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Difficult Nature of the Tansformation
Legacy of a Silent Man follows a professional assassin who, after twenty years, is forced into retirement and has to learn how to live an ordinary life, but his past isn’t ready for him to retire just yet. What first inspired the idea of the Silent Man program?
I was curious about the moral ambiguity of an assassin. It’s a career choice wholly at odds with normal society. Can someone who’s spent their entire life robbing others of their lives be reclaimed? Perhaps there’s no hope for mercenaries who’ll kill anyone, for any reason, in exchange for money. But for the character in this book, who was an employee of the Federal government, performing sanctioned kills, it was a job that needed doing. Maybe a man like that can put his past behind him, even though it would be a journey; he’d struggle and be tempted to fall back on his training and his old, violent ways. I could picture the trouble he’d have, and I wanted to see what that journey would look like.
One of the novel’s central ideas is that people can build a new identity after leaving behind the lives they once knew. Why did that theme appeal to you?
Being forced to retire at the relatively young age of 46, Kamden Clark was forcibly thrown into a new life he wasn’t prepared for. Despite the uncertainty, he didn’t shy away from the challenge. He purchased a house in the suburbs, bought his dream car, and did his best to acclimate. His social interactions are clumsy. His problem-solving skills lean aggressive. He has a lot of learning to do. It’s the difficult nature of the transformation that appealed to me.
The novel includes extensive details about weapons, tactics, technology, and training. How much research went into those elements?
More than any other book I’ve written, I had to frequently pause to research technical aspects or weapon details. Kamden Clark was a professional assassin, and it wouldn’t do to have him using the wrong equipment. I generally do research in advance and take notes. But, occasionally, I’ll be right in the middle of a chapter and realize I’m not sure what type of gun I’d need to accomplish a certain task. So I had to stop writing and go looking.
Do you envision Kamden’s story continuing in future books?
Absolutely. In fact, one of the not-fully resolved elements in the book relates to the assassin who was trying to kill Kamden. The interplay between the Chameleon and Kamden was fun to write, and it suggests their story isn’t over. I’m thinking about teaming them up in the next book. Two of the most dangerous assassins in the world working together? That would be a crazy amount of firepower to throw at a problem. I’d like to see what would become of that deadly partnership.
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Per an unpublished policy, any Silent Man who reaches the age of 46 faces forced retirement. Kamden always assumed he’d die on the job, which is the most common outcome for anyone in his profession. Instead, he’s suddenly thrust into a “normal” life he’s unprepared for. For most, the absence of violence, death, and danger would be welcomed, but for Kamden, those things are all he knows. How is he going to make his way in a world where his training has taught him to solve every problem with a gun?
To Kamden’s credit, he’s adopted new routines to replace his old ones. He’s trying to fit in, to learn how to interact with people who don’t need killing. It’s slow-going, and complicating matters is the corrupt cop who lives nearby and is determined to cause trouble for Kamden. While contending with the troublesome cop, he also has to deal with a highly skilled female assassin known as the Chameleon, hired by a vengeful Russian looking to settle the score for a decades-old killing.
Kamden has no choice but to suspend his retirement and do what he does best: dispatch the threats bearing down on him.
Open Power
Devil’s Tango follows a veteran operative who discovers his friend’s death may be connected to a hidden network that influences governments and controls people through money, leverage, and carefully placed agents. Where did the idea behind this novel come from?
The idea grew from a question that has always fascinated me: Who truly holds power?
We see elected officials, military leaders, corporations, and public institutions making decisions, but I wanted to explore the possibility that another layer exists beneath them. What if a private organization did not need to control governments openly because it had already placed the right people inside the right rooms?
That question became the foundation for the Third Estate. The organization operates through influence, information, money, and leverage. Its members rarely need to issue direct orders. They manipulate circumstances until people believe they are making their own choices.
I combined that premise with my interest in military operations, medicine, secret organizations, and morally complicated characters. The result became a story about conspiracy, but also about trust, loyalty, identity, and what happens when capable people discover that the systems they believed in may have been compromised.
What makes Lovac different from other covert operatives in the thriller genre?
Lovac is not searching for his identity or trying to escape what he has done. He knows exactly who he is, what he is capable of, and how the shadow world operates.
What makes him different is the conflict between his discipline and his personal loyalties. He approaches every room as a tactical problem. He studies exits, weapons, posture, timing, and possible threats before anyone else realizes danger exists. He is controlled, precise, and lethal, but he is not emotionless.
His greatest vulnerability is not fear. It is loyalty.
