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The Protectors® Podcast
Welcome to The Protectors® Podcast, where the valor meets the storyteller. Hosted by Jason Piccolo, a seasoned veteran and retired special agent, this series is a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the courage and tales of those who pledge to protect us. Beyond the front-line stories of bravery and dedication, this podcast goes a step further, weaving in the perspectives of those who bolster and narrate the protector's journey—featuring a remarkable lineup including New York Times Best Sellers and acclaimed Hollywood actors.
The Protectors® Podcast offers a diverse array of voices, from those who wear the uniform to the authors and entertainers who amplify their stories. It's a unique blend that highlights not only the raw realities faced by our protectors but also how their sacrifices inspire the narratives we cherish in literature and film. Each episode is a testament to the interconnected worlds of service and support, bringing listeners an unmatched depth of insight.
Dr. Jason Piccolo is a retired federal agent, former U.S. Army Infantry Captain (Iraq 2006), and author.
Past Guests Include:- Sean Patrick Flanery - Andrews & Wilson- Mark Greaney- Stephen Hunter- Remi Adeleke - Florent Groberg - Clint Emerson - Travis Mills
The Protectors® Podcast
525 | Mark Greaney
In our latest episode, Mark Greaney reflects on the profound responsibilities of being a protector in a rapidly changing world.
• Mark shares his experiences transitioning to fatherhood during challenging times
• The impact of social media on personal and professional relationships
• Emphasizing the need for family involvement in safety plans
• Discussing practical firearm training and preparedness in crisis situations
• The relevance of storytelling in shaping perspectives on protection
• Insights on the upcoming release of Mark’s new book and genre shift
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
Hey, welcome back to the protectors. A multiple guest has returned Mark Rainey and my awesome co-star Am I Dare. Hey, welcome back to the show. But first, before we get out there, we want to give a really big shout out to Gene O'Neill, also a great co-host. So, gene, hope you're doing great, brother, we're thinking about you. So, mark, welcome to the show, man.
Speaker 2:Hey man, how you doing Good to see both of you.
Speaker 1:Good, I see you had a very big article posted. Was it the Washington Post?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they did. They did a piece on me. They had a guy come into town and we went out to a gun range in North Mississippi and did some shooting, had a really good time. It was fun.
Speaker 1:I think that's the journalism I want to do, where I get to just go around and shoot guns with people and just have fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he wasn't. The journalist was not. Travis was not, I don't think, very experienced with guns, but was doing really well. He was hitting out at 450 yards within two minutes of instruction from the instructors there. He did really good.
Speaker 1:Well, you know me, I love to shoot guns, I love to talk about guns no-transcript bad vibes towards that.
Speaker 2:But actually beforehand they're like well, we want to see mark. They came to my publicist and they were like, we want to see him doing some of the research that he does on things. And so my publicist was like, well, what can you do? And I'm like, well, I'm in memphis, so we're not scuba diving. Um, there's all sorts of things that you know it's like you're not going to see me researching in some other country because I do that. I was like, but, um, I know some guys at a range that uh are, they're all trainers, they all professionally trained. They're not just, you know, my Yahoo buddies that are going to take us out and shoot. So we went to the shoot house and to to the range and and then he, he had a good time with it, he, he had a lot of fun. We drove down.
Speaker 2:You know the tough thing about these. This was like an all day interview and so it's kind of hard to you know the tough thing about these. This was like an all-day interview and, um, so it's kind of hard to you know. You just, you're naturally had need to be on your guard a little bit, uh, about what you say, and so I was kind of uh, like the first line in there was like mark grainy says like yeah, I haven't shot in a while. I'm gonna look like an idiot, you know. It's like that's probably something I said just as we were driving down there, because he had his mic going the whole time, you know. But it it was uh a lot of fun and uh, you know, it was a good article.
Speaker 1:I was you brought up a good point about how they're recording all the time and there's been a lot of people that kind of put their foot in their mouth and said things like just being off the cuff. It's almost like the almost famous movie where you're like the journalist isn't your friend, you got to watch out with her. So, like I can imagine, like being miked up all day, you really do let your guard down, you really can see your true self. So that must have been.
Speaker 2:Must have been very hesitant at first, but then very freeing yeah, and when I did joe rogan a couple years ago, I was like not nervous at all. I was like, oh, this will be cool, this will be fun. And then, like the night before, two days before they're, they're like, oh, just so, you know, the interview runs. It's about a three-hour interview and I've just I got terrified. I was like I cannot keep my guard up for three hours.
Speaker 2:And with joe it's like within 10 minutes you're just talking to somebody you know he's not using notes or doesn't feel like an interview, it's just just kind of a chat. And so I was like there's no way I'm going 100, you know, three full hours without saying one stupid thing about. Oh yeah, this guy is an idiot or whatever you know. And he kind of gets you to bring your guard down some. But you know, I walked out of there going like I guess I'll just have to watch this and see who I, who I've offended, which one of my friends I've offended you know, and that's I do love that you brought up the offended part, because you and I are Facebook friends and you know I do see a lot of the posts.
Speaker 1:I see a lot of people coming to kick back, but you do, you are very you, and I think Brad Taylor and a few others aren't just authors, and what I mean by that is like you actually take a critical look at things that are going on in a world and you actually provide your own input on it and you don't just kind of, you know, listen, some people are like hey, I got, I got to think about book sales, I got to think about this, I got to think about every single word. I say yeah, and it just goes back to you being free and open with that journalist. But you are, you one being free and open with that journalist, but you are. One thing I do is I notice that you actually take critical looks at things that are going on in the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and anyone who agrees with you is like preach, preach. And if they disagree with you, it's always this weird, almost threatening thing like you need to be careful about alienating your fans. It's like, no, it's you that don't agree with me. It's, it's not. You know 50 million people that are not going to buy my book and and it's like you don't have to agree with me. It's it's.
Speaker 2:I have the exact same voice that you have. I'm not saying I know more than you. I mean, if it's about something in Ukraine, it's possible I know more than you, cause I I read about this stuff for a couple hours every day. Maybe you don't, but maybe you know more than I do. Maybe you just know because your uncle told you something. I try not to get in social media fights just because it really does waste time and time that you don't have. You're not going to change anybody's opinion. No one's going to change my opinion. I've got people out there who are like you know, vladimir Putin is completely misunderstood and you know you're not looking at it right or whatever, and you just go OK, go with God, man, do your thing, and so I don't really engage the way I used to, but I don't like to, you know, like get acidic like some people do, just immediately.
