1146. When I Should Have Been Reading Textbooks, I Was Reading Novels.

“From the time I was six or seven years of age, I always enjoyed reading. When I should have been reading textbooks, I was reading novels. When I was 13 or 14, a watershed moment was when I picked up a book in my dad’s home library. It was a book called Casino Royale. This is in 1958, and the author’s name was Ian Fleming.

“It changed my life entirely. I knew that this was the kind of work that I could see myself getting steeped in. And that kind of led me, in many respects, to what I did in the Air Force. And then when it was time to start writing, I just had a natural bent towards the thriller aspect of novels.

“I joined the Air Force after college and during the Vietnam war I was stationed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. I was attached to 13th Air Force Headquarters and part of the 13th Air Force headquarters. They were responsible for all of the reconnaissance work being done in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. So my duties brought me into Vietnam and Thailand on a recurring basis for that year and a half that I was over there.

“After that, I moved to Miami and joined an Air Force Reserve Squadron. My favorite part of that work, although I enjoyed all of it, was being involved in national security management. Sometimes it was like living inside a novel, but it was a very real life novel. It was all stuff that you couldn’t really talk about to other people, but fascinating. When the first Gulf War came around, I was given command of an active-duty squadron at Homestead Air Force Base. It turned out that I was the only reserve officer at the time to be given command of an active-duty Air Force squadron during wartime.”

Ian O’Connor is a retired US Air Force Colonel and a recognized expert in the field of national security management. This background serves him well as the foundation for his novels. He’s the author of “The Seventh Seal” and “The Barbarossa Covenant,” both Justin Scott Thrillers. Copies of these books are in the US Naval Academy and US Air Force Academy Libraries. He co-authored “ Scrappy, Memoir of a Fighter Pilot in Korea and Vietnam.” And his thriller, “The Twilight of the Day,” was awarded a bronze medal by the Military Writers Society of America. Ian’s newest novel, “The Pegasus Directive,” focuses on who really killed President John F. Kennedy and all the fiendish machinations behind the assassination.