The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Cold Ground: A Jack Decker Story (Jack Decker Series Book 1) by Michael Jacquard

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Cold Ground: A Jack Decker Story (Jack Decker Series Book 1) by Michael Jacquard https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Ground-Jack-Decker-Story-ebook/dp/B0GSW5TDCT Mjacquard.com Jack Decker, 48 — former U.S. Army Special Forces Master Sergeant, CIA SAD/Ground Branch operative — has retired to Garrison Falls, Vermont. When the Vega Syndicate moves in and a teenage girl named Lily Marsh disappears, he’s pulled back into a world he thought he’d left.

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Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Oaksvoss here from thecris Fosho.com. L.A.Z. You know, and there, I'm learning things that makes official. Welcome to the show. As always, the Chris Voss show is the family that loves you. It doesn't judge it's harshly because, you know, you're here to learn. You're here to to educate. You're here to entertain yourselves. Find out more about what the world is

and make the world a better place and all that good stuff. So we're going to get into it today. As always, refer the show to your family, friends, or relatives, go to Goodreads.com, Fortresschus, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Forteschus, Chris Vos, One, on the TikTokany and all those crazy places in the internet. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Vos show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today's featured author is brought to you by majestic authors media, specializing in strategic marketing and publishing to help authors reach their ideal audience and maximize their book's

success, turning powerful messages into global impact, one story at a time. Timmy, an amazing young man on the show, we're going to be talking about his book series, and we're going to get into with him on some interesting novels that he is writing. The book is entitled Cold Ground, a Jack Decker novel, part of the Jack Decker series. This is Book 101 in the series by Michael D. Jekard. And we're going to talk to him about what's going on with this character is that he has this book, what stories he's telling and maybe some of the future stuff that he's working on. So we'll get into that.

Michael is the author of the forementioned book. It's his debut novel that was published in 2026. It is a fiction book rooted in a long career in special forces, the intelligence, community, and a deep understanding of the lives of operators, special force soldiers, case officers, the men and women who do difficult work in difficult places that are expected to come home and be ordinary. Jack Decker is his attempt to take that figure seriously, not as a superhero, but as a broken veteran, but as a, not only as a broken veteran, but as a whole person whose skills, history and moral code, make him both useful and difficult to live near. He lives in England with his family and is currently working on the second Jack Decker novel. Welcome to the show. How are you, sir? I'm well. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. We're doing awesome. Give us your dot com's, website, social media, wherever we want people to find out more about. you on the interwebs. I have a website at mjikard.com. I'm also on

Instagram and Facebook of course social media. I dabble in it. Uh-huh. Yeah. We all try and dabble in it. Some of us get more of it on us than others. It's kind of like a giant pig pen over there. So, always fun. So Michael, give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your book? Cold Ground. Cold Ground is. Jack Decker got out of, he was in special forces for a number of years. Then he was recruited by the CIA doing spooky stuff as a member of the ground branch. And he finally had enough. He decided to retire.

He wanted to move to a small community up in Vermont. Just wanted to live a quiet retirement reading, fishing, hiking, you know, the usual stuff. then a criminal cartel kind of moves into the area, upsets the balance of the small community, which he's kind of adopted as his town now, and gets involved, kind of reluctantly. But, you know, some of the tradecraft comes back. And, you know, he helps out the town's police chief, who is kind of more than a friend. female. And she comes over on Saturday nights, bringing wine, you know,

hang out together. Does she have a sister? No, I'm just kidding. I'm single. So that's the gist of it. He's just trying to live a quiet life. It goes through, like I said, using some of the tradecraft and some of the personnel management skills that he's learned over the year.

I tried to avoid this on purpose. There's no running gun battles. There's no supercar chases. I was just trying to keep it real. Yeah. Yeah. Now, it's rooted in special forces and intelligence community. Is this a personal experience of yours where you've lived that life?

Well, I did spend quite a few years in the Army Special Forces. traveling around the world, meeting interesting people, and doing exciting things and getting paid for it. Nice. Once I left there, I became a consultant over in the United Arab Emirates, consulting to their national counterterrorism unit. Left that. Then I joined, I got a job over here in England with the Department of Defense. and working for the Defense Intelligence Agency as an Intel officer for 20 years, and I finally retired from that.

