Sea Control - Sea Control 498 - The Academy with David Poyer

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Links1. The Academy - A Dan Lenson Novel, by David Poyer, St. Martin's Press, December 2023. 2. Poyer.com.

Hey folks, it's Jared. Dr. Ed Salo returns as host this week with author David Poyer. If you're not familiar with David, he is the author of the 22 novels in the Dan Lentzen series. This episode was edited and produced by Johan Porisch. Here at SimSec, we aim to further international maritime security through an exchange of ideas and the rigor of critical thought and writing. If you haven't already, please check out SimSec.org for new articles on the most important maritime topics. If you'd like to contribute to the discussion, check out the Write for SimSec tab to learn how you can submit articles for publication. With that, Kimber's Men.

You're listening to Sea Control, posted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Good day, Sea Control. Today we have the pleasure of talking to David Poyer, author of numerous novels, including the Dan Linson Tales of the Modern Navy series, which we'll be concluding with a new book, The Academy, released in December of this year, 2023, for all you future people. David is a graduate of the Naval Academy in 1971 and later received a master's degree from George Washington University. His active and reserve naval service includes sea duty in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, Caribbean, Pacific, and sea duty at the

Pentagon Fleet Training Center Surface Warfare Development Group, Joint Forces Command, and in Saudi Arabia in Bahrain. He retired from the Joint Forces Command as a captain with the Defense Superior Service Medal as his highest award. He's been writing novels since 1976 and is the author of nearly 50 books. Welcome to Sea Control. Oh, hooray, Ed. Good to make your acquaintance and good to be here on Sea Control. So I've got a question for you, just jumping out there. So why are you writing novels about the Navy and other maritime subjects? And did you always want to be a writer? Well, you know, I have this little story I tell about when I was four years old, I was sitting on the back porch with my mother and she was reading to me and she had kind of

a stock answer whenever I would ask a question, which of course I was full of questions in those days and still am. But I would ask her, where did this guy come from? And her answer was, God made it. I say, I would say, you know, where does the dog come from? God made it. And then I asked her that day, where do books come from? And she said, writers write them. And that was when I knew what I was here for. I was actually named after a character, a Dickens character. She named me after David Copperfield. That was her favorite book. So that's when I started writing. And as far as why I write Navy novels, the Navy books are one of several series that I do. I do the Hemlock County books, which are set in Western Pennsylvania. I do the Taylor Galloway novels,

which are diving adventures i do the civil war at sea novels with simon and schuster three of those and some one-off sailing novels ghosting and uh the whiteness of the whale which is a retelling of moby dick and modern dress but why do i write navy novels that was the original question right yes okay uh i write navy novels because sol bello has the the novelist sol bello had the concept of the arcanum and he said the arcanum was a environment or a world that you knew well enough to set any kind of story within yeah that's what the navy was for me uh that's 30 after 30 years active in reserve service, I felt I knew the ins and outs of the Navy, especially the surface and submarine navies. And so I am able to set almost any story that I want

within that arcanum. So that's kind of, you know, a blending of life experience and the demands of fiction. So let's move on to the latest book and the last book, I guess, in the series. The Academy, which is coming out again in December 2023, 22nd book in the series. Can you give the listeners a short overview of who Dan Lanson, the hero of the series, is? Yeah, Dan has graduated from the Naval Academy, of course, and that is going to be a parallel plot in the Academy. See, the Academy runs on two tracks. In one, he is a first-class midshipman decades before, and in the other one, he's on his twilight tour before retirement as the superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. So those are two different viewpoints he's going to have about the institution and about the Navy and about character change and about things that he cares about. So Lenson himself is a surface line officer, spent a lot of time in destroyers and frigates.

He has had wartime experience in several milieus, most recently the war with China. I don't know if you have read those yet, Ed, but I did five books covering a war between the allies and the central powers, that is China, Iran, and a couple of other associated nations against the U.S. and its allies. I did five books on that. I think it was over the last six years. He had more experience in that. He was fleeted up to vice admiral during the conflict. After the conflict ended, he reverted to his peacetime rank of 06. And then again, has to be fleeted up to vice admiral in order to take over the superintendent position, which has not been vetoed by Senator Tuberville because I wrote the book a year ago and

did not envision anything like that happening. Did he ask to go back to the academy or did he, was he asked to be? And if this is too much, if you think it's taken too much of the plot away, I totally understand. Oh, well, in the last couple of books before this, in Arctic Sea and in Overthrow and Violent Peace as well, he's voiced his druthers, his wishes for his Twilight Tour, which, you know, everybody, you know, serves in the military can see that coming up over the horizon to them. So he can see that he's going to age out and going to be retired. But there's a tradition in the Navy, I don't know if it exists in the other services, that, you know, if at all possible, they give you your final choice of tour, if at all possible. And, of course, it has to fulfill the needs of the service as well. So his choice for a twilight tour is superintendent of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, and he got it.

