I'm a writer. I look at the news and wonder how I might twist it into an interesting plot. Yesterday's false ballistic missile threat to Hawaii that caused alarm and panic was inexcusable on several levels. However, as a writer I'm looking for things that are probably not there; never happened; and are pure fiction. In other words, I see plot points for a thriller. Here are a few examples: What if...the public employee who mistakenly pushed the wrong button that activated Hawaii's threat alert system was actually working for the North Koreans? What if...this false alarm was really North Korea testing US reaction to such a threat? What if US military response was asleep at the switch and never spooled up the bombers and missiles in response to this false threat? Why didn't Kim Jung Un put out the message that North Korea hadn't launched a ballistic missile at Hawaii? Why didn't President Trump call Un and demand to know what was going on? Was Un unafraid of any US retaliatory response? How did he know there wouldn't be one?
All of these are the fictional threads a crafty writer might use to weave an compelling thriller that grips readers and forces them to turn the next page and the next. That's just what I did in creating Man of Honor--what if state-sponsored cyber warfare soldiers began crashing US airliners in a plot that targeted the entire US transport infrastructure? Same thing with God's Banker--what if there was a forced take-over of Vatican Bank by a group of religious extremists?
We writers get our inspiration from some of the most unlikely places. Thanks for reading.
--Chris