Hemingway said this;

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed"

My name is Josephine Sage Ryder, but most people call me "Josie" and a very few still call me "Dusty" - which relates to an unfortunate event that took place when I was an Army helicopter pilot. For reasons best not recalled, I managed to make an extreme low-pass over some Colonels field-shower out in the wilds of Iraq and left him looking like the human version of a powdered donut.

I wound up standing Permanent Alert for a month, and the other pilots damn near died of laughter.

I'm not a soldier any more and haven't been for some time. Institutionally the Army has "issues" with soldiers who write books while on active duty. Generally, if your book is historical and favors the Army's image if itself (all the Brothers are valiant and all the Sisters are virtuous) they will leave you alone. My first two books fit that model and since I was the daughter of a recently-deceased and highly-respected Senior Officer; they ignored them.

Unfortunately, my third book ( the one that made money ) was a novel depicting the fictionalized exploits of a female Army Aviator - turned - CID investigator. I made the Army look good, Virtue DID triumph in the end and the Soldiers portrayed were courageous people with a commitment to Duty.... But between pages #1 and #875 people had sex, people were murdered, people did assorted Very Bad Things and my Main Character made derogatory statements about "don't ask/don't tell" and Officers who abuse Privilege among other sacred cows.

Predictably, the Brass reacted poorly and when the next two books in the series were Optioned, reluctantly accepted my request for transfer to the Reserve and release from active duty. I'm sure there were tears......

Three more books have seen my main character develop a strange erotic life and have depicted the Army as a noble institution in which people occasionally get Laid and sometimes even tie each other up for recreational purposes. They've sold well and I'm told that they remain popular with the Troops ( if not the Brass ). So now I make my living as Hemingway described above, with breaks between novels for something I dearly love; research.

I grew up living the sheltered life of a Generals Kid. Being Mad Jack Ryder's daughter meant living a "proper" existence and not learning much about kinky sex, Heavy Rubber, "girl time" or where to get the best prices on leather-goods and Trashy Lingerie.

So, between novels - I do research.

My Main Character has evolved a lot, and my next book will see her investigating even darker and edgier sub-cultures than ever before, as well as finally "settling down" in a strange way. I did some research, and about a week ago I moved from my home in Falls Church to the notorious city of Hathian, La.

If I'm going to do "dark and edgy" - I want to learn from the best....