which one reason why he got it, of course, is that his wife is now the secretary of defense. But that always helps. You know, you were saying that the Navy allows you to have a place to put any of the stories you'd want to tell. After 22 books, that gives a lot of character development. So what are, do you see him as, well, for lack of a better term, like the perfect naval officer? And, you know, nobody's perfect, because then that wouldn't be an exciting story at all without flaws. But do you see him kind of embodying what you see as a good leader, a good officer? Well, I don't think he's perfect. I am definitely not perfect.

But I think he has or tries to suppress his ego more than some of the senior officers that I've served with. he seems or tries to be more focused on the welfare of his people and accomplishment of the mission than making himself look good. And occasionally over those 22 books, he has made wrong decisions and paid the price. But in the Navy, we sort of have a saying that that the only really bad decision is not to make a decision and that of course stems from the old days of line of battleships whereas if you kept steaming ahead on the same course and speed the next salvo would land right on top of you he has made some bad decisions and and so he's definitely not a perfect naval officer and he has internal quandaries so

Yeah, that's what people tell me they like about the character. He's not superhuman. He's not flawless. He has self-doubt. He makes mistakes. He tries to recover. But overall, I think his character arc bends toward a good place. you know on the back of the book and it's talking about that he's coming at the academy at a time where congress is cutting budgets calls for radical reform and traditions the academies are always it seems at a period where when people are wanting change they look at that and like oh do we really need an academy or they are they really training the officers we need those kind of thing. So what do you see as the importance of the Naval Academy today? Okay, a good question, and one that's been debated since the founding of the Republic had. It was George Washington who proposed that a military academy be established, and of course the first one was

the Military Academy at West Point. The Naval Academy was established shortly thereafter, after the Summers Mutiny, and the other academies, the Air Force Academy in 47 and so forth. But yes, you're absolutely right. I have a collection of books here over the last 100, 150 years, all arguing against a continuation of the service academies. And the points that their authors all make is that they're elitist institutions, that they foster an elitist mindset, and that the billets could just as well be filled by militia officers or what we today would call reserve officers. Well, you know, there are arguments on both sides of that,

and that's a good portion of what the book is about, when Dan has to defend the Academy and the Academies, all of them, against the Senate Armed Services Committee in hearings. But he has to make those points, and he has to make them convincing, especially after a war when the big drive is to cut military budgets so after the war with china the congress is out to save some money yeah when i teach military history that's the one thing that's the statement after every war and i'm like and what happens to the army and they're all like they cut it i'm like yes exactly everyone wants to cut the army because

armies are expensive, militaries are expensive. Well, we kind of did it right, considering the problems in the 1930s. We kept a corps, a professional corps, that was able quickly to stand up a citizen army. I say quickly, but it took about two years to actually start getting units that were ready to fight. My dad actually fought in North Africa as part of that citizen Army and went on to Sicily, and then to southern France, and then to Germany, and then to Czechoslovakia. So he was in World War II from the beginning, at least as far as the United States was concerned. But he served under officers who were a trained cadre from the 1920s and 1930s. And most of them, of course, were service academy graduates, some reservists as well,

But certainly the senior leadership from Marshall on down, Marshall and Lay on down, they were academy graduates. When we look at promotion rates, you know, the assertion often is that a reserve officer is just as good as a military academy officer. And I think that's absolutely true. In some cases, they're probably better in many cases. but the when you look at the promotion opportunities especially at the senior ranks with every step upward the military academy graduates and the naval academy graduates and the coast guard academy graduates seem to predominate and i think that's because of dedication more than some kind of in-group activity but those are my opinions and i

dilate on them at length in the book. You know, some of the major themes in the novel are the aftermaths of the war with China that you were discussing earlier, and you were mentioning kind of half-joking about the keeping of the promotions in the U.S. Senate. What are some of the other major themes that you see in not only this novel, but probably five to four with the war that are representative of today's military situation? I guess the short answer is a lot. If you had to pick maybe the top three situations that kind of worry you that you've written about, what would they be? Well, let's see. I think the first one is the depth of our bench, of course. And that's being shown up now, you know, very, very rigorously in terms of our ability to support our allies, Israel and Ukraine.

