“Daly Battles” is a follow up to “Matt’s War”.

In Matt’s War, I put two engineers, Matt Daly and George Sahin, in the middle of a terror plot, put Matt in grave danger and let them sort it out. (There was a bit more to the plot than that, but you get the idea). If that intrigues you stop by here and check it out.

I digress.

I needed to place Matt and George in an even more precarious position for the sequel. I needed the stakes to be higher and the adversary meaner.

Initially I thought about placing them somewhere in the middle east, but dismissed that as too cliche. I’d set them up at the end of Matt’s War to be civilian eyes on the ground for the CIA. There is an Office of Terrorism Analysis (key to the plot line in both stories) and I invented an arm that enlisted civilian executives to keep an eye peeled while they were in high-risk countries on business. (Or did I invent that arm? Maybe it’s real.)

I digressed again.

The middle-east was cliche.I needed something different.

And then Kim Jong-il died.

And suddenly the words of George Bush resonated through my head, over a decade ago when he lumped North Korea in with Iran and Iraq as part of the Axis of Evil.

Perfect.

An isolated, paranoid potentially nuclear powered state, a dynasty passed on to the third generation – and to the third son, no less. Perfect fodder.

Research started nine months ago. Plotting went through over half a dozen iterations until the “a-ha” moment in June (I’m not referring to the Norwegian pop group) that pulled it all together.

It doesn’t hurt that every couple of weeks another news article helping my story leaks out of the country. This is my sixth book, and I can honestly say it’s the one I am most excited about.

There are still edits and proofreading to do. The cover isn’t 100%. But it is with Beta readers (and I’ve got some great feedback so far – thanks) and I still expect to have it ready for the first week of September.

Stay tuned. It’ll be a cracker.