Speaker 1:They're just looking for a fight, they're trying to start a fight and then they're trying to keep a fight going and, and, and I don't see the point in that. I you know I shouldn't say this out loud, but if I get people who comment like that, I'm usually just like block right away.
Speaker 1:Block yeah and you know the thing is, what we have is we have 270 million adults in the us and when we look at social media, you really have, you know, you have echo chambers. Yeah, People that are hopping on there. They may have a hundred thousand followers, they may have a million followers, a million out of 270 million adults. And think about it this way they are speaking to the same echo chamber, meaning when they say something some rhetoric they are just saying it to fuel and when they're doing the fuel, they're just burning that fuel to gather their own influence and their own power.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they're just trying to get their clicks. They call them outrage merchants. It's like so many people just make money on outrage and that's just what it's become. It's the nature of the beast now, and it's kind of sad. I, you know, say that I, it's, it's a necessary evil.
Speaker 2:Social media, uh, for me, because it's, you know, part of my job and parts of it. I, like you know, I've definitely, you know, have relationships with people I'm friends with, or whatever. I I met my wife on Instagram, which sounds worse than it is. Uh, we, we had a mutual friend, but uh, but uh, but you know.
Speaker 2:So there's definitely great aspects of it, but at the same time, it's just, it's just a kind of a tough time to be alive, because I noticed this when I get emails from people and let's say they don't like my book and they'll send me an email and it's so like vicious, and then it's accusatory of like you didn't write it or whatever it is, it's just like it's like to the bone, mean, and I always just sort of respond like, oh, okay, sorry, you didn't like it. I mean, I, I, you know it's, I've written 14 books. It it's, you know, it does stand to reason. There might be one that you would like more and one that you would like less. I don't know that you should accuse me of fraud for not writing the book, but 100% of the time when you respond to them, you get this feeling.
Speaker 2:When they respond back, they're like oh, I didn't know I was talking to a human being. I thought I was talking to like some entity or whatever. So once it's a human being, then they're like oh, I didn't mean to insinuate that thing that. I just screamed at you. That's the last thing I meant for you to take out of that. And so it's people fold up like a cheap suitcase and it's literally like they don't think you're real. And then when it's like oh, when you're real. So I had somebody yelling at me on social media today and I could have responded with you know, if it was you and me sitting there having a beer, talking about this we could maybe have the discussion, but as it is now, you just want to kind of like snipe and it's just not worth it to me.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's right, oh sorry. No, it's like now that they've monetized, I mean they even have a word for it. It used to be clickbait, was the thing, now it's rage bait and people get paid off of how much interaction they get. And who gets more interaction than the people who anger you?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:But the world of the internet can take you down some really interesting rabbit holes, which I found an article that you had for in good housekeeping, which is not the place. I would ever look for a more greeny article, but I found this one really interesting and it kind of touches on something that Jason's been doing, where he's been trying to find guidance and, like you know, correlate guidance for people who are transitioning from service into the private sector. Now that might not be directly applicable to the circumstances of your life, but you've had some significant transitions from you know, going and working in the medical device field to being a full-time author. And then you know you call out being in your fifties and single and now, all of a sudden, you have an entire family. Hey, thanks, covid, now I have a whole family. How did you navigate those kinds of major transitions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a. That's a great question. Like I scratch my head sometimes about how things have changed. And you know, I could be sitting here sitting talking to a US senator about some issue and then I go like, wow, I waited tables till I was 31. It's kind of weird that you know, like like how life is is just a thing that you know. You just kind of have to stick with and and things will happen to you. But yeah, I I always wanted to be a writer and I worked a day job and um secretly wrote uh there in the office some of the time and uh got got busted once or twice um printing something out on the printer.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I never really thought I would do this full time. I just seemed like such a dream. But what happened to me was I got published and wasn't given a big advance or anything like that, but just a mass market original, a little paperback. But I had that opportunity. And then they asked me if I would write a couple more in the series and then, roughly the same time, I was getting an opportunity to maybe do some ghostwriting some you know where your name's not anywhere on the book. And then so I went from going. You know, like there's no way I can quit my job to. I kind of have to quit my job. I don't have a bunch of money and I don't have a bunch of money coming in, but I have so much work I have to do that. I can't do this all at Starbucks, you know, before going into the office all day. So I quit my job, you know, just with my fingers crossed that I that I would make it because I was committing to writing and that was this huge, huge change in my life.
Speaker 2:And then just like, like with Allison, I was married previously for just a few years and got divorced and didn't even think, didn't even know if I'd ever get married again or whatever. And I met Allison and she had three kids. I did not have kids and I had two dogs and she had two dogs at the time. And uh, and then we met and I had proposed in January of 20. And so I guess March of 20 is when there was the big shutdown. So we were getting married in September and so I was like, okay, we're, you guys are moving in. I mean, that's just like there's really nothing else, there's no other way to do COVID with your fiance and her family, so, uh, so they moved in with me and uh, and so it was this real shock therapy of everything happening all at once, which it turned out really great. But uh, yeah, it's just funny how your life can just turn on a dime.
Speaker 1:You know, I always call it pivoting, like where, you know, in the military, you pivot from one one area to the next. But with you, pivoting in a fatherhood now is different. Now is like, you know, when you're 50 or when you're late 40, you're getting into a relationship and now you're going to be taking over the responsibility of being a father, which is kind of one of the ultimate responsibilities. Yes, the the kids can have their own, like you know, uh, physical father, what do you call it? A biological father? But now you are taking on a responsibility for their safety and their welfare. Yeah, and having that, that free form of where you can go and you can research, you could do this, you could do that. And also, you know, with social media, you have to. You know, whatever you say can also come back on your family. So it's like that must have been a very, very interesting pivot, not just to be in love and to have all the great things that come with it, but now you have this responsibility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a huge responsibility and I didn't really know what I was getting into, but, in good ways, honestly, like this was like so much better than I could have imagined that it would be. But, yeah, I do, I'm protective of the kids and you know, from buying a house with every security precaution that you can imagine to to, you know gates and lights and alarms and all that stuff, but then you go, well, all the kids are driving now, so they just get up and leave, and then you can't be. You can't really be, uh, protective. We had this thing just as an example of like, where you go, well, I'm gonna just protect everybody because that's my job, and then it all goes to hell.
