Welcome to my new website and blog. This whole book publishing (and blogging) thing is uncharted territory for me. Editors, publishers, agents, marketing, publicists, book signings, and God forbid blogs! Yikes. It’s been a very long road from the instant that a book idea popped into my head to that blessed moment sitting a hotel room near Ft. Sill Oklahoma when I typed those magical words (that actually mean absolutely nothing) “The End.” Trust me, you are far from done when that moment occurs. But to borrow a line from Churchill it was the “End of the Beginning.”

As some of you may know I have been scribbling away on a new book (Outside the Wire) for some time. The inspiration actually came to me one evening in the late summer of 2008 as I was walking back to my hooch after a particularly unmemorable meal in the chow hall (“The Coalition Café” to be exact). The Coalition Café was one of several chow halls located on Camp Victory, in Baghdad Iraq. I was at the time serving as an embedded civilian terrorism and organized crime expert with the US Army’s 10^th Mountain Division, IED defeat cell. I started writing down book ideas and outlines after I returned to the states. But enough of that. The purpose of this blog is not to drone on and on about the book. Obviously, I will discuss it but in fact, I plan to discuss many other things that are near and dear to my heart and perhaps more interesting. Subjects such as the perils and pleasures of being a new grandpa, BBQ, history, and its’ inescapable lessons, learning to fly fish, crime, war, terrorism and the challenges and pleasures of making old guns roar again. I may even share my thoughts on a few new ones too. I sincerely hope you are both entertained, challenged, and perhaps enlightened by my ramblings.  Thanks for tuning in.