Oh, wow. So are you right? Which, no. Right? Yeah, that's, I guess, what Mark Twain said, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, you, you know, we have a lot of people like yourselves come on the show that they've worked in the military or police officers, even like newspaper, you know, the crime section of the paper that covers crime, you know,

they go out and see these things. So you're right at what you know. And, you know, they tend to turn into great novelists because they, you know, they know the guns, they know the danger, they know the play, they know the scenarios, you know. And one guy on the show, he just basically would change the names and rewrite some of the murder scenes that he came across. And, you know, it's, it's great. You, you have that knowledge

and that thing that can really help you build great stories, great novels, and then they sound realistic because, like, if I try to write a military novel, it, like, I would get written by every military guy in the world, like, you're holding the gun the wrong way, or, you know,

just go with that gun, or, you know, what are you talking about? You have no idea. You know, and so guys like yourself that have been in that sort of business and area and had exposure to it. You guys have working knowledge, and you can apply that to the books and just write these great books that people love. We try.

It's also a curse when you go to a movie and, you know, you're with people. And it's like, that's no way. That's not the way that works. That's how everyone would do at my book. They'd be like, this guy clearly has never been in the military. He's, you know, I'd be like, you know, I'd be calling shit all weird. But so what was the, what was the aha moment? This is your first book.

What was the aha moment that you had that was like, Dern out, I'm going to sit down and write this thing? Well, I determined that was too old, fat and ugly for only fans. So. You would be. But, you know, I'd been toying with this idea for forever. Uh-huh. I was a big fan as a kid and growing up of reading people like Robert B. Parker and, you know, who did the Spencer for Hire series and the Jesse Stone series.

And then I was, you know, a big fan of espionage fiction, La Curee being one of my favorite authors. And I just figured, you know, I'm going to write something. At first I was going to be an autobiography that I would. had the labels fiction because it's just too weird. Then I decided to go with the Robert P. Parker type character and just sat down and started writing. Yeah. Well, congratulations.

Did you, did you use? Was there any techniques that you used to write? Like, some people write like every day. Some people, you know, there's habit habit habitual sort of things that authors will try and do. like I would try and write every day and sometimes it doesn't work. But, you know, you try to have a pattern to keep you in the groove and keep your writing and keep, you know, keep from getting writers block maybe a little bit. What are some of the techniques you utilize to write your book? At first, I just lock myself in the room.

You know, I'm just sat in front of the computer. I had the idea. So I did kind of an outline. This is kind of what I'd like to go. Oh, you did outline. And then just started putting pen to paper. At first it was like all over the map. And it took a while to kind of bring stuff together and figure out, okay, this is what I want for a plot.

This is how I want the character to be. So I spent a lot of time on character development, figuring, you know, what is it that I want Jack Decker to be? but you know other than coming up here and sitting down at the computer with a tall glass of whiskey Do you find whiskey makes the words flow better? I mean I used to be able to be more creative when I did vodka and whether it was writing music or just about anything I was better at it. But also I was great at hangovers and so that ended that fairly quickly. 20 years later. The whiskey can help.

Yeah. But, you know, every now and then I'll just, if I find myself getting stuck, I'll go and sit out in the backyard and have a whiskey and a cigar. And kind of think about things, be pinching about things going on there. Yeah, just, you know, out there, letting it flow, basically. Yeah, yeah, let it flow. You know, I asked a psychiatrist one time, I go, you know, I'm able to play just beautiful piano and write beautiful piano music and my guitar.

I'm more creative in business thinking. I'm just more creative when I'm smashed on vodka. And a lot of rock stars do the same thing. They're on a lot of drugs. And I often joke about Metallica, one of my favorite bands that, like, for a lot of years there, they all got cleaned up and off drugs, and their music started to suck. I was like, can we get back on the drugs again? Because this is not working.

But I asked a psychiatrist one time why it is. And he goes, what it is is you have a highly logical left brain. Yeah, it's pretty controlling. And when you are able to turn it off with drugs, your creative mind suddenly can run free and play. And that's what's happening. And I was like, wow, that's really wild. but, you know, still like a hangover, so that's that.

But, you know, I mean, whatever it takes, everyone's got, like, little techniques they use. Some people write an hour in the morning. Some people write in the early, early morning before their kids and wives get up or spouses get up so they can, you know, just have that focus time. And so it's great. And plus, you know, it's daunting sometimes to do your first book. But I think once you, the great thing about getting your first book done is once it's done, you can kind of look at it and go, okay, I know how to do this again, you know?

Yeah, I'm finding that, yeah, with the second book, you know, I'm really still trying to find my voice as far as your writing goes. So the second book's maybe a little different in style. The third book will definitely be different in style. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. I'm already outlining that one, so. Do you find it outlining?

the, you know, some people do that. They will outline a book and it really works for them. For me, I just do what I call puking on the page and I just let it all bleed out and puk out and just go, and I don't worry about any

commas or, you know, I just let it flow and it's either going to be good or it's going to be crap or it's going to be something I can turn into something good. But everyone's got kind of a different way and you just have to kind of find what works for you, Right.