Speaker 2:Um, I was out of town for work and there was a guy here in memphis who was live streaming going around and murdering people. He was just driving around and murdering people on Facebook live and, uh, it was making news everywhere and I, of course, I heard about it. So I called my stepdaughter and I was like hey, ava, are you home? And she was the only one driving at the time and, uh, she was my oldest and I said are you home? She goes. Yeah, I was like, oh, thank God, thank god. I'm like, just don't go out of the house.
Speaker 2:Um, there's a guy driving all over the city shooting people on on the streets and he's going into gas stations killing people. Um, like, just, you know, I just wanted to make sure you're home. She's like, okay, hang up. She immediately runs downstairs, runs out the front door, jumps in her car, drives to where her boyfriend boyfriend is a valet parking cars, not even in Memphis, like the town right next to us and races all the way across the city, picks him up and then races back. And, of course, I saw him a week later and I'm like, hey, man, I think I know you well enough to know you were not driving that bus. He's like, no, sir, he's like I said I did not want her to do that.
Speaker 2:And then I was like, okay, ava, next time there's a madman driving around killing people, I'm just not going to tell you, I'm just going to keep it to myself for your own safety. It's just, you know, despite your best laid plans, you know I have a plan uh to for anything that might happen in this house, but it's all going to involve the kids doing the thing that I told them that they needed to do if that ever happened. And while I was telling them that at the dinner table they were all talking to each other and shouting over each other and playing with the dog. And you know, I'm not sure they're going to remember my security plan for me coming up and getting them and they're going to like follow me back in a tactical train to to the body armor in the in the closet. It's not going to go the way that I see it in my head, but yeah, I glad you know what, mark.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad you brought that up. That was the next thing I want to transition into. Was, or should I say, pivot is the protector aspect of it. And you know you've you. You know firearms are your life, whether you like it or not. Firearms are your life, whether you like it or not. They've become your life since you started getting into the writing, into the world and you got that bug. But now you have a different aspect. Now it's not just for fun and for training and to see how they work on the books. Now you've introduced firearms into your family and now you are actually the protector.
Speaker 1:And I like to tell people out there it doesn't matter if you've worn a uniform or carried a badge or have done anything in that community where a gun or a firearm is a part of your tool. Everybody is a protector now. So now, mark, you're looking at firearms, in my opinion, as someone that's a protector. So have you changed your mentality when it comes to like okay, well, I can't just keep a gun everywhere in a house, like in a drawer and stuff, but what's's your? What's changed?
Speaker 2:Yeah, just my, my own sort of setup has changed. I have, uh, an AR that I can get to really quickly, but the home defense weapon for the house is a, is a Glock 19 and just one of those little like uh, four digit uh, you know, pressure, uh, combination, lock things. Everybody knows where it is. Lock things, everybody knows where it is, the housekeeper knows where it is and I know the housekeeper knows how to use it. And, uh, you know, my wife knows how to use the, uh, the remington 870. She's not going to touch the ar-15 and nobody else in the house will, because that's probably something they're not really trained on.
Speaker 2:They've shot it out in the woods before with me but you know it's not that level of of shooting, um, but yeah, we, we need to get more. My stepdaughter will go on walks. My younger stepdaughter will go on walks and, uh, I've let her carry pepper spray before, but we've spent a lot of time explaining to her the problems that pepper spray will not get you out of. You know it's this ain't the movies. You're basically just really going to annoy somebody. Uh, you know, for for the first few seconds.
Speaker 2:And uh, with, uh, with OC, and so you know I, I think we're clear headed about it. You know I, this is my home office here. I've got weapons here, I've got a weapon on me. If I've got pants on, I've got some kind of a gun on and um, and then they, they know, they know which weapon they can access in the house. They're not going to go to the big safe and pull out the 6.5 green more or anything. They wouldn't know what to do with it and, uh, the neighbors probably wouldn't want that anyhow. So we have a, we have a a basis of a plan, uh, concepts of a plan, I think, to turn this, yeah, I've noticed that with the author community too, as I talk to more people.
Speaker 1:I actually went out to visit one of our friends, Brian Andrews, and sat down with his family and I went through a whole safety course with him with firearms and what to use and how to use, because he's got kids.
Speaker 1:And it's not just the outside things of of the world with criminals and stuff, but now that you're a public figure, you know, you're literally a public figure. You know ryan gosling's in your movies and hey, you know dude's pretty cool and the thing is, but you just never know. So it's always like you have to be situation aware, yeah, of what's going on out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't worry too much about it. You know, this is funny. I had to go overseas to Algeria once, or I was asked to for work, and I had a buddy who was in the intelligence community and I was like, hey, is it safe, or whatever. And he's like, yeah, just keep a low profile. And I'm like, yeah, they're not inviting me over there to keep a low profile, this is like a low profile. And I'm like, yeah, they're not inviting me over there to keep a low profile. This is like a state department. It was like a book fair thing. You know, it's like I don't get to do low profile and when I'm traveling I say that I'm traveling, you know, and I'm going to be in this town and do this thing. My family's really well protected here and I have a brother that lives literally three minutes away from where I live, which is super convenient, and you know, everything I can think to do is done security wise here. But still, yeah, there's that thing where you have to be kind of high profile. I had a guy once that wanted to be my bodyguard and I kept telling him I don't need a bodyguard, I'm fine, I don't need a bodyguard. He was a little wacky, and then he sent me this text with this long explanation of what might happen to me, which was super freaking, threatening, and the fact this guy didn't recognize it. He's like so just picture this, you're standing there at this event and you know this guy comes up behind you know whatever, and you know involved me getting stabbed in the back and uh, and I was like dude, I don't know if I at that point you can't really explain to somebody that what they just said was nuts, because if they said it, then they're not going to pick up on it. I had a guy call my, my then 90 year old aunt at like five in the morning one day because she, she was the only grainy in the phone book in Memphis, tennessee, so he, he called her desperate to find me and he was obviously somebody off his meds or something like that. And and, uh, you know, then it comes to this point where you know I figured out who it was and uh, because I had a couple of kind of wacky fans and and I like kind of accosted him on it and and then I just sort of realized that he was going like well, I hope you understood that, that you know how hard I went to reach out to you means that I really think I had the story that we can tell you. Whatever it was he wanted. And I was like, oh, why am I wasting my breath trying to tell this guy that what he just did was nuts? You know, it's like when you're nuts it doesn't seem nuts. So you know, I basically just said I know what town you live in and in this state you live in and the next call is to the local police department and I'm going to get, you know, I'm going to get a lawyer on this and I didn't hear from him after that. But yeah, there is, I am.
