The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Adversary (The Tier One Thrillers) by Brian Andrews, Jeffrey Wilson

Episode Date: December 27, 2025

The Adversary (The Tier One Thrillers) by Brian Andrews, Jeffrey Wilson https://www.amazon.com/Adversary-Tier-One-Thrillers/dp/B0F95HK4D2 From New York Times bestselling authors Andrews & Wilson, The Adversary is the next heart-stopping installment in the Tier One series. For John Dempsey, it’s a time of uncertainty. As a new administration tries to piece together who was behind the assassination of an American president, task force Ember is a team without a target. Newly Minted POTUS, Kelso Jarvis, is haunted by strange dreams of a house on fire, and Dempsey’s son Jake–who has begun his own journey as a SEAL–can’t escape the ghost of the father he believes to be dead. But when a routine intelligence gathering mission in Taiwan goes horribly wrong and one of Ember’s own is captured, Dempsey’s frustration only grows. As Ember races to rescue their teammate before it’s too late, three of America’s strongest warriors–Dempsey, Jarvis, and Jake–must ask themselves if tomorrow’s adversary resides across the Taiwan Strait, or within themselves. About the author Brian is a US Navy veteran, nuclear engineer, and former submarine officer. He graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in psychology, holds a Master’s in business from Cornell, and is a Park Leadership Fellow. He is a principal contributor at Career Authors, a site dedicated to advancing the careers of aspiring and published writers: www.careerauthors.com.

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Because you're about to go on a moment. monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss i'm osse voss here from the chris fos show dot com oh leased young and there lately seems that makes a visual welcome the big show for 16 years 2600 episodes you're bringing to chris voss show because uh well we had uh you know the judge said that we had to do community service so they were like uh you want to go to jail or you want to do a podcast and i'm like how bad is it in jail no i'm just kidding We love you guys, and we're glad you guys always watch the shows. Please refer to your family, friends, and relatives.

Goodreads.com, Fortressisch, Christfoss. LinkedIn.com, Fortezs, Christfoss, won the TikTok. All that's a crazy place, you know where they're at. Today we have a returning gentleman on the show. We've had them on multiple times. They write the wonderful series there for Tom Clancy. They are the authors of their own series, too, as well. And the latest one comes out called the adversary,

part of the Tier 1 Thrillers Package out November 4th, 2025. We have Brian Williams. I've been promoted to NBC host. Yeah, Brian Williams. Just don't tell stories of your Rack experience. That's a demotion, my friend. Yeah, demotion. Demotion.

I've been demoted. But, I mean, at least you, I mean, he used to be a good looking dude. He used to get the chicks, I think. I don't know. Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson are on the show with us today. And Chris is clearly having a seizure of some type, so we'll get to that later because we have a show to do. Also, there are other book that they have coming out called First Ranger Short Story. It's on Kindle, audiobook, and audio CD, I should say.

And it's a series of short stories. So we're going into that. Welcome to the show, gentlemen. How are you guys? Great, man. Always good to see you, Chris. It's good to see you guys, too, when I'm not having a seizure. I'm not having a stroke.

So thanks, guys, for coming the show. give us any dot coms where do you want to have people look you up on the interwebs that is an easy one andrews dash wilson dot com there's no brian williams in there anywhere no nbc it's just andrews dash wilson dot com you know what's funny is i saw the wilson i was thinking the beach boys i blended your last name with your his first name he does sing jeff is he's quite a local uh can you sing that uh wouldn't it be nice that's right so guys Guys, you got this thing going on.