The people he cares about have begun paying for decisions he made years earlier, and asking for help does not come naturally to him. His partnership with Sophie forces him into unfamiliar territory. He can calculate angles and eliminate threats, but trust cannot be solved with the same precision.
That tension between professional control and personal responsibility makes him more than a traditional assassin or covert operative.
The Third Estate operates through influence rather than open power. What interested you about that type of control?
Open power attracts attention. Influence can remain invisible.
I was interested in creating an organization that does not need to overthrow governments, command armies, or announce its existence. The Third Estate recruits or manipulates people who already occupy useful positions. Its members understand that one carefully placed official, adviser, executive, scientist, or military officer can accomplish more than an army if no one realizes who shaped the decision.
That kind of control is frightening because it can appear ordinary. A policy changes. Evidence disappears. A contract is issued. A person receives a promotion, reassignment, or accusation. Each event may look unrelated, but together they form a system designed by people who remain hidden.
The Third Estate also believes its actions are justified. Its members do not consider themselves villains. They believe they are creating stability and protecting society from people who cannot be trusted to govern themselves. That moral certainty makes the organization more dangerous.
Can we look forward to a third installment in The Third Estate series? Where will it take readers?
Yes. The third installment is already planned, and it continues the story two years after the events of Devil’s Tango.
The consequences of Sophie and Lovac’s discoveries have not disappeared. Their actions exposed parts of the Third Estate, but the organization is larger, older, and more deeply embedded than either of them realized. New threats emerge, old loyalties are tested, and secrets connected to Grand Lake Manor begin to surface. The lines between ally, enemy, and family grow increasingly difficult to distinguish.
The danger expands, but the emotional stakes do as well. The third book will continue the mystery, suspense, tactical action, and morally complicated alliances of the series while revealing that some of the most dangerous secrets have been hiding much closer to home.
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Trying to bury her past and build a future, medical student and military officer Sophie Allard lives by precision, discipline, and instinct—until a dying gunshot victim whispers a message in her ear meant for someone else. By sunrise, she is suspended, framed for murder, and hunted by people who don’t leave witnesses. Evidence vanishes. Someone is tying off loose ends—and Sophie just became one of them.
Three years off the grid hasn’t erased Kai Lovac’s name from the kill lists. Cold, disciplined, and lethal, he knows exactly what happens to people who uncover the wrong secret. His friend died protecting Dossier 1627—a file powerful enough to expose the Third Estate, a covert syndicate that kills to remain invisible. Lovac once worked in their shadows. Now they want him erased.
Driven together by a shared threat and a past neither can escape, Sophie and Lovac are pulled into a labyrinth where assassins close in, hidden labs bury the truth, and betrayal waits at every turn. Each clue pulls them deeper. Alliances fracture without warning. Every step demands perfect timing. A single misstep carries a body count. And when the music stops, one wrong move will end everything.
Relentless, cinematic, and razor-sharp, Devil’s Tango is a high-stakes thriller of precision, power, and survival—where every turn is calculated, every secret is lethal, and trusting the wrong person can be your last mistake.
The Third Estate: Devil’s Tango
Devil’s Tango is a sprawling political-action thriller built around secret organizations, military intelligence, elite assassins, experimental research, and a conspiracy that reaches into public institutions. The story opens at a funeral where veteran operative Kai Lovac discovers that his friend’s death may be connected to the Third Estate, a hidden network that influences governments and controls people through money, leverage, and carefully placed agents. From there, the plot pulls medical student and former pilot Sophie Allard into Lovac’s investigation. Sophie is already fighting to preserve her career when she’s accused of a crime she didn’t commit, and her search for the truth soon becomes tangled with Lovac’s hunt for Dossier 1627, the mysterious Professor Milo Anderson, and the secrets surrounding Project Afterburner. The book establishes its dangerous world immediately, filling even a chapel with armed mourners, concealed loyalties, and the expectation that violence could erupt at any moment.
The book’s greatest strength is its momentum. Scenes move quickly from hospitals and military hearings to covert bases, private estates, aircraft, underground laboratories, and heavily guarded political events. Lovac approaches each environment as a tactical puzzle, constantly studying exits, body language, weapons, and possible threats. Sophie brings a different kind of energy. She’s impulsive, compassionate, stubborn, and highly capable, which makes her a lively counterweight to Lovac’s controlled intensity. Their uneasy partnership gives the story much of its personality. They argue, withhold information, rescue each other, and slowly develop trust without losing the friction that makes their conversations entertaining. The large supporting cast can take some concentration to track, but the shifting alliances suit a story in which nearly everyone has a hidden connection or competing agenda.