Speaker 2:I've had people like sort of threaten me over political views or things that I've written in books before. And you know, obviously, going to other countries, some squirrely things can happen, never really that dramatic. I don't want to like turn it into like some kind of like Jason Bourne or something. It's more like you know, the cab driver was trying to take me to go get some drugs and I didn't want to go that level of danger. But really it's the people who don't have a really good. You know they've, they've lost their mind a little bit. Those are the ones that kind of scare you because you, you, you can't control them at all. And there's, there's been a bunch of other instances. Any other instance I'll talk about. That person's going to know, if they see this video, that I'm talking about them. So I'm going to keep it vague.
Speaker 3:No, and that's fair. I mean, it's the equivalent of like every time I tell my 12 year old you know, why are you arguing with the five-year-old? The five-year-old is not going to get it. So it's kind of the same thing with these people who feel like they have a relationship with you based on how much you are in the public eye. Now that being said, you have does that? Does that change?
Speaker 2:how you try to find your work-life balance. I don't know. I kind of blindly wander myself into situations, so maybe it should a little bit more, but it really doesn't. You know, I'll go on a book tour next week and I'll go to an event here in Memphis. There'll be 200 to 225 people there and I don't you know, I'll be one of the crazy people.
Speaker 3:Oh, are you coming?
Speaker 2:Oh, I hope you can make it and and so like it's. It's like I don't sit there and go like, is this some sort of a security situation? I had a situation I'm not going to say what town, cause the person's going to know I'm talking about him and these are people you have to be careful about but I had a thing where I was like, okay, am I going to walk out this door when this is over and this person is going to just come up and kill me? I don't know, I'm not, I don't. You know, I didn't have anything I could way to really stop it, so I just crossed my fingers. But it was another sort of odd situation. But but it's really very few. I mean most people, you know, you hear about the one tenth of one percent of the the danger out there, but most people are just incredible and awesome.
Speaker 2:When I started writing Clancy books, I thought after Tom passed away, I thought I was going to get a lot of like negative flack because you would get emails, people like you've stolen Clancy's name, which isn't really how it works, um, and but then when you, I went on the tour, everyone was so kind and cool and appreciative and I spent the whole tour, going like oh, I'm gonna get tomatoes thrown at me tonight, and it was just very, very different from that. The people that come out are the people that appreciate what you're doing. So you know, I don't really worry about it too much.
Speaker 1:Well, welcome to the world of being a protector, because you cannot worry about it too much, because your mind will eat itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So when we get into the books and stuff like that and you talk about your fans, you talk about reality basedbased books and I can see people they read into it and they think everything's a conspiracy theory. But nowadays you're seeing a lot of reality coming true. You know you're seeing, like ai, for instance, and you know it was great um, I think it was your last book where, like the, the drones, the the robots that they're real. You know this stuff is real and now we're talking listen, I am from new jersey so I've been getting so many texts from everybody about drones and drones and drones and this and that and what is the government doing, so I can imagine you're getting the same type of thing yeah when you're putting this stuff into your books yeah, I have a lot of people desperate to talk to me about something that they know about that no one else knows about.
Speaker 2:You know and it's not that none of these people are right, I just I always go like, yeah, I'm OK. You know, it's like I first off as an author. You're not just sitting there waiting for somebody to give you some ideas or to give you some source material to work on. You know, it's like you're working on something else, so it doesn't really come into play. But yeah, there's people that um will read stuff into your books.
Speaker 2:Uh, it really happened more in those early Clancy days when it, when, um I first took over after Clancy, I think a lot of people saw me as this potential vessel for them to whatever conspiracy they were, you know, afraid of or certain was happening. You know that they needed to talk to me about it and we had to work on it together. And you know I'm not an investigative reporter. I make stuff up and I love to learn about what's going on in the world and then fictionalizing it. But there's there's better primary sources for me If, if you want information.
Speaker 2:Um, I wrote some book and then, like the Lithuanian consulate, asked me to come and speak about what was in the book and and I was like everything I know about it is you know is was in my writing and I stopped doing the research after that. So it was like I appreciate that you liked my take on it but, um, you know, I can tell you where I did my research and those. Every one of those people is going to know more about it than I am. So I, uh, I'm just trying to learn as much as I can, to tell, tell my story and then move on to the next story.
Speaker 1:You know, we did come here to well, we did have you on here to talk about midnight black and we'll get around to that. But the thing is about your books, is?
Speaker 3:I am a fan with my emotions. I really want to talk about the new.
Speaker 1:I am you can take. Right after this we're going to talk about the book and then we'll get into some more topics. As far as guns because god knows I love talking about guns and stuff with mark but the thing is, your court gentry is one of my favorite characters out there. I've been a fanboy since forever and it's it's really great to actually talk to you about this because I just I got to make sure that you're good. I don't want any psychos going out there and shooting you. I know it's kind of weird.
Speaker 1:It makes two of us yeah no, it's true, though, it is a really great character. I love it and I'd love to see more of tv development or whether they rebrand and reboot it or whatever. I think the character is great and I think it is based a lot on reality. Based on my own experience with the ic and and amos, we've run into people who have that same type of background, yeah, the same type of cape, not obviously not the super, the superhero type capabilities, because some of the shit it gets into is going to come on, yeah, but it's great.
Speaker 1:But I love the fact that you're you're bringing in these characters of life, because to me, fiction books are great, because they they plant the seed and to the youth, whether that's a female, a male or boy or girl or whatever, is that they want to pursue the life, that kind of life, whether it's the, the intelligence support or the direct action operator, they want to pursue that life, and fiction is what it does. It builds your imagination, which also builds you to become something that you can be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I I've. From the very beginning, when I started reading Clancy when I was a teenager, you know, in the 80s is when he was really such a great recruiting tool for the, for the military, and and rightly so. And so I mean I love to talk about this stuff, I love to learn about it. One of the like funny aspects of writing a really, really long series like my first book came out in 2009. I didn't know anybody in the IC. I didn't know anybody that knew anybody in the IC, or you know that I was aware of Really anyone in law enforcement. I didn't know anybody. I read a lot of books and I wrote this. You know I've written several manuscripts, so it was my first book that sold. So you put things in the early stages of this series that now a dozen books in 14 books in you've met a lot of these people and you've met these ground branch dudes and you've met all these delta guys and you go okay, this is really dumb, this thing that I put in there in the beginning, but I'm stuck with it. You know this sort of explanation for things is not realistic, and so at certain points I've tried to almost retool some things that happened to him earlier in his career and just the way things are set up in the bureaucracy.