Now, is this book included, this new book, the adversary? Is that part of the new imprint deal you've got with Blackstone Publishing? Yeah, I mean, basically the imprint is AWE, Andrews & Wilson Entertainment, and it's going to be the storehouse for all thrillers at Blackstone that sort of share that same ethos. Oh, yeah, there's the logo, our new AWE logo. So it won't be just our books because that's the definition. of a vanity press. It won't be just our books. It's going to be all the books that fit into that team and mission before self ethos. We have a lot of fellow military veterans like Don

Bentley and Josh Hood and guys like that that are going to be joining us over there and writing with us. But of course, all of our stuff will, by definition, fall under the imprint. So, yeah, the adversary is the ninth book in the Tier 1 series. And so it falls in the AEWE imprint. It's one of the first books in the imprint. So, nice nice I do you want to give us a quick overview of all of your stuff and then we'll drill into the book because you guys have a lot of these you guys have a lot of these storylines and book lines that you know thanks for asking yeah so like you said in the opening we do write the jack ryan series for tom clancy we did three books there and I think we're calling it quits after three which we talked about on the last show but such an honor to write those those jack rinds but in addition to that you know we have our original stuff, the Anders and Wilson series. So the first one was Tier 1. And that started, like you said, we're on Book 9 now. Book 10 comes out in July called Insurgent. And that's sort of our tent pole series and where most people find us. We have a spinoff series called

Sons of Valor, four books in that series, which, you know, has crossovers between the Tier 1 characters and the Sons of Valor characters. And we also have another really fun series called The Shepherds, four books in that series, which has got some speculative elements, some faith elements. And it's sort of like, I don't know, what would you say, Jeff? Like, Stranger Things meets, you know. Meets the Chosen. I don't know. Yeah. It's a weird. It's a weird matchup, right? Because it's when you tell people, yeah, we have the Shepherds, it's this tier one operator, kick-ass Christian series. They're like, wait, what? I guess so, yeah, it's got, it's the kind of action that Andrews and Wilson are known for. It's high stakes, violent military action,

but in the setting of spiritual warfare and a faith message. So it's a really, it's one of our favorite series because it's cool to blend those things together. Me, that's a very natural blend, right? Like everybody, no matter where you end up, ask questions about, you know, the universe and their existence and God and what they believe about it. To not put that in your writing seems a little fake. So this series delves into that pretty hard. and it's one that we've had a lot of fun with. And it's also been optioned for television, so we're excited about that. So, yeah, those are the big series in a couple of standalones.

We've got The Sandbox, which is one of my favorite novels we've written. We've got four minutes, which is likely to become its own series. That came out last year, the first book, and we got the second book in that, sort of in the queue, waiting to see what happens with the feature film that we're developing from that book. So we've got a lot going on, man. It's busy. My wife is happy and also misses me. Oh, but she wants you to stay working there.

Probably, yeah, if she had to choose between the two. I mean, there's only so much cleaning you could do at home. That's right. That's right. If you had to choose between poor Jeff, more attention and not so poor Jeff, I don't know. We should ask her. Let's have her on the show.

Let's have her on the show and just find out, you know. As long as she gets the check and gets to do her if she wants, then she's good. Yeah, but if we have them on, Jeff, then they're like, wait, this is what you guys do for a little bit? I thought you said these things were really important that you saw. You said you were working. Who said you were working? You're just talking to people on the internet. Screwing around with some dude who's just like you.

Yeah. See? Yeah. So let's get into it with the adversary, the book 9 of 10. And what's inside this new book? And tell us about some of the characters, too, if you guys would. I think this one's, we were really excited about book nine. You know, when you start a series, you don't necessarily know where it's going to go.

I mean, you map out the first couple books, at least in our case, we mapped out sort of the first three. But then you're not thinking about book nine when you're writing book one, right? And so you start these relationships with characters and they have families and friendships. And over time, they evolve and unexpected things happen. And sometimes tragic things happen, especially like in the, world of operators and special forces. And so, you know, our protagonist, John Dempsey, and this isn't a spoiler because it happens in the first book in the series, you know, he has to make this very difficult decision to essentially, you know, walk away from his family

in order to protect them from the bad guys. And so in an effort to keep them safe and maintain some normality in the life of his son and his wife, he disappears into the deep, dark world of task force operations. But he's always, you know, he still loves them. He's always thinking about them. And his son follows in dad's footsteps and becomes a Navy SEAL. And so one of the things that we did over the last eight books was, you know, Jake is curious about his dad's life at the Tier 1 and what that was and some of the secrets.

