New Character Profile!!!!

The vast majority of my real-life characters are designed to keep readers guessing while providing some heart stopping thrills.

But Sthankaila Shabaz Wilson is the opposite. You read about her in my exciting mystery thriller, TWISTED.

Now, she’s back in Book Two, NO MERCY. Sthankaila is the shrewd character that can get into the hearts and minds of any man captivating their imagination while leaving them wanting.

A register nurse and no non-sense, single Mom, who lives with her mother, Sthankaila Shabaz Wilson is savvy, sexy, smart, and when it’s time to kick butt, she takes no prisoners.

Brace yourself for a high octane experience!

Check out Sthankaila Shabaz Wilson’s profile online at:

https://www.carlalanpublishing.com/characters

Art Design by: Emily Steele

IF WE DON'T TRY - THEN WE DON'T DO!

I strongly agree!!!

When I have a point to make, I'm pretty sure that most of you that have work with me know, I would always say this: "LET'S YOU AND I GO FOR A LITTLE WALK."

I can't do the walk, now 'cause I'm staying away from large crowds due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

So, I have to get my point across from a distance. What I have to say is not a soap box issue. I'm hoping anyone reading this won't get that impression. However, it is sad the situation we find ourselves in these days. The lack of common courtesy, ignoring doing what we know is the right thing to do for what we really want to do, is so easy for everyone right now. Without giving it much thought, we just resort to doing what everyone else is doing regardless of the consequences. Even when we know that it's not in our best interest.

For a while, I was in my own little funk trying to deal with the pandemic. Circumstances beyond my control kept forcing me to keep moving the timeline on the release of my next book. It's important to me to get it done and out there. Yet, it really wasn't that important. If you know what I mean. Since March of this year, I have had a close up look at this pandemic as it has affected members of my family. And, as they say, "What affects you directly, affects everyone else around you...INDIRECTLY." The pandemic's indirect affect forced us to make temporary adjustments that if not handled properly can become major adjustments.

As time passed and more unexpected news dropped, I keep trying to think of something interesting and upbeat to post . . . but as I looked for the right words, I was determined to not let what is going on in our country, right now, get be down.

I hope that all of us are believing in this terrible pandemic and trying to live so others are not infected by your carelessness. Until the vaccine is administered to at least fifty percent of the population, wearing a mask and social distancing, even though it is something that most of us refuse to do, does not mean your freedom is being taken away. It just means you care for other people.

It's the least you can do.

Don't you think...

The Real Story of the “Football” That Follows the President Everywhere

By Michael Dobbs

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2014

It is the closest modern-day equivalent of the medieval crown and scepter—a symbol of supreme authority.

Accompanying the commander in chief wherever he goes, the innocuous-looking briefcase is touted in movies and spy novels as the ultimate power accessory, a doomsday machine that could destroy the entire world.

Although its origins remain highly classified, the Football can be traced back to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Privately, John F. Kennedy believed that nuclear weapons were, as he put it, “only good for deterring.” He also felt it was “insane that two men, sitting on opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization.” Horrified by the doctrine known as MAD (mutually assured destruction), JFK ordered locks to be placed on nuclear weapons and demanded alternatives to the “all or nothing” nuclear war plan. A declassified Kennedy memo documents the concerns that led to the invention of the Football as a system for verifying the identity of the commander in chief. The president posed the following chilling, but commonsense, questions:

“What would I say to the Joint War Room to launch an immediate nuclear strike?” “How would the person who received my instructions verify them?”

According to former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, the Football acquired its name from an early nuclear war plan code-named “Dropkick.” (“Dropkick” needed a “football” in order to be put into effect.) The earliest known photograph of a military aide trailing the president with the telltale black briefcase (a modified version of a standard Zero-Halliburton model) was taken on May 10, 1963, at the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Since 1963, the Football has become a staple of presidential trips, and was even photographed in Red Square in May 1988, accompanying President Ronald Reagan on a state visit to the Soviet Union. (Reagan’s Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, was accompanied by a military aide who was clutching a very similar device, known in Russian as the chemodanchik, or “little briefcase.”)

A recurring complaint of presidents and military aides alike has been that the Football, which currently weighs around 45 pounds, contains too much documentation. President Jimmy Carter, who had qualified as a nuclear submarine commander, was aware that he would have only a few minutes to decide how to respond to a nuclear strike against the United States. Carter ordered that the war plans be drastically simplified. A former military aide to President Bill Clinton, Col. Buzz Patterson, would later describe the resulting pared-down set of choices as akin to a “Denny’s breakfast menu.” “It’s like picking one out of Column A and two out of Column B,” he told the History Channel.

The first unclassified reference to the existence of the Football is contained in a formerly top-secret memorandum from 1965 obtained by the National Security Archive of George Washington University. Tasked with reducing the weight of the Football, a senior defense official agreed this was a worthy goal, but added, “I am sure we can find strong couriers who are capable of carrying an additional pound or two of paper.” For the Football to function as designed, the military aide must be nearby the commander in chief at all times and the president must be in possession of his authentication codes. Both elements of the system have failed on occasion. According to the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Hugh Shelton, Clinton mislaid his laminated code card, nicknamed the “Biscuit,” for several months in 2000. “This is a big deal, a gargantuan deal,” the general complained in his 2010 autobiography, Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior. An even closer brush with disaster came during the attempted assassination of Reagan in March 1981. During the chaos that followed the shooting, the military aide was separated from the president, and did not accompany him to the George Washington University hospital. In the moments before Reagan was wheeled into the operating theater, he was stripped of his clothes and other possessions. The Biscuit was later found abandoned, unceremoniously dumped in a hospital plastic bag. It seems unlikely that a crown or scepter would have been treated so cavalierly.