Clancy Letter Quotes

Horner also, to quote John Paul Jones, has something a professional officer must have: “the nicest sense of personal honor.” Right and wrong are identifiable in Chuck’s universe, and separate. In a community where a man’s word is his life, Chuck Horner’s word is found in gold lettering on an adamantine wall of granite.

And this letter threatened change, didn’t it? It was a threat, and he might have to do something about the threat. That meant doing something about the man behind it. It had happened before. It could happen again, he decided. Andropov would not live long enough to learn that in considering this action, he would set in motion the demise of his own country.

Writers are tough sons-of-bitches. It’s hard enough to write a book. Then you have to wade into this street fight we call the publishing industry and start pitching your project. The tweed jacket crowd is gone, replaced by Darwinian corporate mergers, staff churn, the e-book earthquake, anti-trust pricing scuffles, and book platforms multiplying like rabbits. You have to sort through too much personal information on too few agents, searching for a hook, parsing what they love, and what they want, and exactly how they want it presented. Your pitch letter has to be pitch perfect, a polished gem. You gotta sell more than a well-wrought paragraph; only Clancy and Cussler get a promo budget. You gotta show them you’ve got a social media game – tweet, facebook, link-in, chat, blog. You gotta help them sell your book. So what. I wouldn’t trade this trade for anything. Thanks, Gutenberg, for inventing this game I love.