And he starts to question, you know, did my dad? Is my dad really dead? Because his friend has a conspiracy theory. And so, but in the back of his mind, he believes that he saw his dad, you know, buried in Arlington. And so he must be dead. Oh, wow. But in this book, we have a big reunion between father and son. Oh, dear.

Yeah. And the fans have been waiting for it for nine years. Wow. They, at least for three books, they've been saying, when are we going to see the, yeah. And so. We're going to see the reunion. A little bit of a little bit of a spoiler there, but I think not an unexpected. I don't think we're spoiling anything.

I think everyone's buying this book, knowing that this is going to be it. We sort of set it up in book eight that the tension was at a breaking point. And so what that looks like. And, you know, imagine how you would feel if you found out your dad had lied to you about being dead. And you buried him and grieved for him for years and years and years. And then he says, nah, just kidding. I was out here doing all this work all the time. Hey, give me a hug, buddy.

Right? like how's that going to go and so um you know i would do i dress up as a zombie i would dress up as a zombie and come back from the dead yeah we couldn't quite work that in to the story arc with the geopolitics but you guys need like a call of duty zombie arm yeah uh anything you want to throw on brian on the story this and so far you know the book's been out now about a month it's it's our highest rated book of all time so um you know we've just the fans have really really embraced the story and that makes us feel good too because you know you never know how those things are going to go you know you don't know how the if if we're just excited about something and it's not going to resonate well it really

resonated and so um you know if you're working your way through the series you know hurry up and get to book nine because you're going to love what happens well folks get on the get on the get on the amazon there with your credit card and just load it on up i mean yeah that's christmas it's a time to give yeah yeah give the books so it buy it by set for friends and relatives oh i meant give us another royalty but yeah oh yeah or you can binge in on audible i feel like our books are very bingeable you know because the story continues through all nine books yes there's unique missions and operations in each story but it's not like you're starting over from scratch with every single book and that's it has a very Netflix feel don't you think

Jeff like the way yeah I think it does and I think the people that discovered us through the Clancy will see that same that same idea you know Jack Ryan and and then the characters that we introduce in that series Katie and Kyle they arc out over all the books of course because that's they're the central protagonists but there's a new geopolitical challenge in each book One thing we do a little differently in our Tier 1 book and in Sons of Valor as well is we do tend to arc the antagonist stories over more than one book, which is something we didn't do in the Ryan books, just because that's not what Clancy does. So in this book, for example, you are seeing sort of the culmination of some other things that happened in book 8, just like we did in the first books. Our first three books, they're not officially called this, but we thought of them as the Persian trilogy because VVAC and Iran was this. central antagonist and this main character. In real life, you don't just have a couple weeks

and at the end, all the bad guys are dead and you go and have a barbecue. In real life, as you all know, Chris, sometimes you just work your way up that food chain. And yeah, you're, you had a successful deployment that got you closer to the real bad guy that you're trying to get. And we try to reflect that in the books. So there's some of that in this book, too. Some of the things that were left unanswered in book eight will move forward in this book as well. So the geopolitical tension and violence of action is all there as well with the backdrop of this drama between Dempsey and his son. Yeah, real bad guys are pretty darn good at insulating themselves from danger.

Yeah, right. They tend to stick around a long time. Yeah, evil people last forever. That's why I try not to be a good person. I was going to say that that faking your death thing is pretty good. I fake my death to get away from my teenagers, so I don't feel guilty at all. I'm never coming back. Maybe you were the role model for a job.

Maybe I was. You guys stole the plot for my life. We stole your plot line. Yeah, yeah. First I sent a military school when they were two. So it helps if they can't see you. And then I've got plastic surgery too as well. Teenagers, you know what this is like.

