I’ve been writing for about twenty-five years. Only recently did I start publishing. That gap isn’t writer’s block or procrastination. It’s the distance between having stories in your head and being ready to put them on the page the way they deserve. I needed the years. The stories needed the life I lived first.
I’ve always been a voracious reader, and I’ve never limited myself to one genre. Just like music, you can appreciate all of it, but eventually you find the sound that lives in your bones. For me, it started with mysteries. The hard-beat cop type, where the detective is grinding through rain-soaked streets and every witness is lying about something. I loved those books. But the thriller always pulled me back.
The Heartbeat of a Good Thriller
When you find a novel that makes your heart race, one that makes you question what you believe about reality, something shifts in you. You don’t just read it. You live inside it. And when you find a character whose weaknesses are visible, whose flaws are real, yet you root for them anyway? That’s the kind of story I want to tell.
I’ve never been a fan of the flat-out evil villain. I’ve always needed to understand the meaning behind what people did.
The villain matters just as much. I’ve never been drawn to the flat-out evil antagonist, the one who’s cruel simply because the plot needs him to be. For most of my life, I’ve tried to understand the reasoning behind what people do. What was it that made them believe their course of action was right? Whether you agree with them or not, in their mind it made sense. That gap between their logic and ours is where the real tension lives.
What the Military Taught Me
I joined the military when I was eighteen. I enjoyed the pace, but I’ve always had a complicated relationship with authority. Nevertheless, I served honorably, left after four years, worked for the government, and later returned to complete a full career. That trajectory shaped everything I write.
The naive perspective of that eighteen-year-old was gradually eroded by witnessing the cruelty of the real world. Not all at once… it happened in layers, the way disillusionment usually does. In an attempt to make sense of it, I trained myself to look at the other side of every argument, every conflict. Not to excuse what I saw, but to understand it. That instinct became the foundation of my storytelling.
While I’ve always had a creative mind, I found that storytelling came naturally to me. Thriller writing wasn’t a career decision, it was a natural extension of the life I had lived.
I don’t consider myself a conspiracy theorist. But I do enjoy good conspiracy-thriller fiction. And here’s the problem I face with the novels I’m writing: what do you call a conspiracy once it’s been proven to exist?
The Idea That Wouldn’t Let Go
The concept behind The Blind Eye Series has been lingering in the back of my mind for years. Projects like MKUltra, Operation Mockingbird… real programs, documented, declassified. They raise a question that most fiction doesn’t bother to ask: what if an actual independent organization took those programs on? Not a rogue government agency. Not a shadowy cabal from a movie. A company. Operating in the open just enough to avoid suspicion, and in the shadows just enough to do whatever it wanted.
That’s the seed. Details about Operation Mockingbird, and how it connects to the larger story, will surface in Book Two. But the question that started everything was simple: what happens when the conspiracy isn’t a theory anymore, and the people who uncover it have to decide what they’re willing to do about it?
What do you call a conspiracy once it’s been proven to exist?
Finally Putting the Stories in Ink
I found myself recently retired, and it was finally time. No more excuses, no more “someday.” The stories had been living rent-free in my head for long enough. It was time to put them in ink.
I write to entertain. That’s the first job, and I take it seriously. But I also write to make people think. So much of our society walks around living their lives completely oblivious to what’s going on around them. Maybe it’s because we don’t want to know. Maybe it’s because we feel powerless. But knowledge is power, and I’m a firm believer that if you see something, at least you can react to it.
You may not be able to stop it alone. You might not have a team like the one in The Blind Eye Series watching your back. But at least you can face the problem head-on.
I like to think that in my novels, people will start to see the world a little differently. Not with fear, but with preparation. Not with helplessness, but with the understanding that sometimes, we simply aren’t in control. And that’s exactly when it matters most to be paying attention.
Stay paranoid.
– Rhett Sloane