemy: for Russia, 'The Baltic Chain'; for China, 'The Boomslang Gambit'; for Iran, 'The Zangezur Campaign'.  Since China persisted in being an economic PITA, I twisted the shank one more time for another go in 'Brine of War'.

Sometime during BOW, I concluded it would make some sense to expand on the Warlock charter and from whence it came.  A recent 'fan' inquired if 'Moths to the Flame' was my Silmarillion-- a pretty apt observation, but it was not intended.  I had a sequence of offensive actions against specified targets and their dependent allies to apply.  I had thought about some of these years ago-- for example, I had thought about Nordstream in 2012 shortly after Russia had annexed Crimea...so I had to run through the madness before these things actually occurred.

Well, you can see what happened with Nordstream.

But I felt compelled to go back in time and fill in how the Warlock came to be, who was its architect and the type of person, the kind of integrity needed to fill that vacuum.  The whole series is about character-- men and women this Country is capable of producing.

It just takes a Warlock to UNLEASH them.