So tell us, give us a little. bit about your background. Where do you guys get this experience and knowledge, know this military stuff? Tell us about both of your bios. I'll each take a shot at that. Yeah, so we met as writers, but we're both Navy veterans. A lot of people think mistakenly that we knew each other in the Navy. We didn't. We were in different communities, but also at different times. So my story is a little bit convoluted. I was in the military, and then I was out of the military, and then I was working in another part of the federal government for a few years that was violent and not like on TV. And I said, you know what, maybe I'm going to go live a life of peace now. So I went to medical

school, became a surgeon, was a Navy reservist because I always had that pull to serve still. So I was like, I'm going to be an academic doctor and I'm going to do weekend warrior stuff. I'll feel like I'm serving my country and I'll still do this other thing. And then 9-11 happened when I was in fellowship training. And it just really, really pissed me off, like everyone, like a not unique story. But I went to my detail and said, look, man, I want to go back on active duty. And he was like, yeah, I'll get you mobilize. It's like, no, bro, you don't understand. I had a regular commission. I don't want to be a mobilized reservist. I want to go back on active duty. So as you can imagine, after 9-11, being a surgeon with some other world combat experience,

it was not difficult to convince them that I should be back on active duty. So I went on active duty and deployed as a first team surgeon with Marines as soon as I reported. And during that deployment, I ran into some folks from my spooky past. And they were like, you know, you'd be perfect for. And so I wound up getting recruited and screened into the J-Soc seal team. And so I spent the rest of my Navy career doing that and then sort of left that to do the weird joint interagency task force kind of stuff. It did that for a few years. So that's sort of my weird convoluted journey. Mine's a little harder to follow than my eyes. I think. Mine sounds more made up.

I know that. I am a good... Does it? And what's cool about all the things you did, though, is you got to interface with so many different... I mean, you did a stint on a carrier, you did stints with the Marines, you did stints with special operations. So that's pretty good. Yeah, I really informed what we do now in these books, in the new series we're going to be launching in 27 called Strike Group, in the Klan. books, that eclectic experience of being in and around aviation, being in and around special

operations, being in and around other, all the other things, communities, the Marines, definitely, definitely makes the work a little easier for the stuff that we write, that's for sure. Yeah, that knowledge of base. I mean, so many great writers on the show that write in the sort of as novel genres that you guys do, they all, a lot of them come from military or sometimes police backgrounds, you know? They do now, right? Like, when we were kids, though, it wasn't like that. Like, Tom Clancy was an insurance salesman, right?

Like this generation of writers, Don Bentley, Josh Hood, some of the people that we've listed that are going to be writing with us in the imprint, they bring a different perspective that makes it, except Mark Cameron, right? Like, he was a marshal, right? U.S. Marshall. Yeah, there's a ton of that now. And I think it does bring something special to writing or to reading the books that are out there now in that genre, for sure. Yeah, Brian, you want to give us your bio background? Yeah, so I was a Blue Water Navy guy.

I was with the submarine community on a fast attack submarine station in the Pacific. And so, you know, my story sort of reads a little bit like Hunt for Red October. I mean, I was reading Hunt for it at October and watching it on the TV in the wardroom while we're in the Pacific chasing around Russian submarine. So that was kind of ironic. But just an amazing, you know, an amazing community, silent service. The submarine community is sort of the workhorse of the Blue Water Navy that people don't know about. And they don't realize that there are submarines out there doing missions all the time because you can't see them and we don't talk about them. And so you see the carrier strike group.

Everybody, you know, that makes the news when it deploys. And we know when Arlie Burke shoot Tomahawks. We know when, you know, planes conduct operations in the Middle East off of XYZ carrier. but what people don't know is that the submarines come in and they sort of prep the battlefield with collecting intelligence and my ship happened to be the first salvo in the watch the first salvo in the iraq war you know of tomahawks and so you know they're they're pretty incredible platform to think that you have you know a hundred do a you know on my submarine with a hundred people living underwater for months at a time just completely invisible to the rest of the world but

that's where i come from I never thought about it, Ryan, too, you just said it. But that's, you know, you mentioned how I have a cross-connection over communities. You guys really do, too, because now with the special mission boats, you know, you're, you're interfacing with intelligence constantly. You're interfacing with special warfare now because your delivery system for that and you're, and you're doing intel gathering, ISR. Like, you kind of cross all the, all the big Navy, big Bluewater Navy, special operations, Intel.

