with D.C. Hampton
We are delighted to welcome author D.C. Hampton to Omnimystery News today.
D.C.'s suspense thriller is A Touch of Nerves (Westchester Publishing; December 2012 trade paperback and ebook formats), a timely novel in view of recent worldwide events. We recently had the opportunity to talk with him more about his book.
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Omnimystery News: Introduce us to the principal characters of A Touch of Nerves. What is is about them that appeals to you as a writer?
Photo provided courtesy of
D.C. Hampton
D.C. Hampton: Army Captain Ben Hawkins is the lead character. He's not a superhero or superspy. He's not an Olympic-class athlete or marksman. He's just a normal person in a very abnormal situation, but he is someone who will do whatever it takes to get the job done.
What appeals to me about Ben Hawkins is that he's willing to take risks, break the rules, and even get arrested if that's what it takes to get the job done. I admire his perseverance.
Colonel Arash Kashani is a senior official in the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. Is he a good guy? Is he a bad guy? He's an appealing figure, with a sense of humor and a fine sense of irony. He remains in the background, yet is in communication with both the FBI and Capt. Hawkins as they work to stop a terrorist plot.
OMN: Into which fiction genre would you place the book?
DCH: A Touch of Nerves could be categorized as an action thriller, but that label is a bit limited. The story opens with a prologue which recounts the events of the Navy missile cruiser the USS Vincennes, but this is not a military story either.
I think of A Touch of Nerves as both an action thriller and a geopolitical tale about the complex relationship between Iran and the United States, making the story especially timely today. Virtually all the events and background are accurate, including scenes involving Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Army chemical weapons, NSA monitoring of phone transmissions and cyber-warfare.
The story is not a polemic or a military story. It is an action thriller that uses real events throughout the story to make it realistic and believable.
OMN: Tell us something about the book that isn't mentioned in the synopsis.
DCH: There is a certain irony: the U.S. went to war with Iraq to find chemical weapons, even after we assisted Iraq in its war with Iran (in which Iraq used chemical weapons).
Also, my two sons served in the Iraq war, one as a platoon leader in Iraq and one on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt.
OMN: Tell us more about your writing process.
DCH: The general outline of the story and the theme — hatred and revenge — were there from the start. But much of the story developed as I was writing, especially when I was away from the typewriter. The characters also developed and changed as I got to know them better and visited them more.
Certainly there are certain principles of good storytelling. These include description, atmosphere, character development, timeline and tension.
I'm not a teacher of creative writing and nearly all of my writing has been non-fiction, a very narrow form of storytelling. While writing my first novel, I discovered how much I had to move from a shorthand form of report-telling to creating an atmosphere, describing a setting (even if only briefly), bringing a character alive, creating believable actions and events, and developing tension and suspense.
While writing A Touch of Nerves I realized that several of the characters, while believable, were simply not developed enough for the reader to have a strong sense or feeling about them. The bad guys needed to portray a stronger intent of hate and anger, while the good guys needed to be more interesting, more three-dimensional. While re-writing the story I added two scenes, one in a suburban shopping mall and the other in the home of a young mother and her daughter. Those two episodes gave more depth to several characters by illustrating how far they were willing to go, how evil they could be, even if they had misgivings about what they were doing.
Developing tension and suspense may be more important in an action thriller, but both play a role in any story. Readers of Moby Dick know Ahab will find the white whale, but what happens then? Infidel is a nonfictional narrative of a young woman's life, but readers feel the tension and stress in her daily life. The Bible tells the story of Job, and there's a lesson there, but it's the suspense of what comes next that keeps us riveted to the story.
Description, character, action, tension — not easy, but that's the fun of storytelling.
OMN: How did you go about researching the plot points of the story?
DCH: The internet has a wealth of information, obviously. Military reports, Google maps, satellite imagery, descriptions of chemical weapons, United Nation resolutions and Army CID and FBI websites are all sources of good information.
I also received help from the FBI media division during a visit to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., and checked on accuracy of military terminology and descriptions with my sons, Capt. Alex Hampton (Army) and LDC Nick Hampton (Navy).
OMN: How true are you to the settings in which the action takes place?