You know, I don't think I outlined the first book. Uh-huh. That was kind of a stream of consciousness. Uh-huh. But the second book I definitely outlined, the third book I'm outlining now. And do we tease out the name of the second book yet? Yeah. Controlled Burn.

Controlled Burn. That should be published shortly, hopefully within the next month. Uh-huh. Oh, so next month? Really? Wow. If everything comes together and all the editing and all that fun stuff. So what do you like this character so much? What is it that you find, you think that appeals to the audience and the listeners, readers out there? I think that he's focused. He's a realist. He's not your typical broken, broken veteran. You're typical psycho ex-Green Beret kind of guy.

Green Beret kills 11, eat self, film at 10. Not that guy. He's just kind of, you know, just leave me alone. I want to do my job. I'm going to live my life. Yes, I know how to do that because I'm very good at it. But I don't want to do that right now is kind of his whole. you know, his whole vibe, I guess, is, you know, I can kill you with this finger, but I'm not going to, you know, but not the character that I wanted to show.

I didn't want an Arnold Schwarzenegger out there, you know, terminating people. I just wanted, like I said, trying to keep it real and show that, you know, the moral complexities of some of the things that the people in, in the, that profession struggle with occasionally. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is a dangerous world, and it's a world where you can't trust anybody, right? And so, you know, you have to operate within the bounds of

that sort of modus of operandi with your mind and stuff. And when did you realize you could write books? Did you used to write maybe drafts or poems or maybe write in your early years? and you just kind of were like eventually like, you know, I think I might be good at this. Yeah, years ago, I would write short stories.

I did blogging. I had a website where I would just, you know, post articles, things that interested me and I would write. And then, yeah, I did poetry for a while. But then, you know, I just back, you know, it's been years. And I just thought, yeah, someday I'm going to do this. And, well, some day's here. Some days here. Well, congratulations.

You know, a lot of people do that. You know, they're busy in life doing their things. And they find that when they get older, they've got the time to, you know, sit down and write things. Sometimes people retire and they just reach that point where they can do some stuff. And, yeah, it makes all the difference in the world because they can now enjoy what they want to do. They've got the time to ponder it. And sometimes you just reach that age where you can look back and you, hey, you know, I've heard a lot of people around 50. They kind of have a mental wake up or brain wake up where you've got enough experience under your belt.

Maybe that need to breed and that peeing in your brain to constantly be chasing girls or boys is kind of falling off. And so you're a little bit focused on like, hey, what is this world and what are we doing here? and I think you got a little bit more time to ponder, especially when you've lived the life where you've seen enough human nature to go. I think I understand what's going on here a little bit. Who is the Jack Decker character in your book modeled after? I was afraid somebody was going to ask me that,

but it's kind of an amalgamation of a lot of different people that I've known, but nobody in particular. Okay. Cool. And would you say some of the book is autobiographical, maybe on your experiences, or is it an emagulation? Matt, see, I don't even know how to spell the word. It's Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning? Yeah, I'm on there. But, yeah, I just, I wouldn't say there's anything autobiographical, autobiographical.

in there. I was trying to avoid that as well. Yeah. I guess, you know, I did omit some things from the books where I wrote and then deleted that would have been more autobiographical, like, you know, going into the Army, going through the Special Forces qualification process, going to a team, being a weapon sergeant on a team, being an Intel sergeant on a team. Those aspects, I guess, are, you know, through my lived experience,

it's sort of autobiographical. Well, this should be really interesting to see the series develop. And people love characters. They love series. They love the follow the character. Now, what themes do you find yourself returning to in your writing? And is Jack Decker going to keep on going as the, as the, as the main protagonist?

He's going to go for at least another book. I'm not sure. You know, I did think about switching up genres in the future, but, you know, maybe doing something a little more, a little lighter,

a little more humorous, writing humor instead of these serious moral conflagrations or you know just yeah they can be complex when you're doing with issues emotions mental damage maybe trauma things of those natures you know there's all sorts of there's all sorts of things that you can get into with that I'm sure what do you hope book about my cat I don't know you're going to write a book about your cat or you're a joke is that so let's see Now, what do you hope people come away with when they read your books?