Speaker 2:People ask me all the time at signings is there a guy like him out there? And it's funny because I've done a lot of events with Brad Taylor, who's a good friend of mine and Brad Taylor was Delta, and Brad Taylor is just the most no-nonsense. He's like one of the funniest people I know. He's just a super no-nonsense guy. So I've been at events with him. And then they'll ask me, they'll ask both of us, you know, is there somebody like that? And I'm like well, you know, there's stuff we don't know what's going on and there's interesting things happen and blah, blah, blah. And I'll give like this three minute answer of like you know, there's amazing people, whatever. And then they go to Brad and he's like no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:There example, people are like is there a gray man out there doing this stuff? And I talk about you know we picked up an Al Qaeda guy in Italy. I can't remember what year, but like in the 2000s the CIA did and I think that the Italians indicted dozens and dozens of people that they decided were part of this operation. And maybe they were, and so it's like, you know, I might write a scene where court blows into Lagos, nigeria, kills a guy, slips out all by himself, and the reality is, you know, there's 72 support people and 16 airplanes and all this other stuff. So I mean, you know, really cool, amazing things happen that we know about and that we don't know about. But you know, everything's sort of shorthanded for a spy novel, just by necessity.
Speaker 3:I could definitely see that Now, as you've been crafting all these over the years, you know, and the story just keeps evolving, and one of my favorite things that you've leaned into in the last several books is the interactions between not just Court but with Zoya and Zach in Hightower, so the three of them together, that kind of poison apple trio, is fantastic. Thank you, I don't know how to say this without any spoilers, but Zach's kind of found himself in a bad spot, and so has Zoya. Are we going to get the three of them back together at any point?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they are both in a really bad spot as this book opens up and I won't tell you what happens throughout the story. But yeah, so I always say all my books are standalone, you don't have to read any of the previous books. But when we last see Zach, he's in a lot of trouble with the government and when you last see Zoya, she's even in worse trouble with another government. I guess is probably the simple way to shorthand that and this book involves both of them, so you'll see what's been going on. This book starts six months after the ending of the last book, so that's a little key, but yeah, they're fun characters to write about.
Speaker 2:I learned something when I was writing the Clancy novels. Clancy has this big crew of beloved characters novels. Clancy has this big crew of beloved characters and I love that and I and I liked sort of developing that as my series has grown on. But with clancy always, you always sort of felt like you had to have everybody in every book, um, the whole cast there in every book. And I don't know if tom felt that way towards the end, but you know, I think as writers carrying on the Jack Ryan universe, you sort of felt that you needed to have everybody in there, and I never wanted to do that with the gray man. I always want it to be about the gray man and whoever he's with in this book, whether it's somebody from the past, someone he has in a relationship with or somebody brand new. It just depends on what's the best story, and so I never intended for Zoya to be in every book or Zach to be in every book. You know Zach had tried to kill Court in the past. Zoya was an adversary when Court met her. So they've had these relationships that have changed and they were all worked together, as you said, in this group called Poison Apple and and I've always wanted to just bring them in when, when it was, it felt right for that book. Having said that, it felt right in Chaos Agent and it feels right in Midnight Black.
Speaker 2:This story takes place, as I said, six months later and it opens up with Court he's.
Speaker 2:He spent the last half a year trying to get to Zoya. Nobody thinks she's still alive. He's the only one that's holding out hope and he has exhausted all the easy ways if they are easy ways to get into Russia to look for her. It's the largest country in the world as people keep reminding him and they don't know where she is or if she's even alive. And now he's, you know. The book opens with him trying to make a deal with the Romanian mob to put him on a smuggling boat that's going across the Black Sea to Sochi with no idea where she is once he gets there and really no context there. So he's scraping the bottom of the barrel for what he's going to do and he's a very desperate man and I wanted to open it with that, just so you just see the depths he's gone to in the last half a year and what he's willing to do, and kind of give you a tease of what's happening later in the book.
Speaker 3:Well, I've had Midnight Black pre-ordered since. Well, the link went live. But I think one of the things I love most about what you did with the chaos agent is you did kind of give us that like you never normally have all the characters, so every time one of the characters from the past came back into the pages, it was a treat. As a fan, I love court I really do but there is something special about having characters that you've grown to love suddenly reappear in your pages.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But you know, you start to really like them too, so much so that my daughter's a fan. You may have heard this high-pitched squeal all the way in Memphis from Middle Tennessee that you couldn't identify at the time. That was her, with the cliffhanger of the chaos agent. So she might assault me the day the book arrives.
Speaker 2:We are eagerly anticipating this one yeah, well, whatever you do, don't read it back to front. Um, I've done that before, where you just anticipate something so much. It's like, listen, I'm just gonna be miserable if I don't know. So I'm just gonna go try and find out the end and then I'll. Then I'll enjoy the rest of it. But uh, you know, as the writer, that's the last thing you want people to do. It's like even when I read the book jacket cover you know the cover that they write the little synopsis I always hate it because I'm like you're giving away too much. You're giving away too much. And my editor is like, yeah, it's called selling a book, you got to do it, you know. It's like I just want people to just, you know, I don't even want them to look at the cover because the cover might give something away. It's just a writer. But yeah, well, I hope she, I hope she enjoys it and I hope I don't get in trouble with her at the end.
Speaker 3:Well, I have to applaud you one way or the other Because I mean, it's one thing to take a character that everybody fully invested, to have essentially an ensemble that everybody's a fan of. That is a major feat, and I absolutely bow down before the mastery oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:You know, it's just fun. I never thought I'd be writing a series and then, as you put these characters in, uh, they become kind of important to you and then, you know, I I like having a lot of tension in in the books. So I always think, like those mission impossible movies, I love the mission impossible movies but, uh, not all of them, but a bunch of them ended with all the good guys sitting around a table having a beer going like, wow, that thing we just did, wasn't that awesome toast, you know, cool thumbs up, um, and everything's great, and it's like I like to. I like things to end a little more squirrely than that, you know, a little more realistic, and so they don't always end with everybody just, you know, giving each other a big group hug and going off into the distance.
