My fictional Task Force Zeta, featured in the Red Hot & Blue series, was based on the real life Task Force 145, formed by the Pentagon in 2003 from men from Delta Force, Rangers, SEALs and British SAS. They were responsible for taking out Al-Zarqawi in 2006. TREY, JACK, JIMMY, BULL, MATT and THE COMMANDER were based on this special task force, their practices, and philosophies. From an ABC news article in 2006: “Task Force 145 uses a process that they call the unblinking eye, which is essentially a very tight linkage between intelligence and operations, meaning that as soon as they have intelligence they want to act on it, rather than sit and dwell on it for days at a time,” said Sean Naylor, who reported a piece on TF 145 for the Army Times.”

** PUBLISHING HISTORY **

After Samhain Publishing closed its doors, I got the rights back to all my books, including the Red Hot & Blue series.  They have been re-edited and released with fresh new covers and more competitive pricing for both eBook and paperback versions.

Wait. What happened? Well, small press publishing being what it is, the titles, the covers and the compilations of this series have been changed three times, as two of the publishers went out of business. To confuse things more, the series went from Red Hot & Blue (no commas), to Red, Hot & Blue (one comma) to Red, Hot, & Blue (two commas), depending on the current editor. I am bringing it back to what I intended–RED HOT & BLUE, with no freaking commas! Samhain also chose to separate the trilogies and release the individual stories, which had been written and published together. I have reversed their decision and republished the individual stories in the groups of three, as they were written.  I apologize if this is confusing. Trust me, it upsets no one more than me. The best I can do is move forward with complete transparency. I have now self published them so no editor and no publisher will determine the face or fate of my series again.

For those who own the originals, not much as changed. You do NOT have to repurchase the stories you own. I have made small changes. I fixed my rookie writing mistakes and bad habits. (Holy exclamation points, Batman!!)  I had added one opening scene to “Trey” between the original Linden Bay Romance Trilogy 103:Red Hot & Blue release and the Samhain rerelease as a single title. I have updated a bit of the technology and references (the flip phones became smart phones. Paris Hilton became Kim Kardashian), but I have tried to leave the time period and the setting as originally written since the details of the real life war are time specific.

(NOTE: Because these had to be re-published with new ISBNs, they will not show up at Amazon with the warning ‘you already purchased this book’. Check your eReaders for the old and new book titles before repurchasing! The book covers below are the OLD Samhain versions for your reference.)