Research That Puts You on the Edge of Your Seat

When I first started writing my first novel about Jonathan Preston in 2012, I was astonished that I could sit down at my computer and watch as I typed what came through my brain onto the screen. It was like someone stood over me and poured the information into my brain, and all I had to do was type. Fortunately for me, a lot of preparation and research went into the process before I ever started typing. Yes, writing a novel, short story, or a children’s book takes research and preparation—and sometimes lots of it.

I wrote my first novel in six months. After I finished Operation King Cobra, I kept on typing and finished Call for Blood in another six months. I nearly quit writing after I published Operation King Cobra because of the horrible experience I went through with my publisher. Thank God, they went out of business because they were scoundrels—promising the world, but delivering nothing except a printed book. After that experience, I began self-publishing so I could control the process.

My fourth novel, Imminent Threat, continues the WWII espionage, sabotage, and intrigue in the first three novels, except this one, is total fiction. I took a mission that the Imperial Japanese Navy planned but didn’t execute and said, “What if they did go through with their mission to strike the US with a biological weapon?” However, writing this novel was much more difficult and required extensive research.

So, here’s my elevator pitch: Imminent Threat by Steve Doherty is a thriller in the tradition of Tom Clancy’s Hunt for Red October and Clive Cussler’s Black Wind, about one of the US Army’s most successful covert operatives—Jonathan Preston. Weeks before Japan surrenders, a Japanese intelligence czar secretly sends out two aircraft carrier submarines to strike the US mainland with a deadly biological agent. Preston and his US Army counterintelligence team race against time to stop a Japanese agent, Asami Nakada, from taking possession of the biological weapon and striking Washington D.C. This Jonathan Preston thriller will, once again, have you on the edge of your seat.