Speaker 1:So it keeps it interesting for me as the writer you hit the nail on the head with those damn mission impossible movies and everything. You just can't wait for the next one. Now it's like I saw the preview for the upcoming one. It's like May or something. I'm like, come on, man. It's like the same thing with your books. It's like I want them to come out and I'm fortunate enough where I can get the. They'll send me a copy of it ahead of time. But I, on the audible books, that it puts me into a movie, like I'm like. And the thing is with, like you know, my workout routine, I was walking, like I love to walk, for like hours on a time and I, I need these books. Yeah, so the audible versions are incredible. So if anybody's not really into reading you know, front to back books I really highly recommend the audible version j Jay Snyder nails it.
Speaker 3:He is Court's voice in my head.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's done such a great job over 14 years and people like compliment me for picking him and I'm like I did pick him but they only gave me two people to listen to. So I don't know that I get like you know I'm that special, but I thought he was great and he's you know if I thought he was great and he's you know if anything just gotten better over the years. So, yeah, and I'm a big audio book lover too, and every day when I'm working out or, you know, walking, walking the dogs or whatever, I'll have a podcast on or an audio book on and it's fun. I'm listening to this Slow Horses series now. I love the TV show.
Speaker 1:Oh, me too.
Speaker 2:I was. I was a late adapter to it actually met mccarran last year, briefly and, and I hadn't read the books, and I started to watch the uh, the series and liked it. But you know how you just get pulled away from something and never go back. And it was almost like it was so deep and involved that I was like I'll have to start it over to to do it. And so finally my wife and I started over and we're just obsessed with it. We love it. And so now I'm listening to the audio books and then we we still have part of the last season because we're so far behind to watch. So it's like there's been days where I've listened to slow the first one um, you know, audio book for a couple hours and then, uh, then watch one of the later episodes at night. But they're they're really well done too you know, this brings me into things.
Speaker 1:You, you have a lot of extracurricular things. You know, with the firearms, when this tonight traveling the gray man that's your life blood. But have you thought about, like you know, a lot of authors are jumping down to the realm of? Hey, you know what I'm going to cover off through a non-fiction. I'm going to do this. Have you thought about spinning off? Or you ever thought about doing anything other than a gray man? Yeah, I mean obviously you thought about it, but have you taken that furtive gesture?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I I've written other stuff that's also military, slash, espionage, slash, political, um, and that I figured would be all that I would do. But actually next year I'm going to I'm writing gray man 15 right now, so that'll come out next year. I'm going to I'm writing Gray man 15 right now, so that'll come out next year. But next year I'm going to take a year off from Gray man and write a standalone novel that will be a thriller, but not in that vein at all. It's going to be more of a heist caper, domestic thriller type of a thing. It's an idea that I have and have been developing, so I'm excited to do that, to do something different.
Speaker 2:I will never really go that far afield genre-wise, because I like thrillers and I can't see me doing something horror or fantasy or romancy or anything like that. But I do have this idea for something that I'll, that I will develop and we'll see if people think that it's different enough or we'll see if people think it's too different. Early in my career I had an idea for something like that and my agent was like, yeah, you'll have to use a pen name for that. It's like people are just starting to know that name and know who you are, and this was like too far afield. So so I don't know how I didn't know how any of that stuff worked. That never came to pass.
Speaker 1:there's no books with my pen name on them, but let's you know, I should have I should have rephrased that, I should have said a new genre, because you do have the armored series yeah, yeah, I've got other stuff like this.
Speaker 2:it's of that vein. But yeah, this, this book that I'm going to do next year, is going to be the first one that's going to feel like it's not a military thriller. I mean, a gun's going to turn up somewhere in it, I don't know, maybe if it's just on a table. I don't know how far I can get away from my bread and butter, but we'll see.
Speaker 1:Well, you brought up the word gun, and you know me, I love to talk about guns.
Speaker 2:I think you brought up the word gun, Jason. Hey, listen, you sit down there, listen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hey, we already know my story about staccato and I'm gonna throw them under the bus again. No, I'm just kidding. No, because I had josh on. Where josh are you? Or one of the interviews, god knows. I've talked about staccato a bunch of times and the next thing, you know, you guys got staccatos in your hand and I'm like huh. So then I'm like posting, I'm like you know what? Um, I really gotta try one of those out.
Speaker 1:But besides staccato, I've been, um, I've been really batshit about this glock 40, 43x oh really yeah, and I, um, I just I was a sig 365 guy for a long time, you know, and. But you know, I tell people I'm like, look, I have guns for different things. If I'm gonna, if I'm gonna wear shorts, I'm a little smith bodyguard 380 because, I know I'm gonna carry it.
Speaker 1:And then I was into my my sig 365, but this glock 43, and then I got a. Then, all of a sudden, you know, I had to wait around my range one day and they're like, well, the lane's not gonna be available for an hour and a half, so I buy a glock 45 and I'm telling you right now that glolock 45, I've carried Glock 19s in my career for probably about 17 out of 23 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But this Glock 45 is one of the best Glocks I've ever shot.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:It's a 45 ACP.
Speaker 2:No, it's nine millimeter. What is it?
Speaker 1:It's the. It's almost like the frame size, not the actual full frame size of a Glock 17. So the, the base is the same size as the grip, wise is a 17. Okay, but then the slide itself is like a 19. Okay, so like a four inch and it's optics ready and I'm telling you right now you need to try the gun out. It's combat Tupperware, it's actually great.
Speaker 1:Listen listen, staccatos have they have their place. I mean, listen, I have a lot of cop friends that are carrying them. Now I have a lot of different people. Great gun to shoot, from what I understand. But this Glock is pretty solid. Yeah, it's pretty solid.
Speaker 2:I believe it, I have two Glock 19s and my third generation is the bedside bump in the night gun, as I was talking about earlier, the gun for the whole family. Not optics ready or anything like that, but it's. I've got excess big dot sight on there and that's plenty good for anything we need. You know what I just bought? Uh, a couple months ago I got my first noveski rifle and, uh, gosh, I love it. I love it, I love it. It's a 11 and a half inch. I sbr'd it. I got my paperwork back like in three days.
Speaker 2:I'm like this has got to be some kind of government setup. I don't know what's. You know, it's like somebody's going to come through the window, um, and, and I got a can on it. I bought it. Uh, it's cat is. There's a titanium uh can and um, oh my gosh, I just got some unity tactical like a you know the high rising uh thing for the. We got an aim point Aimpoint magnifier and I've got it risen. Just put that stuff on there and, oh my gosh, this is a great gun to shoot. I want to say it's hearing safe, or maybe I'm just. You know, my ears are just messed up, but I've fired it without Ear Pro and it's loud, but it's, you know, it's louder than my nine millimeter SBR with without ear pro, but I mean it's. It's pretty much hearing safe with this titanium can on. It's a short little can too, so, um, it's, it's. It's really cool gun, I love it?
