Silent Warriors is an historical novel, in the sense that the story is made up – fiction – but it is set in the past, depicts the characteristics of the time period in which it’s set (such as language, customs, and so forth), and may put words in to the mouths of real people, and depict actual events.
And Silent Warriors does all of those things. But that being said, it is still a novel – a work of fiction. And fiction sometimes requires deviations from actual history to achieve a particular dramatic effect. For example, in Orca, Jake Lawlor makes eleven war patrols as her commanding officer. Now no commanding officer in WWII made more than five war patrols as CO – the average was actually 3.2 patrols per CO – and I say as much in the preface to Silent Warriors. (Medal of Honor winner Dick O’Kane made the most war patrols of any WWII naval officer: five as Executive Officer in Wahoo, and five more as CO of Tang.)
And everything that happens aboard Orca and the boats she operated with – with one exception – actually happened aboard a sub in WWII. As to what that one exception was, I’d be happy to hear from anyone who can put their finger on it!
The Silent Warriors audio book is in final production. Bill Bird, who is narrating the book, has done all the final sound edits and is in the process of adding sound effects (he’s using actual recordings from the WWII submarine Pompanito in action.)
My next book, Operation Exodus, is in the editing process at Escarpment Press. The editing is going slower than I had hoped, so if it makes a Spring release, it will be late in the Spring. More later.
-Gene