I would love one jot the secret history. I began The Keep back in March and just finished The Dark At The End. I have a good mind, but am certainly no wheezy

I'm afraid to start Nightworld. I don't want this to end. I was a little weepy at the in of this last one.

10/1 - release day for COLD CITY in paperback http://tinyurl.com/l2uvapy

10/3 - Went through the NIGHTWORLD page proofs (last time ever, I hope). Found a big design issue. (I designed the book, so I should know.)

10/4 - at my editor's request, I added a couple of brief scenes to the end of FEAR CITY. No argument: they were necessary.

10/5 - Benjamin Carre's work mesmerizes me... http://www.blancfonce.com/images/#/conte...Ghosts.jpg

10/6 - 60s rock plus a bad pun - how can I not share this? http://tinyurl.com/mswhdb9

10/7 - supposedly a Russian tampon commercial. Can't be for real... can it? http://urlybits.com/2013/06/russian-tampon-commercial/

10/10 - while heading for the station to train into NYC for lunch with my neighbor, some texting #@!*%! rear-ended me. So that put the kibosh on NYC.

10/11 - made it to the train into NYC for ComicCon without another idiot running into me.

10/11 - good day at NYCC - two signings, moderated a panel, drinks at the Algonquin, dinner at the Lambs Club.

10/13 - back to NYC once more for the Pulp and Paperback Expo. Met some old friends like Ron Goulart, Jill Bauman, and Charles Ardai. Had coffee afterward with Wally Stroby

10/14 - a 1-minute horror film. Fine visual storytelling. Creepy! It bears rewatching. http://vimeo.com/70386747

10/17 - This burns me. I like "Elementary" and watched 2 episodes last night. Correct me if I'm wrong but nowhere in the opening credits do I recall seeing mention of Arthur Conan Doyle. I do remember seeing "Created by Robert Doherty." Really? Imagine the hubris it takes to move another writer's characters from London to NYC and call yourself the "creator."

10/18 - My publicist at MacMillan says it looks like I'll be hitting the Left Coast with pen in hand come mid-November. Details in "Where I'll Be At."

10/21 - To all you people who kept pushing me to see "Orphan Black"... thank you.

10/22 - Cool Halloween costumes - "Saw Guy" is by far the best. http://tinyurl.com/kxbf5uj

10/24 - off to DC to start the Operation Thriller IV tour for USO. Details of Day 1 here: http://tinyurl.com/q9eo66f

10/25 - day 2 of the tour. Details here: http://tinyurl.com/nqd722r

10/26 - day 3: a visit to Quantico, and then at 10pm we board a plane for a 12-hour flight to Kuwait.

10/27 - day 4: the sun is setting over Kuwait City when we land. We came in over Iraq. All I saw out the window was sandy desert until we reached the Persian Gulf, so I'm prepared for heat, but not the humidity. I expected desert air but apparently the Gulf keeps the humidity high - at least this time of year. Security is high for us as we board a bus and head for the Missoni Hotel: an advance team leads the way and a chase car stays close behind. USO treats us to dinner at the hotel, then we head to our rooms. I'm 7 hours ahead of east coast time - which means my body still thinks its 3 p.m. Sleep proves elusive.

10/28 - day 5. Details and photos here: http://tinyurl.com/m4wj29c

10/29 - day 6: http://tinyurl.com/lrcwonp and a montage of photos here: http://www.uso.org/thriller-writers-uso-...13-photos/

10/29 - "The Widow Lindley" novelette went live on Amazon today: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G2DZEQY

10/30 - day 7: we take the long drive back to Frankfurt and catch a flight to Heathrow. After another long ride we arrive at the RAF base in Mildenhall. We have dinner at the Bird in Hand pub right outside one of the base gates, then repair to our rooms.

10/31 - last month I scripted an adaptation of my story, "Doc Johnson," for IN THE DARKthat ends a very successful crowd-funding on Kickstarter: http://tinyurl.com/pemmwfm

10/31 - Day 8: Halloween is spent shuttling between the Lakenheath and Mildenhall base D-Facs (dining facilities) and PXs. Here were are at Lakenheath (sans Kathy): http://tinyurl.com/n4oqdnj We also stop at the Mildenhall base library where we meet and greet soldiers and talk about writing and sign their books. We've brought a limited supply of our own titles and these are gone by the end of the day.

10/31 - the last night of the Operation Thriller USO tour. Harlan Coben rented a car to go back to London tonight for an early a.m. meeting. So after a farewell dinner at the Bird in Hand, Heather Graham and I tag along so we can get an early start to Brighton the next day.

October 30: a travel day: we take the long drive back to Frankfurt and catch a flight to Heathrow. After another long ride we arrive at the RAF base in Mildenhall. We have dinner at the Bird in Hand pub right outside one of the base gates, then repair to our rooms.

October 31:Halloween is spent shuttling between the Lakenheath and Mildenhall base D-Facs (dining facilities) and PXs. Here were are ar Lakenheath (sans Kathy): http://tinyurl.com/n4oqdnj
We also stop at the Mildenhall base library where we meet and greet soldiers and talk about writing and sign their books. We've brought a limited supply of our own titles and these are gone by the end of the day.

On the last night of the Operation Thriller USO tour, Harlan Coben has rented a car to go back to London for an early a.m. meeting. So after a farewell dinner at the Bird in Hand, Heather Graham and I tag along so we can get an early start to Brighton the next day.

10/29 - We arrive in the a.m. at Frankfurt airport and are bused out to the Ramstein base which houses 70k Americans. It even has its own shopping mall. We check into the Air Force hotel attached to said mall, but not for long. As soon as we're settled we head over to the USO center on base where we hang out with the service men and women.

