The third diver remained back twenty-five feet from the cabin cruiser as cover for the other two. He had his high-powered spear gun at the ready.

“Roll up on the tail board when the swell drops it back into the water. I’ll follow you on the next rise,” one man said to the other.

The two black suited divers quietly shimmied up on the transom’s teak platform just above the boat’s water line. They removed the small pony bottles they had been breathing from, along with their fins. They velcro’d the dive gear to the stainless steel ring on the back of the transom.

From special water proof bags came two semi-auto firearms with silencers screwed on to the barrels. Their hip holsters held shiny stainless steel U.S. Diver fighting knives, authentic right down to the individual serial numbers on the base of the blades. They crept silently over the back of the cabin cruiser and along the aft deck.

One of the passengers exited a moment later from the enclosed cabin to come up on deck for a smoke.

The lead diver clamped his hand over the man’s mouth like a vise, as the sharp pointed edge of the knife sank up to the serrated cuts on the top of the blade. The limp body was dumped quietly onto the deck where blood ran freely from the fatal wound. The other two occupants of the boat were not as lucky to die so easily. A vain fight for survival ensued.

The retired FBI agent put up the greatest resistance when he pulled out his forty caliber pistol. A bullet to the head ended his life immediately, but only after he got off two shots that went wild and missed his attacker.

The engineer smacked one of the divers in the head with a beer bottle which broke over his polyurethane hooded dive suit. Moments later the grizzled engineer was in the open, up on deck. The third diver, who was floating in the water fifteen feet from the boat, took aim and fired.

The barbed spear shot through the engineer’s right shoulder and lodged firmly in the fiberglass bulkhead behind. Excruciating pain seized him as blood pulsed out of his upper chest. He looked down and spotted his friend Donnie already dead.

The lead diver stepped out on the open deck, “I’m gonna’ do you a favor,” he said to the impaled engineer. He grabbed the man’s arm and slashed through the brachial artery with the razor sharp dive knife. Rich red blood shot out of the engineer’s arm with every beat of his heart.

“With any luck maybe you’ll bleed to death before you drown.”

Two minutes passed, and the divers quietly stepped back over the deck that was now awash with blood to the rear transom where they donned their equipment. As they slid into the water, the small stains of blood on their Henderson dive suits dissipated into the salty ocean.

The cabin cruiser was rapidly taking on water from the hole that had been punched through to the bottom of the fiberglass hull. In a few minutes it would disappear beneath the waves and drop five hundred feet to the bottom of the bay.

The engineer was still alive, pinned to the bulkhead of the little pleasure craft. His future was measured in mere seconds.

The gurgling air escaping from the sinking sport boat was evident aboard the sub in the sonar operator’s headset.

“She’s going down sir,” the sonar man reported.

“Radio, where are the divers?” he asked.

“The divers are on the surface, flashing us now sir,”

Once in the water, one diver keyed a tiny, waterproof, three-watt, ELF – extremely low frequency – radio to signal the sub that they were on the way back. His radio emitted a weak signal that was designed for close in work. The low radio frequency would not penetrate the seawater beyond a few hundred yards.

In response, the sub flashed a faint UV light from the extended periscope for a halfsecond so the three divers could obtain their bearings and swim in the direction of the submerged ship. When they reached the black, parkerized rubber basketball floating in the water above the sub, they dove down.

Six minutes later the aft deck chamber housing began to drain as the three divers removed their gear.

“Chamber, report!” the captain said into the intercom.

“It was quick sir. The engineer and his friends won’t be talking to U.S. authorities anymore. We have the notepads and documents they took in a waterproof bag,” the senior
diver replied.

“Very well. Three down, one to go. Meet me in the galley when you’re dried off.” The skipper turned to his executive officer who was standing nearby. “Mr. James, change heading to two-four-five degrees and put us straight on to Port Angeles.” “When we’re seven thousand yards north of that location, change course to the center of the channel and notify me when we come abreast of Otter Point and Port Crescent. Stay sharp and keep an eye on the instruments. If a U.S. sub is in the channel move to the Canadian side of the border and wait her out.”

“Aye Captain,” the executive officer replied.

“XO, you have the Conn,” the captain barked.

Captain Sle Wallen disappeared down a ladder. His muted footsteps echoed on the metal deck and open grating as he made his way aft, ducking a pipe and several gauges as he went.

Finding Time To Write–it is possible

American Fork, Utah–2-17-03–So, you feel for sure that you’ve got the great American Novel inside you begging to come out, or a screenplay that would set Hollywood on it’s heels? Now, all you need is for the rest of the world to leave you alone so that you can put your inspired words to paper–how do you find the time?