Readers of Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne novels will recognize the book’s fascination with concealed identities, compromised institutions, specialized operatives, and conspiracies layered inside other conspiracies. Lovac shares Bourne’s ability to enter a room and instinctively calculate danger, though he’s more settled in his identity and more closely tied to the shadowy professional world pursuing him. The novel also has something in common with Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp books, particularly in its mixture of political power struggles and direct, tactical action. Still, Devil’s Tango gives its story a distinct flavor through Sophie’s medical and aviation background, the almost ceremonial culture of the Assassins Guild, and the Third Estate’s preference for manipulating systems.
The novel ends with several major revelations and victories while leaving the larger struggle open. Sophie gains more control over her future, Lovac returns to the Guild with valuable leverage, and hidden identities inside the Third Estate finally come into view. That ending captures what the book does best: it treats trust as something dangerous, valuable, and constantly renegotiated. The Third Estate: Devil’s Tango is an ambitious thriller with a dense plot, cinematic action, and characters whose relationships matter as much as the secrets they’re chasing. It’ll appeal most to readers who enjoy long conspiracies, tactical detail, morally complicated alliances, and endings that open the door to a larger conflict.
Pages: 323 | ASIN : B0GXXCZT6X
Rogue Vengeance
Charles Stewart’s Rogue Vengeance is a muscular military thriller about loyalty under fire, the cost of service, and the long shadow cast when governments use warriors and then try to discard them. Colt Hawkins is trying to build a future with Liberty Starr on the Sabre T Ranch, but peace barely has time to take root before a wedding becomes a battlefield; Jesse remains trapped in a brutal Chinese prison, and Task Force 24 is pulled back into a widening conflict that stretches from Montana to Madrid, Hainan Island, and Taiwan. The novel moves with the urgency of an operation already in motion, blending domestic trauma, covert rescue planning, political betrayal, and geopolitical escalation into one restless story about people who keep answering the call even when the call has taken too much from them.
What stayed with me most was the emotional weight beneath all the tactical movement. The opening contrast between Jesse’s suffering in captivity and Colt’s quiet hope at the Raven’s Nest sets the tone beautifully: this is a book interested in bodies under pressure, but also in what people build when they’re desperate to believe they can still have a life. Stewart lets readers feel the tenderness, and that makes the violence feel less like a spectacle and more like a violation. At its best, the novel understands that survival isn’t clean or triumphant. It’s sore, frightened, stubborn, and sometimes quietly beautiful.
The writing has a hard-edged cadence that suits the material. Stewart favors clipped sentences, procedural detail, and scene cuts that mimic surveillance feeds or tactical briefings, and that gives the novel a cinematic, forward-driving rhythm. I found the operational details convincing and immersive, especially when the book follows intelligence gathering, safe houses, cell structures, and rescue planning. At times, though, the sheer density of names, agencies, acronyms, and moving parts can crowd the emotional space. The story occasionally explains when it could trust the moment to breathe. Still, there’s an authenticity in the worldview that’s difficult to fake. The ideas are clear and strongly felt: duty doesn’t end just because politics shifts, loyalty is heavier than policy, and the people who protect a nation are often least protected by it. I didn’t always need every briefing, but I believed deeply in the ache behind them.
I found Rogue Vengeance intense, heartfelt, and deeply invested in the bonds between warriors, families, and the country they serve. It’s a large, ambitious thriller with a bruised heart, one that works best when its action is anchored in grief, devotion, and the fragile possibility of home. The ending opens the door to an even larger conflict, but it also reinforces the novel’s central truth: Colt and his team may be wounded, but they’re not finished. I’d recommend this book to readers who enjoy military thrillers with detailed operations, sprawling geopolitical stakes, and a strong emotional core, especially those who like stories about brotherhood, sacrifice, and the private costs behind public missions.
Pages: 429 | ASIN : B0GFXJYSQ2
The “Right” Call
Rogue Vengeance is the third installment in the Colt Hawkins Series and follows a network of CIA and special forces operations figures as their personal lives collide with international violence. What draws you to the espionage thriller genre?
There’s a particular tension in espionage that you don’t find anywhere else in fiction- the collision between the personal and the geopolitical. A spy can’t have a normal conversation, can’t fully trust the person across the dinner table, can’t ever truly come home. That fascinates me. The genre lets me explore loyalty, deception, and sacrifice at their absolute extremes, where a single decision ripples across borders and lives.
