When I started writing my first thriller novel more than two years ago, the inspiration came from our changing society and the growing fear in America.
The question most of us have is: What will we do if we are attacked? Or, what will we do if our home is broken into and we are confronted by armed and dangerous thieves? What will we do if we are at work or a restaurant or walking down the street and someone shows up and starts shooting people? What will we do if we are driving down the street and some finger-flipping irate driver pulls a gun out and starts shooting at us?
What will we you do?
That's the question that sparked this novel, because a large percentage of Americans are asking themselves that same question as gun sales across the country have risen drastically over the past decade.
I have never owned, or even held, a real gun. So I gained an insight, an understanding about guns, through my extensive research and the journey of my lead character, Dylan Reilly. I place him in those "what if" scenarios. With each confrontation, he grows and evolves. He learns the hard lessons and makes the difficult choices.
He realizes every American is at risk and has three options when it comes to their safety. Each choice comes with a risk. If you purchase a gun, you are taking the risk of using it when you become angry. Or if you have kids, they may find it and mistakenly use it. Both of those risk scenarios happen all the time in our country.
The other option, not owning a gun, comes with the risk of not being able defend yourself if you are confronted by a person with a gun, whether at your home or out in public. You're defenseless! This is also a very common scenario in the United States.
The third option is to move to a country that has stricter gun laws. This is risky too since you would be moving to a new country, a new society - a lot of unknowns. Canada has stricter gun laws and is considered one of the safest destinations in the world. Would you leave America to live there? I wouldn't. What about countries that prohibit owning firearms like Cambodia, Eritrea and the Solomon Islands? Is that even a consideration? Not for me.
So in A Dangerous Freedom, you will follow the experience of protagonist, Dylan Reilly, and the dangers he faces, his decisions along the way and how he evolves to defend himself and other innocent people around him.
The novel is titled, A Dangerous Freedom, directly from Thomas Jefferson's famous quote. The book has received feedback from experienced authors, some of whom are comparing it to novels by the great Tom Clancy and the early work of David Baldacci. I am honored if any reader considers this novel comparable - on any level - to the work of those great authors. You can see those reviews on the Home Page of this website.
A Dangerous Freedom is being published by Post Hill Press and will be available beginning March 31, 2021. Thanks for reading!