Mark Terry

Mark Terry is the author of three Derek Stillwater novels, The Devil's Pitchfork, The Serpent's Kiss, and The Fallen, as well as two standalone novels, Dirty Deeds and Dancing in the Dark.

From his Q & A with Travis Erwin:

I've read your blog long enough to know you are a tireless researcher, but given the fact your characters are knee deep in matters of national security, how do you go about gathering information on weapons and procedures and such without raising red flags in gov't institutions the world over? Or does the FBI and CIA hold a constant vigil outside your door? Yeah I'm mostly joking, but have you ever had any "interesting" inquiries as to why you are looking into such matters as chemical warfare and biological weapons?

I'm reasonably certain my Internet searches have caught the attention of the FBI etc. Here's an example: over the last several weeks I've been researching chemical weapons that come out of Russia and domestic terrorism in Russia. Then, two or three weeks of that, there's a Moscow subway bombing by domestic terrorists. If my name doesn't come up on some sort of list somewhere at the Federal level, then someone's really not doing their job. Particularly in that some of my searches are for things that are a little bit more esoteric than, say, VX gas or Sarin. I mean, how many people have even heard of Soman?

At my last house my next-door neighbor put up this huge satellite dish (this was before the small dishes) that looked like something you could contact Mars with, and then--weirdly--built an addition onto the house so the satellite pole came up out of the roof. For a while there we swore Juan must have been working for the NSA. And once I had a private investigator come to the house, flash his credentials and ask if he could use our driveway for surveillance purposes. Not to be paranoid, but you do...[read on]

The Page 69 Test: The Fallen.

My Book, the Movie: The Fallen.

--Marshal Zeringue