Speaker 1:How are the triggers? Because what I've been doing is I like I build my own ARs but then I'll throw, like the rise armament triggers in there, because I I noticed, you know, and ama, could you know, when you're shooting the old-fashioned m4s or the um m2 or whatever the ar, whatever crap, in a regular standard, uh triggers are horrible yeah, well, the noveske trigger, I mean, to me it's good I'm not an expert on comparing like staccato had me come out in october they were doing a shoot of the new guns, um, and there was a bunch of people there and they were asking everybody for their opinions and I'm like I think it's great.
Speaker 2:But you might want to ask any one of these other people that would probably, you know, have fired more platforms and more rounds and all that other stuff. It's like, uh, it's hard, you know, I can only compare it to, you know, a limited number thing. It's the same with ar-15. I have a rock river arms ar-15 that I've had since 2004 or something like that, and, uh, it's been a really, really reliable gun over the years. But, um, this noveske is, you know, it's a generation improved upon.
Speaker 1:That it's really nice I like the idea of carrying a gun that you're actually going to carry and shooting a gun you're actually you're gonna care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know I love.
Speaker 1:Believe me, you can. You can go crazy on guns, you can modify them. You could do this, you could do that, but the thing is, as long as you can shoot it straight in your practice with it, that's the gun you should carry yeah, I, I agree, and I do have guns that are just end up in the safe mostly, um, but like I, I wanted an.
Speaker 2:I wanted a grand from world war ii, like an original ones. My wife got me one for for christmas a couple years ago, manufactured in january of 1944. Just really awesome. I'll probably never shoot it. Um, looks like I could, but I don't need to shoot it, you know it. It's just I wanted it and you know I have a. I have my car off. I really want to get like a stainless Walther PPK. I'm not going to carry it but yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:It's like I would just really really love to have one of those, and so I think it's okay to have stuff in your safe. But yeah, you should. You should really like train with what you're going to, you know, carry and uh, you know, my joke was like if something goes bump in the night, I'm going to get my glasses on and then I'm going to go like, okay, am I going for the shotgun or the ar, or is this more of a uh, glock 19 type of a situation? It's like that's not reality. You know, you're just going to grab it.
Speaker 1:Okay, I got it, it is.
Speaker 2:It is reality.
Speaker 1:So what happened One night? You know what? I lived in a decent area.
Speaker 2:You know every work and things can happen, but there were gunshots Every good story starts off with. I live in a decent area. Dot, dot dot.
Speaker 1:We heard gunshots. I've run down into my office. I'm like, I'm looking around, I'm like fuck, I'm like, what do I grab? Like, so I grab this one, ar, because it has like the optics and all that. And I run upstairs and I'm like, but it happens like sometimes you're like huh. So that's why, when you said you have a bump in a night gun, now that is my life. I'm like I have my glock 17. That's my bump in a night gun. I don't have any optics on it. I have a light, yeah, and that's it. But yeah, it's, it's true, you have your bump in a night gun. Become proficient in that gun, know where it's at and know how to utilize it, yeah, I totally agree with that.
Speaker 3:It's like uh, we, we talked to somebody a little while ago, a friend of mine who has a company that does does virtual reality shooting, where they have the handset.
Speaker 3:That feels like I got the Glock or not the Glock, the Sig 365. I have discovered a downside to it, though, because, without having to pay for ammo or range time or anything like that, I may have lost several hours of my life and didn't even realize I was burning them away. I ended up having a little bruise on the palm of my hand from all the mag reloads, because you go through the motions the whole time, but I ended up getting obsessed with shooting steel and, well, zombies.
Speaker 2:But I think that's good for you. I mean, that's time well spent compared to we all could have wasted time otherwise. I have to tell you my one little recent security thing where you think you've got it all figured out but our alarm went off spontaneously in the middle of the night and it was just a door that wasn't closed all the way, and the wind or something. So it turned out to be nothing. But you wake up out of a dead hard sleep. First thing I do is grab my glasses, put them on, grab my gun.
Speaker 2:I'm all the way out into the entry hall of our house before I realized I put on my wife's reading glasses that she'd left on my nightstand right where I had my. My glasses must have been two inches away and I was like I can't see shit. And uh, everything was so blurry and so like I just I ripped them off and I was like all right, I'm just going without glasses. Um and uh, you know, fortunately there was no issues. I'm like, yeah, this one other thing to check off your to-do list at night is like not only make sure you're, I've got glasses, flashlight, my phone, the, the little pistol safe is all right there next to each other. It's just you have to make sure you have the right glasses real handy.
Speaker 1:As visualization works big time with that. It's like if I used to do the rehearsals like I was um in leo in san diego and doing a lot of different things when I was younger and I always used to visualize what would happen if that scenario happened and sometimes in life it does happen. Yeah, but getting back to the firearms thing and having that one weapon that you're going to use all the time and we're going to let you out of here in a minute mark I know we've been dragging you on here no, no, I'm great yeah but the thing is to run, run it, run it hard.
Speaker 1:I found out with my glock um the 43x I always keep wanting to call the 48, but the 43x is that I put the optics on myself and the screws might have been just a little too longer and I kept getting double feeds because it was hitting on my extractor. And I'm running a thousand rounds for this thing because I'm not going to carry something unless I run as much ammo as I possibly can through that thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and I'm talking like crappy ammo too. I want to shoot the worst ammo possible. I want it to be like bags of just crap ammo that might some of them might be rusty, some of them might be old, wet, whatever because I want to know that it's going to function. Yeah, you get the most expensive gun in the world, but when you have one mag, because really, in reality, if you're getting a shootout, you're probably only going to use one mag, sure?
Speaker 2:if you're a civilian.
Speaker 1:I mean, we're talking reality here and it's going to be anywhere from three to seven meters yeah so run that thing and run it hard, but it become practical with that weapon system, with that pistol. Pistol, because the reality is and one thing being an instructor is, I see a ton of people what they'll do is they'll become a basic shot. Now you've progressed over the years. I've watched you, I've seen you do the training, you've put the time in so you can do, like, the CQB stuff, you can do the fun stuff, but you're also falling back on your reality of, hey, you know, know, this is a pistol, I need to shoot that, yeah, but some people will get a firearm. They'll put four or five hundred rounds through it. Think they're proficient with it. They may be able to draw the holster, draw with the holster, but the next thing you know is they're signing up for a cqb class, they're signing up for a nods class, they're signing up for, you know, larp day, yeah.