DCH: The story is set in real places and I worked hard at being accurate to the geography and the settings. This included visits to Iran (by Google satellite maps!), studying the area between Qazvin and Tehran. I also used Google maps to chart out trips by aircraft and car in Virginia, Alabama and Texas. A reader re-creating any of these trips would find the routes and the settings to be accurate, including airline schedules and routes.
The scene in Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris is also accurate, and the episode of identity-switch is entirely possible.
OMN: What are some of your outside interests? And were you able to include any in the story?
DCH: I enjoy sailing and golf. Sailing appears in a brief background scene and, surprisingly, in one of the closing scenes. I was not able to find a way to include a game of golf!
OMN: How did A Touch of Nerves come to be titled?
DCH: The title A Touch of Nerves just showed up in my head one day, early in the writing of the story, and it never changed. It just seemed to fit. An actual chemical nerve agent that plays a central role in the story (VX) is a dangerous "touch of nerves." The story itself, with counter play between the FBI and the terrorists, between an unseen Iranian agent and the FBI, between Hawkins and this shadowy agent, and even between Hawkins and the FBI is "a touch of nerves."
OMN: Tell us more about the cover design. Were you involved in the process of creating it?
DCH: I was very much involved with the cover design. The cover is an interior shot of Union Station in Washington, D.C., where one of the final scenes of the story takes place. The image includes several of the Roman legionnaire statutes overlooking the interior of the station, as if standing guard and protecting the station. And of course, a number of people are attempting to do just that — protect the station and the thousands of people there and elsewhere. The title is in red, to contrast sharply with the background of the station and to give a hint of danger and urgency — perhaps another touch of nerves.
OMN: Suppose A Touch of Nerves were to be adapted for film and you're the casting director. Whose agents are you calling?
DCH: Here is my dream cast:
Ben Hawkins (Lead): Will Smith or Ben Affleck;
Col. Kashani: Andy Garcia, Ben Kingsley, or Alfred Molina;
Sara: Scarlett Johannson, Jennifer Lawrence, Renee Zellwegger.
OMN: What kinds of books do you read for pleasure?
DCH: I read a wide variety of books. Here are ten of my recent favorites:
Guardians of the Revolution;
Freakonomics;
The Submission;
The Infidel;
Naval History of the War of 1812;
The Speeches of Winston Churchill;
Breakfast with Socrates;
The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes;
The Sycamore Tree;
The Scarlet Pimpernel.
OMN: Create a Top 5 list for us on any topic.
DCH: My Top 5 favorite books of all time:
Tale of Two Cities;
Moby Dick;
Red Storm Rising;
Tom Sawyer;
Last of the Mohicans.
OMN: And now tell us five random things about yourself.
DCH: (1) I Love to play the piano — just don't play it very well.
(2) I prefer participating to watching — playing a sport rather than watching.
(3) I spent a month in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in 1968 — just not with the Army.
(4) Independent — rules are OK if they make sense.
(5) Pretty good listener since I don't feel the need to talk about myself, even now.
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D. C. Hampton, a clinical audiologist, has always been a student of history and international relations. He received a master's degree and doctorate in audiology from Columbia University. At the age of 19, while editor of the student daily newspaper at the University of Connecticut, he wrote his first stories from South Vietnam after the Tet Offensive of 1968. He has since written about health care issues for more than 25 years. He lives in Connecticut with his wife Linda. Both of his sons served in the U.S. military during the Iraq War, one in the Persian Gulf on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, and the other on the ground in Iraq with the 10th Mountain Division.
For more information about the author, please visit his author page on Goodreads.
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A Touch of Nerves
D.C. Hampton
A Suspense Thriller
Captain Ben Hawkins is finishing up a routine Army inspection at the Tupelo Chemical Research Facility when he discovers that several pounds of the nerve toxin VX-212 slated for destruction can't be accounted for.
Soon an FBI team is on the trail of Mahmoud, who can't forget his father's fate in the Iraq-Iran war, and Saman, whose parents were on Iran Flight 655, shot down by the American cruiser, the USS Vincennes. Their hatred of the country they blame for their losses leads them to the United States for revenge.
Colonel Kashani, a senior Iranian intelligence officer, stumbles upon the plan and he understands the dangers of enraging the American dragon. His challenge is to stop a terrorist plot without being ensnared by the FBI. And when the FBI investigation reaches a dead end, Hawkins must decide whether to risk his career — and possible arrest — to stop the attack, even if it means working with a foreign agent.