With the Colt Hawkins Series, I wanted to write thrillers that move at full throttle but never lose the human heartbeat underneath. The CIA briefings and the firefights are the engine, but the fuel is always the story and the characters. Rogue Vengeance is where that combustion really ignites- the stakes feel global, but every chapter comes back to people you’ve grown to care about over three books.
Colt is repeatedly forced to choose between duty and personal happiness. Why was that conflict important to the story?
That conflict is Colt Hawkins. A man who’s exceptional at his job precisely because he’s willing to give up everything- and a man who’s slowly realizing that “everything” includes the people he loves most.
I built that tension into the story because I think it’s the truest thing about anyone who serves. The mission demands total commitment, but commitment has a cost, and someone always pays it. By the third book, Colt can no longer compartmentalize. The two halves of his life crash into each other, and watching him try to be both the operative the world needs and the man his loved ones deserve- and learning he may not get both- is the emotional core of Rogue Vengeance. Readers who’ve followed Colt from the beginning will feel that weight in a way that hits hard.
What does the novel say about the limits of patriotism?
This is the question that kept me up at night while writing. Patriotism is often portrayed as uncomplicated–love your country, serve without question. But real loyalty gets tested in the gray spaces, where the “right” call and the “being ordered” aren’t the same thing.
Rogue Vengeance asks what happens when serving your country means betraying your conscience, or when the institutions you’ve bled for stop deserving that blood. Colt and the network around him are forced to define where their loyalty actually lives- in a flag, in their orders, in each other, or in their own sense of right and wrong. I don’t hand the reader an easy answer, because there isn’t one. What I do offer is a story that makes you feel the cost of every choice and respect the people willing to make them.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
We are going to release an Audio version of Rogue Vengeance that will be out around August. The sequel to Rogue Vengeance, Book 4, The Price of Freedom, picks up moments after Rogue finishes. And it is the centerpiece of the Colt Hawkins Series. It is completed and sitting on the shelf. We are going to wait a bit before its release. I have maybe a standalone WWII Historical Epic Fiction Novel, Ties That Bind (179K words), that just went through final edit. That I will seek representation for. And we have done the rough outline for Book 5 of the Colt Hawkins Series, Arch Angel.
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Their own government outcasts Colt and his team, Task Force 24, as ruthless Chinese assassins brutally attack the woman he loves on their wedding day, leaving her severely wounded.
But Colt isn’t dead- Now, it’s personal, he won’t rest until he’s hunted down every last person responsible.
With a mole at the highest levels of power and a ruthless enemy leader pulling the strings, Colt finds himself a target of both the intelligence community that abandoned him and a vengeful Chinese death squad. Aided by his former teammates, Colt uncovers a conspiracy that goes deeper than he ever imagined. Now, his quest for revenge becomes a race against time to save his country from a devastating espionage plot.
The lines between loyalty and betrayal blur as Colt must decide if he can trust the very agency that cast him out. With a new CIA director at the helm and an elite operative watching over the woman he loves, Colt must navigate a deadly game of international espionage where the only rule is survival.
Rogue Vengeance
Rogue Vengeance, by Charles A. Stewart, is a military espionage thriller about betrayal, loyalty, and the heavy cost of service. The story follows Colt Hawkins, Liberty Starr, Jesse, and a network of CIA and special operations figures as personal lives collide with international violence. What begins around a wedding and a fragile hope for peace quickly turns into a larger conflict involving China, covert missions, political pressure, revenge, and survival. It’s an action-heavy thriller, but underneath the gunfire and strategy, it’s also about people trying to hold onto love, purpose, and identity after trauma.
The pacing in this story is fantastic. Stewart writes in short, sharp bursts that often feel like quick camera cuts. One scene is intimate and warm, with family gathered around a ranch house or Colt trying to imagine a quieter future, and then the next scene drops into surveillance, ambush planning, or prison brutality. That contrast works well for the genre. It keeps the pressure high. The book feels almost built for the screen, with clean scene breaks, direct action, and a strong sense of movement. I did sometimes want a little more breathing room, especially when the cast widened and the operational details stacked up. But I also understood the choice. This is a thriller that wants the reader alert, not settled.
I was most drawn to the emotional spine of the book. Colt isn’t just another tough operator who can take a bullet and keep moving. He is a man being asked, again and again, how much of himself he can give before there’s nothing left. The scenes with Liberty give the story its heart, and they make the violence matter more because there is something real at stake beyond mission success. Jesse’s captivity adds another layer, showing endurance in a quieter but no less brutal form. Stewart’s ideas are clear: duty can save people, but it can also consume them; loyalty is noble, but it can become a chain; and governments often treat sacrifice like a renewable resource. That’s where the book feels most grounded to me.