According to “Finish Line” novelist Tom Forest it is possible. “Let me give you a hint,” says Forest, sitting in his swivel chair in his Utah-based business office, surrounded by plaques of achievements and dozens of photos of his wife and children. “Time isn’t some mysterious, elusive creature. She’s a heck of a lot more accessible than you might think. Let me give you a few hints:

1) Break up your routine and free up more valuable writing time. Too much of our day is spent by doing thing on auto pilot. Reading the news paper, sleeping in late on weekends, when we could be spending that time on a writing project.

2) I’ve found it useful to have a pen and a small pocket notebook available. You never know from where or when a great idea might emerge from your mind. Just being outside or in front of the tv or listening to the radio can trigger a valuable item worth pursuing.

3) Dont think that you need huge chunks of time to write. Look for smaller units of time to get your writing done. Few writers can sit and think clearly for long stretches anyway.

4) Dont waste precious time trying to figure out what you’re going to write–do that the night before. Your story should be developing in your head all the time, anyway.

5) Work on more than one project simultaneously–be like the smart farmer. The smart farmer knows that there’s a time to plant and a time to reap. It’s a great way to avoid writers block and to ready several projects for market.

6) Create a safe zone for yourself. A safe zone is territory in which the enemy is not allowed. Writers need to establish safe zones if they are to keep negative thoughts at bay. Negative thoughts sap a writers energy and waste time.

7) Work around others. Instead of making others conform to your schedule, conform to their schedule. Watch for “time patterns” at home and at the office to determine when you are less likely to be interrupted in your writing.

Most people have certain times during the day when you’re at your sharpest, crankiest, and even your hungriest. You also have times when you’re at your most creative. The key is to tap into these key periods. I’ve found that my creative juices flow better in the evening, an hour before I go to bed. Most of “Finish Line” was done just before I went to bed.

9) If you believe that writing is just about putting words on paper, well, think again. You should write, even when you’re not writing. Good writing is ultimately about good living. Living takes time and is worth every moment. If I hadn’t experienced everything I had as a military officer, a fire fighter, or even as a father, I wouldn’t have been able to put “Finish Line” on the market. Use your life as your inspiration for what you write.

Mr. Forest admits that these principles were hard learned. “I learned so much with “Finish Line” and it’s helping me with my next book,” which is another thriller to be released sometime in the fall.

2003 copyright by Media Partners LLC – Randy Jernigan

Contact: Randy Jernigan
Media Partners LLC 801-785-5084
randy@mediapartnersllc.com

The Pro’s and Con’s of Print-On-Demand
By Randy Jernigan

When new author Tom Forest was ready to publish his first novel, Finish Line, he ended up publishing with a Print-on-Demand company. Why? And what exactly is a print-on-demand?

“To a large extent, the title explains the technology,” explains Mr. Forest. “print-on-demand means that whenever a book is demanded (ordered or bought), a copy of the book is printed. To anyone who knows anything about traditional printing methods, this sounds rediculous. Setting up a book on a traditional printing press is a long, costly process and to print a copy of a book would cost thousands of dollors. The advent of digital technologies, however, has brought changes,” explains Forest.

Desktop publishing has been relatively common since the 1980’s. To print a book, however, the finished design was still created as film separations. From these, printers produced plates that were loaded on to the printing presses. When the press started rolling, it took a while to get the right amount of ink on the plate, so the first impressions printed on paper were always discarded. For full-color pages, the paper must be run through the presses four times, once for each of the colors that form the basis of four color printing. Once all this work was done, economics demanded that you produce hundreds or thousands of copies of a book at the same time

The advent of high-quality digital printers in the late 1980’s promised to change the economics of printing. Unlike a traditional press, a digital printer lays ink directly onto the pages in a pattern determined by the code sent to it by a computer. In this way even color digital printers can produce a good color print without running the paper through the press more than once.

Forest explains, “the implications were not lost on printing professionals. They saw that it was becoming easier to print only as many copies of a document as you needed, instead of the standard 500 or 1000 copy minimun runs. The first commercial applications of this technology were in the area of manuals and reports: documents that required small quantities and frequent revisions.” says Forest.

In the late 1990’s, a couple of new companies started to apply this technology to the area of trade book production. There was already a strong self-publishing movement in the US, using traditional printing presses. Using traditional presses, authors had to print hundreds of copies of their book at a time, on spec,at great expense. They then had to store their inventory, and hope they sold the hundreds of copies that would cover their costs. Even when your book costs $2.00 to print, 1000 copies represents a significant investment. Digital printing seemed to offer a practical alternative. But individual authors could not make enough to print single copies of their book and sell them at regular bookstore prices. Some consolidation was needed, to achieve the savings and discounts that came with bulk manufacturing.

