Home Grown and Lethal

Many of us enjoyed the movie Captain Phillips with Tom Hanks. Last year at the NINC conference I got to moderate a panel discussion with a story developer who took the book Captain Phillips wrote, and helped create a "treatment" so that the story could be shopped and funded. It was a fascinating discussion that day on how books become movies.

Today, as I leave the NINC conference again, I'm reminded of that. I saw this very boat Captain Phillips was rescued in, at the Navy SEAL/UDT Museum in Ft. Pierce, Florida. In this day and age when we have terrorists coming closer and closer to our North American soil, we think of these stories.

I used the Home Grown Terrorist connection in my new release, set to come out 11/11/14, Veteran's Day. SEAL's Promise is mainly a love story, as all my military romances are, but the subplot is that a group of terrorists plan attacks on the military men and women who guard us, on our own soil. Not only that, but in my story, their families also fall victim, just like we've seen in the news recently.

Bear in mind this book was written before the recent events in the news. But just like the real events in Captain Phillips, it isn't a matter of if it will happen, it's a matter of when. It's a theme you'll see again with Books 9 and Books 10 in the SEAL Brotherhood Series.

Here's a short excerpt:

They all stopped and observed a news bulletin that interrupted the ball game announcing a terrorist beheading of another male American journalist, along with an aid worker, who was a woman.

The American journalist had been captured over a year ago and several attempts to locate and free the man and two others, had been unsuccessful. Another aid worker from the U.K. had been executed a month ago.

The Team guys shook their heads, taking short looks at each other as they shared their private thoughts in mixed company. Team business was never discussed in front of the wives unless absolutely necessary. Since there was little chance they’d be deployed sooner than three months, all they could do was register their disgust but T.J. knew everyone was thinking the same thing. The groups were getting bolder and bolder. It wouldn’t take long before some of these actions would take place on American soil. And that meant innocents would be targeted.

   The announcer came on and showed a scratchy sign written in Arabic. Jones, being the most fluent in Pashto, squinted and swore. T.J. could recognize some characters and saw the distinctive “U.S” letters on the sign.

      The threat is considered credible. The spokesman specifically mentioned members of the military, and their families, would be targeted. No one is safe, no matter where they live. No one.

NYT and USA/Today and Amazon Top 100 Bestselling Author Sharon Hamilton’s SEAL Brotherhood series have earned her Amazon author rankings of #1 in Romantic Suspense, Military Romance and Contemporary Romance. Her characters follow a sometimes rocky road to redemption through passion and true love. Her Golden Vampires of Tuscany earned her a #1 Amazon author ranking in Gothic Romance.

A lifelong organic vegetable and flower gardener, Sharon and her husband live in the Wine Country of Northern California, where most of her stories take place.

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