Author’s Note ‘The Edge of Reality’

Author’s Note

I wrote this book after completing my first Western, ‘Unreconstructed’. Along with Westerns, the Espionage genre has always been one of my favorites. I grew up watching spy movies, especially the James Bond, 007 series, based on Ian Fleming’s creation. I originally thought of this story when I realized that (to my knowledge) there hadn’t been a spy story about attempted sabotage of America’s moonshot. I then thought of a protagonist for the story, thinking of someone with the heroics of James Bond, but perhaps more relatable, and different from most spy story heroes. He is a divorced, U.S.M.C. Vietnam vet that isn’t a womanizer or heavy drinker, and that prefers to spend his downtime in an isolated cabin in the woods of Georgia, listening to Elvis Presley’s music, reading, and eating barbeque sandwiches with domestic beer. This is about as far as you can get from the jet setting, shaken-martini sipping 007. I then thought of how I could link my Spy hero and my Western one. Make him the great great grandson of Tom Fortner; and Jeff Fortner was born. The three generations in between Tom and Jeff will each have their own trilogy, as I work toward completion of the series. Think of Tom in the reconstruction era 1860s and Jeff in the tumultuous 1960s as the ‘book-ends’ of the saga.

While this story, and any minor technical mistake one might find in it, is completely my own, there are certainly conspiracy theories out there that the Apollo 1 tragedy was a possible sabotage, and that there may have been a KGB plot against Apollo 8. With the Soviets losing the race to the moon, it’s certainly plausible that some in the KGB may have had ideas of delaying or destroying the Apollo 11, one of America’s greatest glories. Fortunately, this never happened, and our moon program was a success. There are links below for further reading. Jeff Fortner will return to Vietnam to confront an old enemy in ‘Solitary Man’.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buick_Riviera

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_%26_Wesson_Model_19

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union

http://www.clavius.org/bibhill.html

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/report/2007/deep-politics-4.htm

https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/history-of-the-cia

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https://www.amazon.com/Edge-Reality-Thriller-Fortner-Family-ebook/dp/B06XHGZGXV/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8