In November of 2002, I was working on a story, frustrated by writer’s block, and took a single afternoon to throw together an idea unlike any I’d written previously. I’m not sure where it sprang from, except that I’d become a huge fan of the television series Alias and other crime investigation / law & order type shows. The idea was possibly the result of needing a break from the Sex And The City type stories I’d been writing for a year. (The paragraphs below with the bold headings are taken straight from the proposal I sent into Kensington.)

The Smithson Group
“Boldly going where law-abiding, rule-stickling, by-the-book pussies won’t - to do what needs to be done.”

That was the first thing I wrote. And the story developed from there, starting with the idea of an older mentor, one who took military men out of career-ending, possibly life-threatening situations and put them to work for his covert agency. I knew he would need a backstory of his own, a motivation for what he took on, and a long-term, all-consuming goal. Before ever selling a single book (not just to Brava, but to any publisher), I had written a proposal that won several RWA contests, an action adventure romance set in a fictional Amazonian type jungle. One of the characters, Hank Smithson, had really come alive for me then, and I decided to use him for this project.

Founder and CEO

Septuagenarian Hank “we don’t need no stinkin’ laws and regulations” Smithson, a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars and the millionaire owner of Smithson Engineering, has recruited a handful of ex-military men, each with a different specialty, and formed a team of mercenaries who fly under the radar of governmental law enforcement.

Once I had Hank nailed, I began working on the operatives. Originally, each man came to the team with a unique talent and military specialization.

Team Members & Specialties
Julian Samms - Intelligence
Tripp Shaughnessey - Information Technology
Eli McKenzie - Weapons
Kelly John Beach - Security
Christian Bane- Negotiations

But since stories are organic and ideas subject to change, these did. The team ended up being just that - a team. Each man equally capable of doing anything he’s called on to do. That didn’t mean each was a clone of the previous. Not at all. In fact, each was as unique as any character I’ve written. They were, however, different men than I’d written as heroes in the past. I’d written cowboys and doctors and lawyers and architects but never heroes who’d broken laws or taken lives in the name of justice. The interesting thing in the course of writing these men was that not a single one of them talked to me about where they’d come from, what sort of childhood they’d had, what sort of family. I knew nothing about their years in the service. All I knew was the inciting incident that started their downhill slide - the event that precipitated their rescue by Hank Smithson. To be honest, I still don’t know anything besides what you will read in the books. That seemed to be all that mattered.

THE BANE AFFAIR introduced Christian Bane.

Christian is the strong silent type. He was Hank’s first recruit, the one with the most tortured military past. The one who had to spend half of his story pretending to be someone else. This was a huge challenge. Not only did I have to create a hero and create his antagonist, but I had to have one man playing both roles for a good part of the story. With Christian’s biggest issue being a matter of trust, he needed a heroine to challenge him at every turn even while he was betraying her. The conflict nearly killed him - especially when forced to choose between duty and love.

THE SHAUGHNESSEY ACCORD introduced Tripp Shaughnessey.

Tripp is definitely the cut-up of the bunch. The fun lover. The kid who refused to grow up. Even so, he knows when it’s time to stop playing and get down to business. He uses the facade as a defense mechanism because he doesn’t like to think about what almost happened to him or what he had to do to escape the jungles of Colombia with his life. He never talks about it in detail to Glory. He doesn’t have to. He lets his actions speak for him. Seeing him switch from mild-mannered engineering project consultant to man of metal *g* was all she needed to understand the truth of who he was.

THE SAMMS AGENDA introduced Julian Samms.

To me, Julian is the suave “James Bond” of the group, culturally refined, sophisticated - a match made somewhere other than heaven with a high-maintenance heroine who is his social equal. I knew that I would never get to explore them fully, however, until I took them out of their comfort zone. And I did by sending them into the Everglades. I needed to get out of Manhattan, and with Spectra IT’s headquarters in the Caribbean, the tip of Florida made for the perfect location. Two fish out of water and yet still circled by sharks. THE SAMMS AGENDA also introduced two other Smithson players: Mick Savin and the enigmatic Ezra Moore.

THE BEACH ALIBI introduced Kelly John Beach.

Kelly John turned out to be the most serious of the SG-5 operatives, a perfect foil for his best friend Tripp. Being as disciplined as he is, he couldn’t deal with how badly he screwed up his mission - and how he had to put an innocent woman into danger to get himself out. He also wound up being the most intense of the heroes - in his emotional responses, his language, even in his approach to making love and falling in love.

THE MCKENZIE ARTIFACT introduced Eli McKenzie.

Eli appeared in THE BANE AFFAIR in a cameo role. At the time I wrote him into Christian’s book, I was intrigued because I had *no* idea what had happened to him, or what I was going to do with him. But I knew that no matter what it was, he wouldn’t have abandoned his post. To that end, I created a new Smithson recruit, Harry “Rabbit” van Zandt to hold down Eli’s fort while he was away. In my folder of story ideas, I had snippets of news reports on the disappearance of young girls along the Texas and Mexico border.

And suddenly I realized that was where Eli had been and what he’d been doing. Working to free girls caught up in Spectra IT’s slavery and prostitution ring. It wasn’t until Stella Banks came onto the scene as a private investigator, however, getting into Eli’s way at every turn that I had something. Still, I was lacking a twist. An explanation for what had happened to him to send him back to Hank’s farm in Saratoga. It was when my editor suggested that Eli was poisoned that my imagination took off - because of course he would have been poisoned by Stella!

You can learn more about all the SG-5 operatives and their stories at their Smithson Group website!

The winner of a complete autographed set of the Smithson Group books was Vikki. Congratulations!