After a quick sandwich, we're off to the Ramstein hospital. This is where all the wounded from the Middle East are stabilized before being sent back to the States. Their average stay is less than 72 hours. The good news is: the census is very low due to the draw downs. After an orientation, we talk to some of the wounded, one of whom has serious writing aspirations.

Here's a photo taken during our orientation: http://www.examiner.com/article/uso-repo...g-overseas

A montage here: http://www.uso.org/thriller-writers-uso-...13-photos/

After that we go to the base library where he sit and talk to a lot of soldiers and meet members of the base's writing group.

10/28 - we awake to - surprise! - rain. After a buffet breakfast we board the bus and head for Camp Arifjan out in the desert. Kuwait is about equal in sqare miles to NJ. Do you know what Missouri looks like? Well, think of Iraq as the major upper part of Missou with Kuwait as the bootheel.


At Arifjan we meet with the camp officers who go over the base's mission and present us with certificates of appreciation. Then we mingle with the troops in the USO center. Arifjan's function is mostly supplies and logistics, and it has a relaxed atmosphere. I meet a couple of Repairman Jack fans and gab with a bunch of the soldiers. They're all delighted we made the trip and keep thanking us. We keep saying that the point of the trip is to thank THEM.


Next stop is waaaay out into the desert. So far out that we see camel roadkill (I kid you not). We pass a lot of tents off the road where Kuwaitis periodically stay to refresh their Bedouin heritage.


We stop at camp Beuhring, just 20 miles from the Iraq border. A different vibe here: these are all infantry and they stand ready to fight should the need arise. But it hasn't arisen, which has led to the nickname, "Camp Boring." We do more meet and greet and then it's back to Kuwait City and the hotel. Better rest up: We fly out for Germany at 2 a.m.

Here we are at Afrijan: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/11/prweb11290055.htm

and again: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=...=1&theater

10/26 - a visit to Quantico, and then at 10pm we board a plane for a 12-hour flight to Kuwait.


10/27 - the sun is setting over Kuwait City when we land. We came in over Iraq. All I saw out the window was sandy desert until we reached the Persian Gulf, so I was prepared for heat, but not the humidity. I expected desert air but apparently the Gulf keeps the humidity high - at least this time of year. Security is high for us as we board a bus and head for the Missoni Hotel: an advance team leads the way and a chase car stays close behind. USO treats us to dinner at the hotel, then we head to our rooms. I'm 7 hours ahead of east coast time - which means my body still thinks its 3 p.m. Sleep proves elusive.

Operation Thriller IV
Day 2
October 25, 2013 - Washington, DC.


Humbled. That’s the word. I go to bed tonight a humbled man.


We spent the afternoon at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. I knew it as the Walter Reed Army Medical Center back in my college days at Georgetown. Since then it has merged with the old Bethesda Naval Hospital and now serves the Air Force as well.


We set up in the cafeteria of Building 62 where the wounded warriors transition from hospital life to real life. This reminded me very much of the Center for the Intrepid at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio that I visited a number of years ago with a clutch of my fellow Macmillan authors to sign and give away copies of our books to the rehabbing soldiers down there.


“Freedom isn’t free.” Like me, you’ve probably heard that phrase often enough to dismiss it as a hoary cliché. Let me tell you, it stops being a cliché when you visit a place like Building 62. These young men and women are survivors, though all have had friends who paid the ultimate price. But many of these survivors have paid within a hair’s breadth of that ultimate.


You stand there, all four of your limbs intact, and converse with them as they calmly tell you how they lost one, two, occasionally more of their own. Because we never hear their names, their injuries become statistics in the public consciousness. But when you do learn their names, and you hear their voices and their stories, see their mechanical limbs, their fire-scarred skin, they’re no longer a number. They’re people – terribly young people – who were sent to war and came back broken.


The USO is on hand to help them heal.


You look around and see this table for one with an empty chair and a single white plate. It’s called a POW/MIA remembrance table, always kept set in the event of the return of a missing comrade. And when you hear that one table is set this way in every base cafeteria all over the world, your throat tightens.


We were all pretty quiet on the van ride back to our Washington hotel.


“USO”… another cliché is to hear those letters and think of the famous Camp Shows. Those morale-boosting events are an important part of the USO, past and present (although nowadays they send a heavy metal band instead of Bob Hope). That’s the public face of USO. What you don’t see are the volunteers who donate their time and often their treasure to lifting the spirits of service men and women all over the world, letting them know they’re not forgotten, and that the folks back home care about them and appreciate what they do.


I didn’t appreciate the extent of the volunteer efforts until tonight at the USO Gala, an annual event to honor the Soldier of the Year from each of the different services. One of the speakers rattled off a few statistics about all the services USO provides, but the one that bowled me over: 27,000 volunteers donated 1.35 million hours of their time to the USO last year.


And I couldn’t help comparing myself to all those thousands of faceless volunteers. What do I do for the folks who put life and limb – quite literally – on the line out there? I spend my days hunched over a keyboard inventing places and scenarios, wandering through worlds that exist only in my head and reporting back on them. Yeah, I know… I hear from soldiers and sailor all the time, telling me how my stories helped pass the time at sea or between deployments. But I’m well paid for what I do. It can’t hold a candle to getting out there and volunteering your time and effort for 1.35 million hours a year.


As I said, I go to bed a humbled man tonight. But one who is happier than ever that he volunteered for Operation Thriller. It’s a measly nine days, but it’s a start.

I noticed that it was missing.

Any idea when this will be available on Audible??

Orphan Black is real mind bender. Its got a bit of everything tossed in and despite a couple of minor issues, I thought it was the best new show I've watched in awhile. Tatiana Maslany is exceptional in the lead role(s), her performance alone is enough to warrant a look-see. I highly recommend it.