Local thriller - Seacoast author focuses new trilogy on war on terror

[SR-25]

What would happen if a female helicopter pilot found herself among the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, an elite band of brothers responsible for searching for weapons of mass destruction?
Writing under the pseudonym "Michael Hawke," first-time author Kevin St. Jarre of Rochester pumps up the action and draws on his experience as a military intelligence leader to find out.

His new novel, "Night Stalkers," which hit bookstore shelves last week, is the first in a three-book series centered on the war on terror. St. Jarre, who teaches English at Noble High School in North Berwick, Maine, has plenty of real-life experience from which to spin his fiction.

Now 36, he joined the Army at 17 and worked in military intelligence for six years. At the military’s Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., he learned to speak Czechoslovakian. He then became what he called "an eastern European specialist" and lived in Germany from 1988 until 1991.

"When I went to Germany, the Czechs were the enemy. Then the (Berlin) Wall came down. Suddenly the Czechs weren’t the enemy anymore," he said during a telephone interview conducted earlier this week.

After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, St. Jarre served in Desert Storm as a combat-intelligence team leader with the 1st Armored Division, he said. He went on to teach military intelligence courses at the former Fort Devens in Ayer, Mass.

In real life, women cannot serve in the 160th SOAR unit, St. Jarre said. Since that’s the case, he thought it would be interesting to introduce readers to fictional heroine Jeanie McCall, who is at the forefront of the action in "Night Stalkers."

"She’s really a lot of fun," he said. "As much as I could, I tried to make it a character-driven story. And for people who do like action, it’s cover-to-cover action."

St. Jarre created the fictional characters in the "Night Stalkers" series from aspects of real-life friends and colleagues, and the books draw upon current political events for inspiration, he said. Predicting the course of world events in advance of the stories’ publication dates - particularly when novels take so long to write - can be tricky, he said.

For example, the second book in the series, "Night Stalkers: Coercion," is finished and will be published in July. But St. Jarre plans to slightly amend the text so the word ‘tsunami’ - which was used as part of a metaphor - is no longer in the manuscript.

Given the real-world devastation caused by the tsunami that hit Asian coastlines on Dec. 26, the author decided he didn’t want to create any discomfort in readers by using the metaphorical image.

"If I can, I’ll take the word out," he said.

The third book in the series is nearly complete, but has yet to be titled, he said. Beyond the trilogy, he plans to write additiona* Night Stalkers" stories. St. Jarre’s agent, Jake Elwell, of the New York firm of Wieser and Elwell, hails from Portsmouth. The series is published by Berkley Books, the publisher of Maine author Gerry Boyle’s popular Jack McMorrow mystery series.

St. Jarre is enjoying the teaching benefits that come with being a published author. When his students complain about having to write 1,200-word term papers, he tells them the first "Night Stalkers" book weighed in at 85,000 words.

St. Jarre, who grew up in Madawaska, Maine, along the Canadian border, has aspired to be a writer all of his life and has spent much of his life honing his craft. Once St. Jarre started elementary school, his father encouraged him to write by paying the young boy 10 cents per page for each story he’d turn out. After St. Jarre completed his military hitch in 1992, he earned a degree in English at the University of Maine at Fort Kent.

St. Jarre began the first "Night Stalkers" book in October 2003 and finished the manuscript in February 2004. He uses outlines as a tool to help him write and assigns himself the task of writing a set number of pages each day. All this, while tending to his home life with his wife, Jennifer, and three children, ages 16, 6 and 2.

He wrote the "Night Stalkers" series under a pen name because he is writing other books under his own name, he said. In the works are "Cora’s Daughter," an account of his mother’s childhood; a spy novel titled "12 Targets"; and an untitled romance novel in which reincarnated soul mates search for each other over the course of many lifetimes.

St. Jarre, who also paints, will teach a creative writing class at Noble High School next year.

"Writing is the same for them as for adults, you have to make a plan," he said about his young charges. "A lot of these students have great stories."

"Night Stalkers" is available at bookstores and can be ordered online. For information about the author, visit www.kevinstjarre.com/books.html.

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/0...5/it/60094.htm

[Coota0]

I'll be damned, I'm reading the first book, right now because I'm interested in flying with 160th, I'm about 1/3 or the way through and it's pretty good.