You know, they're really showing up how badly our industrial base is weathered. I have done industrial base studies for think tanks in the past, and we could clearly see the degeneration there. Now, we are seeing the results of that degeneration, and that is very difficult for us to gear up quickly in terms of ammunition production, rocket engine production, guidance system production. So that's the number one. I guess the number two would be AI, the influence of AI. And in this five-volume series about the war with China, gradually, more and more, you see AI being dependent upon, and it's actually, strategy is being directed by a Chinese AI, which they call Jade Emperor, after the first empire, the first emperor of China, and the American AI, which is called the Battle Eagle. the two AIs are actually directing strategy and in some cases tactics. That I think would be number two. Number three doesn't occur to me at the moment, but maybe those two would get us started.

Yeah, I mean, definitely AI is such a, here in academics, people realize that this is going to affect. I mean, people knew it, but it wasn't until ChatGPT and people could, finding that whole papers are written and it's like well how do we deal with this and you know some people have had the approach and i have joking i'm like well have everyone write stuff in class then go back to paper and pencil and you know others have taken it in different ways and of course ai can mean different things to different disciplines um so yeah it's a learning process and what what what should we use it for? What can we use it for? What works and what doesn't? And I think the other thing, you know, kind of going off that you were talking about the production aspect is the

people joining the military. I'm 51. And when I was graduating high school, big percentage of our class joined the military right after my son graduated um two years ago and i can think of two people in his class and it was a way larger class than mine that went into the military one went to the naval academy and the other joined the national guard for college money so yeah not only having not having the industrial facilities but not having people who are wanting to join or serve Well, you know, I think that's largely dependent on locality. And for around here on the eastern shore of Virginia, I run a civilian marksmanship program club, or team, I should say. And I have a lot of my young people, both boys and girls, do go into the military, the Coast Guard, the Marines. One of our team captains has just come back from a Marine Corps deployment to, I think, Sweden or Finland, not sure exactly. But we graduated a lot of people here who joined the military, and it's a popular way, I think, to advance yourself.

Certainly, it did that for me. I grew up on relief in western Pennsylvania in a very poor family. My dad was schizophrenic, possibly from battle damage during the war, and could not hold a job. And believe me, if I had not been able to go to the Naval Academy, I would probably be wiring houses in western Pennsylvania right now. So it is a means of social advancement. It is good for people overall, I think. I mean, not totally good in every way, but I unreservedly, for most people, recommend military service. Yeah, I mean, I think it can be really beneficial for a lot of people.

A lot of members of my family joined and got opportunities they never would have had or had the opportunity to clean up some messes that they had started in. That's good. You know, people who started college and maybe weren't exactly ready for it. But then later on, they got things cleaned up. And, you know, that that helps, too. And, you know, my dad got got invited to join in the Korean War. And because he knew how to survey, he got to go to Germany instead of going to Korea and then spent the next 20 some years. in because he was like, well, this is a good opportunity for me. Got him out of the upper

peninsula of Michigan, got him away from snow that he hated. Well, there's a saying we have, join the Navy and see the world. Yeah. Of the 22 books, do you have a favorite? No, I can't say I have a favorite. I have several favorites. I think The Circle is pretty much the hardest core destroyer novel I've written. I've had people come up to me at book signings and say, I read The Circle, and I joined the Navy because of it. And I've had other people come up and say, I read The Circle, and I knew there was no way I was going to go into destroyers. So that's one of my favorites. Let's see. Tomahawk is one of my favorites because it looks deepest into the question of, is it, yeah, is it right to employ violence in the service of

the state? That's definitely the business we're in, in the military. We are the instruments of the state and the instruments must employ violence or be ready to employ violence in order to exercise deterrence. And if war comes, we have to exercise violence in order to achieve victory. So that was in Tomahawk. I looked at the weapons procurement process, the weapons development process, and through several characters, looking at the ethics of employing weapons. So I was very proud of that one. I see another favorite is Black Storm, which takes place in Iraq and is pretty much my, that's my Marine Corps novel, where Dan is embedded with a group of Marines and assigned a special mission. And that's the mission he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for. Not by the Navy, oddly enough, but by the U.S. Army. So those are some of the three that are my favorite, exactly.

kind of playing off that and what you were saying earlier about being named after david copperfield what are some of your favorite books to read or that you have laying around or that you read over and over i've got a couple where about every year you seem like pull it out and want to read it again because you enjoy it so much yeah i'm always flummoxed by that question ed because i have hundreds of favorite authors and It always feels like treason to me to name several and leave so many out. So I'm just going to name a couple of the really seminal people in the genre that I write in. And certainly that's Herman Wook and Joseph Conrad and Melville and Ed Beach, for example.