“Print-on-demand companies send many titles to their printer at the same time,” says Forest. “The content of each book is different, but because they print hundreds of books daily, they are able to minimize waste, time, and costs.”

The companies usually create a book ‘container’: one size, on one type of paper. They pour the digital content of each book onto that paper. After the press prints the pages for your neighbor’s novel, it simply starts to lay ink on the next piece of paper in a new pattern–that of the words and pictures in your book. Printing one book at a time has suddenly become a snap.

Therefore, most print-on-demand books are the same size. Each print-on-demand service providers offers standard sizes that their printers are expecting. Thus they achieve economics of scale.

“So what are the costs, really?” Tom Forest goes on to explain. “well, in traditional printing thousands of copies of a book can cost as little as around 50 cents each–but we’re talking tens of thousands of copies. Very few books have a market of tens of thousands. To print a single book traditionally–if you could find someone to do it for you–would cost as much as printing 200, because of the high set-up costs. Maybe even as much as a $1000.” says Forest.

“To print a digital book in single quantities costs POD companies between $4 and $10 per book. Because they are printing so many, their average cost is usually around $6.50. Some companies use this cost to set an average price, losing money on the fattest books, making money on the medium and skinny books. Other companies charge prices based on page-count, allowing the author to set the price, as long as the price does not go below a certain minimum, that guarantees the company its profit.” explains Forest.

Print-on-demand books are not printed until ordered, that kind of goes with the concept of ‘on demand.’ that is not to say that they are not available through traditional channels such as bookstores. Most bookstores subscribe to databases of books ‘in print’ — either online databases, cd editions or the good old-fashioned quarterly catalog. This means that if someone walks into a bookstore and asks for your book, the staff will be able to look up the title, find out how to order the book, and obtain a copy for you.

Other ways to obtain the books include: Directly from the producer. Most companies have an online bookstore such as iUniverse.com with a toll-free number. “This is the best way, because it cuts out the middlemen and generates the highest profits for you,” says Forest, who published his first book through iUniverse. From online bookstores such as Amazon.com. Since these stores routinely list books even if they don’t have them in a warehouse, they are great places to direct your customers. It costs the online bookstore next to nothing to list your book, and they can obtain it at any time. From you. This is probably the least preferable option. Why should you have to pay for and store copies, when you can just send your readers to an online bookstore or a toll-free number or spend none of your own money building a stock?

Of course, you are quite justified in asking how readers will know about your book if it is not on bookstore shelves.

“Thats where a publicist comes in,” explains Forest. “One of the first things I did was hire a P.R. man to get the word out about my book and to let people know where they could get a copy.” says Forest. “We’ve actually sold a good number of books and now it’s being shopped around New York and Hollywood circles by and interested agent for a movie deal.”

And there are other ways of getting the book noticed. Since POD books aren’t usually available on the shelves at first, you need to get the word out to people who are shopping in other locations–news groups, chatrooms, online stores, society newsletters, local newspapers and so on. Without promotion, even a book on a bookstore shelf will not sell many copies.

The final indignity for the traditional published author is the concept of your book going out of print. This can happen within the first year. If the response to the first printing of your book is not rapturous and immediate, the publisher’s accountants will happily demonstrate that your book is not worth a second printing. It will simply become unavailable.

With print-on-demand, there is no need for your book to ever go out of print, since there is no need for a minimum print run and all the costs go along with it.

Since the publishing of Finish Line, author Tom Forest has stepped out onto the public speaking stage, touring in support of his book and speaking to writers groups around the world. Finish Line has won the Quill and Pen Award from the American Wriaters Fellowship and is selling well.

A well organized terrorist group strikes at the heart of the U.S.Winter Olympics. Using a stolen high-tech experimental VTOL stealth aircraft, the group slips past the incredibly tight security net thrown over the games, and stage a daring airborne delivery of an atomic weapon while under fire from a Secret Service sniper team and a Blackhawk combat helicopter. The platoon of highly motivated terrorists, hold an entire city at the razors edge of nuclear destruction. Enter FBI agent Dale Fox, and a lone fire captain with an unorthodox hobby, who together, become a thorn in the side of the terrorists well executed plans.

Tom Forest has never been a spectator in life. He is a former United States Marine and retired supervisor of rescue operations for his local fire department. Tom has rescued people from caves, high angle entrapments, swift water accidents, train collisions, and diving mishaps. He was certified in downed aircraft rescue and taught Vehicle Extrication and Rescue tactics at the Utah State Fire and Rescue Academy. He’s owned several successful businesses, wrote a financial advice column for his local newspaper, and two novels: The T-Rex Virus and the forthcoming Cold Hard Knock.