Trouble on the Straits (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780692447185)

Reading Mark Twain's Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County at an early age made a lasting impression on my writing style. Watching Jacques Cousteau explore the undersea world armed with Aqua-Lung and underwater camera fueled my love for the sea. The scenes and stories were mesmerizing to a young boy. I feel the influence of both storytellers when I create Charley Manner adventures. Amp up the pace, throw in some high-tech gadgets and weaponry, substitute the frog with a man-eating shark or other menacing denizen of the deep, wrap it around an invincible hero and you have Trouble on the Straits (TOTS) and the sequel, Deep Strait. I write action adventure thrillers, injecting my more memorable life experiences into the main character, Charley Manner. Once, while SCUBA diving in darkened waters, something very big bumped me. The creature was not clearly visible in the murk sixty feet below the surface but my imagination filled in the blanks. In TOTS, I start with Charley out on the Florida Straits sitting in his brand new $18,000 fish-fighting chair with a bottle of Gran Patron Platinum tequila and a Great White shark tugging on his line. He ends up in the water with the beast but you'll have to read the book for the rest. And Deep Strait brings more dangers, natural and manmade, in the depths halfway between the Florida Keys and Cuba. Charley is six feet four inches tall, 220 pounds of lean power, encased in a charbroiled tan and topped with salt-crusted hair lightened by Florida's scorching sulphur sun. He is a swash-buckling, ass-kicking former Navy SEAL with a take-no-prisoners attitude. Hooyah! Charley loves to tell tall tales to his bar mates just like me except I'm only six feet tall and not so tan. My shark encounters, not so much. But enough about me. Start reading about Charley in Book #1: Trouble on the Straits. The prequel, Hellhole in Khyber, about Charley's last special op in Afghanistan, is also available and Book#2, Deep Strait, will be out soon. I hope you enjoy reading Charley's adventures as much as I do writing about them.