Not just the junior Ed Beach, but the senior Ed Beach. those are some of the people whose books that I think kind of I'm following in the wake of what's your next project well the most recent project and we you kind of uh we started going down this path uh when we were talking about AI is a a book I just published called writing in the Age of AI by Northampton House Press. And that is a compendium of what I learned over 16 years of teaching writing at the university postgraduate level, plus 40 years of writing novels for major publishers. So Writing in the Age of AI is a compendium and a guideline and advice and finishes up with an evaluation of how we can use AI as writers and what threats it presents to

us, what we can do, how we can use it. For example, I am finding myself using AI pretty often these days, maybe two or three times a week to do transcriptions. You know, when I do an interview or when I'm at a symposium or an important research conversation, I'll record it on my little digital recorder, upload it, and it comes back as a transcript. So AI is doing that for me at a relatively inexpensive price, and it saves me many, many, many hours of laborious transcription. So that's one example in my book where AI can actually help us.

On the other hand, everybody knows about the downsides of AI. And frankly, chat GPT 3.5 is a big advance over the original chat GPT. I tested it recently by, I've been reading a series of books about Samuel Johnson, Dr. Johnson. So I asked it, write me a description of the Chesapeake Bay in 300 words in the style of Dr. Johnson. And the result was, you know, pretty sobering. That's pretty amazing. And I hadn't even thought about the transcription aspect. That is something I jotted down there as an idea. So any more new novel series or you're going to be working on some of the other ones that you were discussing? I am going to have a Hemlock County novel coming out probably early next year, The Hill, which is about cross country running and a scandal in a small town. But I would consider that a minor work. It was something I wrote long, long ago, and it didn't quite make the grade then. And I've gone back and rewritten it and will be bringing that out.

Beyond that, Ed, I'm kind of hesitating in terms of what I want to do next. There may be a Taylor Galloway book. That series is Diving Adventures and kind of like Clive Cussler Diving Adventures, but are centered around a North Carolina-based scallywag and black sheep of a famous family down there. And he runs a diving and salvage business. But he's also an ex-con, and he's also ex-coast guard, and he gets into various questionable situations. And as you can tell from the name, Tiller Galloway, Tiller is the steering mechanism, right? Yeah. Galloway may be steering him toward the gallows.

even his name tells you that the guy is balanced between the dark side and the light side quick question on more the mechanics of writing and your preference do you have a set word count you try to get every day and is do you have a set time that you like to write or is it whatever hits you no no in first draft i do try to do at least a thousand words a day in second draft through seventh draft, and I do a lot of drafts, and that's really where the work goes in, you know, draft two through seven. That's where the book really deepens and develops and the art comes in. The first draft, I just mainly try to get the plot down and some hints as to character and what happens, the action proper, and decide where my points of view are

going to be and then drafts two through seven that's where the real work goes in but on the first draft yeah a thousand words a day and when i'm done with my thousand words i have the rest of the day free early in the morning i guess or i'm not really like not really a morning person where can the listeners keep up with you on the internet or social media Oh, yes. They can definitely see me on my Facebook page, on the David Poirier page in terms of, I think it's www.poirier.com. I signed up really early, so I got one of those really scarce and enviable five-letter domains, poirier.com. So I snagged that and I've held on to that ever since. But probably that's the best place to start, that and the Facebook page, which is David Poyer Writer. We'll have links to those in the show notes. Anything else that you'd like to discuss or that we missed? No, I think that you pretty much raked me over the coals there, Ed.

well um again um i believe the book's coming out in mid-december i want to say the 12th yeah it's actually available now you know okay ship date and availability date is usually about a month before the official pub date and i understand why publishers do that you know to get to push the book out through the various sales channels takes time to ship physical books takes time so the academy is if it's not in the bookstore right now it's on its way and every barnes and noble has a couple copies i understand and every online bookseller has copies available both in ebook and in hard copy so i should say hardcover so that's the academy which is out now i guess well thank you so much and appreciate the time and highly

recommend getting out there and getting this but i will warn them if they if they read the academy they're going to want to go back and read the previous books in the series so you're signing up for a long voyage hey and you know and that's a good thing there's always i guess we seem like we're in the um age of binge watching tv or podcasts and i might as well binge read a whole series or so that's true so all right well thank you sea control and until next time roger © BF-WATCH TV 2021 We'll be right back.