Welcome back to the Two Navy Guys Debrief, the (mostly) weekly forum where we look at a national security issue and how we have explored that topic in our fiction.
By the way, if you’re not already a subscriber to the Two Navy Guys Debrief, here’s your chance!
2024 marks the tenth year of our writing partnership. (Yeah, it’s hard for us to believe, too.) Like many of the best things in life, it was unplanned.
In the spring of 2014, JR and David were invited to speak to a gathering of the local chapter of the US Naval Academy Parent’s Association. The organization is exactly what you think it is: a way for parents of current midshipmen to support each other and their children.
It was a Minnesota Sunday and there was snow on the ground, so it must have been July March. (That was humor, BTW. The snow normally doesn’t stick around past April.) Our brief was to talk about our careers in and after the Navy, and answer questions about what their midshipmen children could expect when they graduated from the Academy with a commission and entered the Fleet.
Another USNA grad (and longtime reader) named Craig Benson started us off with a little background info. David took five minutes to talk about his career path. (Six years in submarines, followed by 20 years in the high-tech private sector, then he chucked it all to write science fiction.)
Then JR spoke. He had retired after 21 years as a Naval intelligence officer and his bio was extensive. He talked about deployments off Iraq and Somalia, and on the ground in Bosnia, East Timor, and Afghanistan. His final assignment was as US Naval Attaché in Finland.1 He was even trained by the CIA as a case officer for clandestine human intelligence (HUMINT) operations for the Department of Defense. When he finished fifteen minutes later, the room was silent.
A gentleman raised his hand.
“Yes, sir?” JR said.
He pointed to me, then back to JR. “You two should get together and write a book.”
We all got a good chuckle out of the comment, but it also got our mental gears turning. David was interested in writing a military thriller, but he felt like he needed a partner…someone with extensive (and current) military experience. Someone like JR.
A week later, over lunch, the Two Navy Guys writing duo was formed.
That was ten years and ten novels ago. While we’re not much for reminiscing, it’s worth pausing here to take stock of our situation. Writing a book is a bucket-list item for a lot of people, but for us, it’s a second (or third) career.
It didn’t start out that way. In fact, when we started, we had no blessed idea how to write a book together. Through the (excruciating) process of trial and error, we figured out not only how to co-write a book, but also how to publish and market our work. We learned a whole lot about the business of writing and publishing—most of it the hard way.
And that brings us to the start of 2024, our tin anniversary. (Or aluminum. The Google machine says a 10th anniversary is tin or aluminum because these metals are durable and resist rusting.)
What can you expect from the Two Navy Guys in 2024?
More books. Covert Action, Book 5 of our bestselling Command and Control series, releases March 5, 2024, in ebook, print, and audiobook.
We are currently in the process of writing Proxy War, the final book in the series, set for a fall 2024 release. Our wonderful publisher has signed us for a new series with a mid-2025 launch date. Stay tuned for more details.
No more radio show. After three years, JR is giving up National Security This Week, his radio show at KYMN. He achieves closure with his final show by interviewing Tom Hanson, Diplomat-in-Residence at the Alworth School at the University of Minnesota - Duluth, about the state of global affairs at the end of 2023. Hanson was also the show's very first guest on January 6, 2021. (Yes, that January 6th!)
More travel. In the next few months, David is headed to Patagonia to research our next series (and to drink red wine). Travel updates to follow.
More Two Navy Guys Debrief. This year marks five years of (mostly) weekly email columns. Some of you have been here since the beginning, but many have joined recently, so here’s what you can expect from our Substack column in 2024:
- Deeper dives into the facts behind our fiction. This is bread and butter fare for our column. A ton of research goes into our books, but only a fraction ends up on the page. We like to use the Debrief to expand on a topic. For example, check out “Two ships passing in the night…”, a post about the Automatic Identification System used on ships—and how it’s being abused by Mr. Putin.
- The (sometimes uncomfortable) intersection of current events and our fiction. 2023 was a crazy year. We wrote a realistic novel about a Russian invasion of Ukraine…and then it happened. Did we predict the future? No, but in some areas we got uncomfortably close. The entire premise of the Command and Control series is a near-future extrapolation of a Great Powers conflict, so we often use our column to discuss what the future might hold. Our July column, “Is the United States Ready for a Major Theater War?” is a good example of this kind of discussion.
- Sales and special projects. If one of our books goes on sale, we’ll tell you about it here. If we are involved in a new project outside of our current series, we’ll give you a heads-up. This column from December, “Behind every villain lies a broken heart” tells the story of one of our long-time readers who went the extra mile and supported a customized short story as a Christmas gift to his wife, Carol. (Thanks again, Claude!)
- NEW: How-to columns on co-writing and publishing. There’s a backstory to this new feature for 2024. We recently accepted an invitation to give a keynote address in March to a literary festival in the Minneapolis area. This invite came out of the blue and at the suggestion of a reader. Not only is that flattering, it got us to thinking: maybe we have something to say about co-writing and publishing that could help others or at least give our readers a laugh.
And that’s the Two Navy Guys 2024 Strategic Plan. Stick with us for another year, we promise it’ll be worth the ride.
Be happy. Stay healthy. Read (or listen to) a book.
As always, thanks for being a supporter –
David & JR, AKA the Two Navy Guys
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That’s one of the reasons Helsinki shows up in our books often. Write what you know!