I would recommend Rogue Vengeance to readers who enjoy military thrillers, CIA action stories, and revenge-driven espionage novels with a large cast and a strong patriotic edge. Fans of high-stakes operations, tactical detail, and stories about brotherhood under pressure will probably appreciate it most. Readers looking for a fast, emotional, mission-focused thriller with both firepower and heart should find plenty to enjoy here.
Pages: 429 | ASIN : B0GFXJYSQ2
A Nest of All Kinds: Jewels of the House Divine
A Nest of All Kinds: Jewels of the House Divine opens on an empire at its most vulnerable: a divine emperor is dead, his infant heir has mysteriously died, and the young Empress-Dowager Anastasia is thrust into a regency fight where grief, law, prophecy, bloodline politics, and old vendettas all sharpen into weapons. Author Michael C. Reid builds a richly imagined Rasnaian Imperium inspired by Byzantine grandeur and Etruscan-Roman invention, then fills it with courtiers, soldiers, mystics, foreign princes, and children born into power before they are old enough to understand its cost.
I was enthralled with the density of the world. This is not a fantasy novel that gestures vaguely at empire; it furnishes the palace, names the offices, explains the rites, and lets the reader feel the pressure of ceremony as a living force. The prose can be ornate, but that suits the material. Incense, marble, blood, silk, ash, and divine sunlight are not decorative here; they are part of the machinery of rule. I admired how Reid makes politics feel intimate. A public decision is never merely public. It is also a father gripping his daughter’s future, a mother staring at an empty cradle, a boy hiding terror behind imperial posture.
I was also pulled in by Anastasia’s uneasy evolution. She is not written as a clean heroine, and the book is stronger for it. Her compassion is real, but so is her capacity for self-deception; her grief humanizes her, but power keeps teaching her cruel new languages. The court intrigue is sometimes labyrinthine, with many names, houses, offices, and loyalties to track, but the emotional through-line remains clear: everyone claims to be protecting someone, and nearly everyone becomes dangerous in the attempt. I found the best scenes to be the ones where tenderness and menace share the same room, especially in Anastasia’s relationships with the imperial twins, Aryan, Tatiana, and her father.
This book is best suited for readers of epic fantasy, political fantasy, court intrigue, dynastic fantasy, alternate history fantasy, and dark imperial fantasy who enjoy layered worldbuilding and morally compromised characters. Readers who love the ruthless family politics of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire will recognize the same appetite for succession crises, poisoned loyalties, and children trapped inside adult wars, though Reid’s work has a more ecclesiastical, Byzantine shimmer. A Nest of All Kinds is a gilded blade of a novel: ornate, merciless, and glowing with dangerous purpose.
Pages: 410 | ASIN : B0FP5J2B6N
Comedy and Free Speech
Deadly Serious centers around an aspiring comedian who finds himself pulled into a world of Cold War secrets, murder, and romance. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
At the time, I was living in Los Angeles and attending comedy clubs during what we now think of as the Cold War era. Some well-known comedians either died under mysterious circumstances or committed suicide, and I became intrigued by the reasons why.
Did any classic spy novels, noir stories, or dark comedies influence the book?
I think the work of John le Carré and Robert Ludlum influenced many of my choices.
How were you able to strike a balance between humor, genuine danger, and emotional stakes?
The irreverent main character, Danny Goodis, believed that comedy and free speech could rise above any danger, but he was mistaken in his assessment of what he was really stumbling into. The story subtly alludes to electrogravitics, which some scientists have associated with UFO/UAP propulsion systems.
Dan spends much of the novel trying to maintain control while his world keeps shifting. Were you interested in exploring how ordinary people respond to overwhelming systems?
I think this is a situation where a character gets in over his head and doesn’t recognize the imminent danger. He acts like a whistleblower in his comedy routines, while Cubans, Russians, and others want to silence him.
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When struggling stand-up comic Dan Goodis witnesses the assassination of a reclusive physicist who leaves him a mysterious code, his life spirals into paranoia and danger.
Hunted by a secret cabal and betrayed by the woman sent to protect him, Dan can’t tell what’s real—or whom to trust.
As he decodes the fragments, his once-ordinary life collapses into deception and fear.
Comedy clubs become interrogation rooms and therapy sessions, and love turns into a weapon he can’t control.
Haunted by betrayal and surrounded by enemies, Dan must finish the hermit’s work before they silence him for good.
The truth may set him free—or bring him crashing down