Speaker 1:And what I always tell people like become and become as proficient as you possibly can with that pistol. Yeah, because in reality you're going to be carrying a pistol and you're and I believe me, I've seen every edc you can imagine where people are saying I carry this full-size glock, it's a glock 17 with three mags and I got a fixed blade. I got a bayonet in my back pocket and it's like. You know, I got a trigicon and it's like, but the reality is you're probably going to have like one, maybe two mags.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I. I every now and then carry a backup magazine for my 365, but usually it's just the gun on my belt and, um, uh, you know, 13 rounds and that's's. You know. They used to say like you're three shots, three yards, three seconds, something like that, and that's probably, probably. But you know, if it doesn't, if it's not that much harder, I would rather have more bullets, you know better to have them and not need them yeah, exactly, yeah.
Speaker 2:What if somebody, uh some trainer I had, like tom gibbons, said anything worth shooting once is we're shooting twice, or something like that great it's like I think it's actually good advice.
Speaker 3:Well, that actually brings up something else. I mean, this is kind of inadvertent training, like when you pick up the glasses that aren't yours, and you can't see, well, that, well, that could very well translate into a storyline for you yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's true.
Speaker 2:Um, anything that goes like that. I've done some opposition for stuff at SWAT school and you know where you're in there with the sim munitions and um, and I've, I've got so much fodder from that, like so much fodder from that.
Speaker 3:And uh, sim rounds are no joke oh my God, yeah, they hit bare skin.
Speaker 2:It's the hardest I've ever been shot and like to keep it that way. But yeah, no, I've got. I think I still have scars on my left arm from it. But I mean it's great Anything that makes you think about things that you wouldn't have thought about otherwise. You know, when it pertains to stuff you're writing about, I mean it's, it's great. It's great fodder for what you're going to do.
Speaker 3:I am curious, though, because we've talked about you doing all this research and you doing all this cool stuff to actually get the experience. Has there been anything that you forced yourself to do? That, you know, scared the crap out of you, but you needed it for the book, for you know court to do?
Speaker 2:You know it seems funny to act like I'm scared of it now, but I really was afraid to scuba dive at first. I had this kind of fear of the ocean and I was like you need to do this, you can do this and um, and I love it so much now and don't understand the fear or the trepidation um, skydiving I will not do and I've I've been offered opportunities to do it. I'm like no, and I I'm always honest with it. Like people I think are surprised that I'm honest. They're like, yeah, I can take you up and we can do this. I have this school in Virginia or whatever. And I'm like, no, I'm way too scared to do that. It's like I will do.
Speaker 2:I've flown in the back of an F-18, you know, but I'm not. Some places where I'm like, yeah, that's a really sketchy area and I've heard bad things and you know, and and I've gone and it's probably been bad but I've had good fortune. Um, so I, I don't, you know, I haven't really pushed it that hard. I was fortunate enough to go to Russia when it was still safe to do so. Midnight Black, half of it takes place inside Russia and I used all the locations that I went when I was writing a Tom Clancy book. Fortunately, and you know, I didn't have to go this time, which I wouldn't have. It'd be a very bad idea to go.
Speaker 2:Something tells me you might have a mishap, that where he gets left behind for a little while, yeah, yeah, and then trade it back for somebody else, but that could be a couple couple years down the road.
Speaker 1:Don't bring any weed with you, that's for true yeah, yeah, yeah you know, one thing I would do is we've been talking about this for a long time, and I talk about the other authors. We've really got to put together, like just a little shooting thing, even a charity shooting thing with all the authors, because, cause you guys, I mean military thriller authors. Yeah, you know we got to do that by you know. Go out to Tennessee and do it, cause I need it. I need a road trip bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I, I, I know people. We can probably make that happen. That'd be great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do it this summer because I got plenty of free time now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'd like to do that, 100% on board. Let's do this.
Speaker 1:And I do actually want to see you in action Because, listen, I do all the moto videos all the time on Instagram, where I'm like I only show some of the good stuff, but I want to see Mark putting some rounds on range and I'm finally going to shoot one of these. Sam Staccatos.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I will have one, you can shoot for sure.
Speaker 1:I saw Josh hey, listen, I always got to say it. I saw Josh pull one out the other day. He got a new box full of staccato.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did too, sorry. Oh, I haven't picked it up from the FFL yet, but it's waiting for me there. I've just been.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I had a laugh there because I tagged staccato and said, hey, listen, I will throw a thousand rounds of the worst ammo through that thing and give you a true test. Yeah 23-year law enforcement instructor. Bullshit test through it and we'll see.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I just want to run it. I just want to run it hard and I want to see what happens. Yeah, yeah, you should. When we get there. First, I am going to shoot the hell out of these Glocks and see how they do it, because I started competition with them and everything. So I hell out of these glocks and, uh, see how they do it, because I mean, I started competition with them and everything.
Speaker 3:So I'm telling you glock 45 mark you got to pick one up, all right, I will.
Speaker 1:I wrote it down, so did I wrote it down too, and you know, I'm telling you that 43x I, I love my listen. I took my uh 365. I put a wilson lower on it. I think I put an m carbo trigger on it. Yeah, and uh, optics. But this, this damn glock, now that I, I figured out this, the optics problem, run a thousand rounds through it, no problem at all, I mean, and the grouping is perfect. You don't need no modifications, and that's one thing I like about it, oem, you know, and you're not having to worry about it. So you guys, um, that's enough of my glock talk and my staccato talk. But, everybody, I'm really looking forward to this new book. I'm about to preorder the Audible right now, as soon as we get off of here.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome. Well, I hope you enjoy it. I hope you both enjoy it and I hope to see you next week. Aima, if you can make it down, that'd be great.
Speaker 3:That's what I'm hoping for, if we can make with my daughter in tow, because otherwise she'd never forgive me.
Speaker 1:Well, I may be road tripping out towards St Louis, so I'll give you a heads up as well.
Speaker 2:Oh man, that'd be great, yeah, awesome.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking about doing a little cross-country little trip, so I'll give you a heads up. Awesome, mark, appreciate you guys.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks a lot, Enjoyed it guys.
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