I want them to come away with, you know, not, you know, in real life, these types of people that are doing this kind of stuff, they're not all, you know, super action heroes. They're not all running gun battles. I want them to come away with, you know, these are real people that have, lives and try and balance the the badness that they see and the evil in the world that they see and try and you know kind of push that to the side while they live a normal life. It's interesting to balance these. I remember we had a French

basically the French version of the CIA on the show and he'd gotten into some pretty interesting stuff of this Saddam Hussein and some other famous operatives. And he's like, you know, it's really hard because you go live that James Bond type of life. And then you have to come home to a wife and several kids. And you have to, you know, act like a normal human being. You know, not everyone's running around acting like James Bond. It'd be kind of an interesting world if everyone did.

But I don't know. That's a movie for another time. I'll let Spielberg handle that one. but, you know, it's hard, and people don't realize the balance you have to live. And then you've got this whole private side that you can't tell your spouse probably about or anyone else about because it's classified. And, you know, there's issues that way. So, yeah, it's like living two different lives, really.

And that makes difficult, I think, for most humans. Yeah, it's like when I retired, when I first retired from the Army, one of the first things my wife said to me was, there now you're retired you can tell me everything you were doing no sounds like she was waiting for to get all the tea spill the tea uh to give us the tea yeah um yeah that's the that's the biggest challenge like you know classified stuff i mean you can get in trouble

you don't want to get in trouble now um uh if you were to pick actors for your characters in a movie adaptation who would you choose was there any that came to mind as you were writing as Jack Decker I would want it's really hard to say somebody I mean I'm thinking

Tom Selleck only somebody younger Tom Selleck only younger maybe Tom Selleck when he was doing the Hawaii he was doing the AI thing because that would put him in the right age group for Jack Decker, right physique, right frame of mind, I think. Maybe some of the guys from Band of Brothers, some of those. Right.

Or Jack Ryan, no, hold on. I'm thinking of the Tom Clancy novels. But, yeah, we've had a lot of those books on the show. And it's interesting how they put by these books. People fall in love with these characters, and they love to follow them through all the things. And sometimes they know more about the characters than the author does. I mean, I've had a bunch of authors come on the show and be like, yeah, people come to the show and tell me how my characters are.

And every now and then I'm like, oh, wow, I didn't realize that one was an alcoholic. Oh, wow. I didn't realize that was an issue. So as we round out, you anticipate getting that first book out. You're working on the third book. So it sounds like you're really starting to get this down. do you want to write this series out as far as you can or does do you have maybe some other you know a lot of some some authors that write in these novel genres they'll sometimes have like different character protagonists uh threads or tree branches and so they create whole new storylines and they'll have multiple storylines going do you see maybe that is a point for you i i have been thinking about that as well um like some of the other characters in the series now maybe branching off into their own stories

and that's the great thing about what you're doing like i mean you can pretty much it's endless what you can do you can do all sorts of stuff right that's true um i guess as long as i don't run out of whiskey i'm not going to run out of both yeah well i hear the millennials aren't aren't drinking as much whiskey in fact the whiskey business is kind of in trouble over here in America. So you're either going to have to keep them in business yourself or hopefully that will still flow. Well, it's been wonderful having the show.

Give people a final pitch out to pick up your book, wherever books can be found and all that good stuff. Well, right now you can find cold ground on Amazon. It's in paperback and Kindle. I probably will within the next month controlled burn will also be out there both on Amazon and I guess where other books are sold working with the publisher now

and we'll see what happens well that should be wonderful and it's just so great to see people become burgeoning authors we saw that during COVID a lot of people got time off to write books and boy, it really helped our show because it just flooded us with all these amazing authors who write books. And, you know, everyone's a first time author at some point in their lives. We've started during COVID.

That was a good time. We had a lot of people doing it. But, you know, hey, better late than never, better late than never. And there is no such thing as late. I mean, most people really become successful and do well, like you and I in our 50s. That's when we really start hitting our things. And, you know, there's a whole list of people that became successful. successful in their 50s.

So, you know, sometimes it's just better because we, we understand things better in our age, or at least we're supposed to, let's put it that way. Yeah. I'm still, I'm still hosing down the kids who get on my front lawn and screen. I'm a teenager. A senior? Yeah. You, you get off, my arm with your AI and your troubles.

Anyway, well, thank you very much for coming the show. We really appreciate it. Michael, it's been great to have you. Well, thank you for having me. you. Thank you. And thanks for honest for tuning in. I'll order up his book where refined books are sold and get ready for the next one. So that's why you want to grab it now and read it. It is entitled, Cold Ground, a Jack Decker novel by the 1 of 1 in the Jack Decker series. Thanks to mine us for us fordreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com,

Fortress, Chris Foss, won the TikTokity and all those crazy places in it. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning, consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain lead.