You kind of do it all. I should have more respect for you than I do. Oh, wow. I should work on that. I mean, there's always, it is Christmas, so there is time for joy and gratitude. It is the season for generosity and new, new epiphanies. You might get a $25 gift this year instead of a $10 for Christmas. I might get the upgrade.

With a $25 Starbucks gift card, I could buy two coffees. Two coffees. Me and my business partner years ago, we kept, we always give each other expensive. presence and it just got out of fucking control after like in years like at the end we're just like dude i don't know i'm going to have to really adjust my monthly budget and we made a lot of money a lot of money and uh i'm like maybe we should just minimize this like i give you a hundred bucks and you give me a hundred bucks and we just kind of cap it because it's getting out of control like like i think one year i think one of last year is just like i wanted to hold backwing for my

a BMW and he bought it. Oh, nice. I can't remember what I bought him, but, but yeah, it was getting real fucking out of control expenses. I'm like, I'm like,

we need cap this, you know, like family. We don't have that problem. Ours is getting cheaper, right? Yeah, Brian,

Brian doesn't even get the family Christmas card unless we're having an extra stamp. So I, you just kind of write it on an eight by, yeah, a half by 11. Sometimes I'll send him a signed book, but it's his book too.

So, Here you go. Hope you do well. Let's see. Good luck in the future. So let's talk about the first ranger short story book. Is this going to be a new series or how does this work with this? Well, I don't know if it'll be a new series,

but what the idea was is to kind of twofold. One is in addition to the series that we talked about that we write, one of the other fun things that we do, is we write short stories as intellectual property to try to develop into film or television. And so we have a lot of, because of our eclectic backgrounds, we have a lot of interest in different types of stuff. And so, you know, over the last five years or so, we've probably written 15 short stories. And we sort of were thinking, like, why don't we share these with people? Why they have to sit sort of like hidden, you know, we love them, but why we have to just sit and not share them?

we thought with the launch of the imprint, it'd be really fun to give our readers and fans, like, you know, sort of like more frequent content. Because a lot of the comments, we get our, like, hey, when's the next book coming out? Can you guys write faster? You know, and so this is kind of a way to make the weight seem a little more palatable. And it also shows a different side of what we do because, you know, we're known for the military thrillers, and there's certainly some of that. First Ranger won't be a series, but what we do have is a series of shorts. that's going to go out over the next year, about one a month on the months that we don't release a book.

And like Brian said, each of these shorts were developed with film and television in mind, and the vast majority of them that you're going to be reading over the year are in development now for film and television. And so it's a fun way to share that side of the business, like Brian said. But it's also a way to share some of the other stuff we're interested in. This is a historical thriller set in 1775 and 1776, that is the true story of Thomas Nolton,

whom many would consider to be the father of special operations and a kinetic warfare in the United States. So that was fun. But we also have some that are speculative, grounded near future sci-fi. And we don't have any, we don't have any mommy porn romance, I don't think. But other than that, we have a little bit of different buckets. We've shot fired over here in the romance novel area. We did a cover.

On April 1st, two years ago, Brian, without even asking if I thought it was a good idea, he printed, he released a cover reveal on our social media that was this seal with no shirt and a woman with her hand on it said, it said, operators need love and two. And what was the title of it? The title was cleared hot. Cleared hot, yeah, cleared hot, operators need loving two coming soon from Anderson Wilson. And it was obviously an April Fool's prank. the boy did we get some

emails. Some people did not think it was a prank because their response was like, okay, cool guys, like looking forward to this one. He didn't think you'd branch out in this direction, but you guys are innovators. We have a lot of those romance novels on.

Those other things sell like hotcakes. They like beach reads, they call them, and they can read them pretty fast. But yeah, they are basically romance porn I've interviewed enough of them and you know what's funny is they're so rubber stamped too they're like but you know I mean they make interesting characters and

people love that stuff so yeah everyone's got their flavor but yeah that would be funny if you guys ran a thread going that way we'll find that cover and send it to you privately not to be shared on the show well you guys put it online we did send yeah that's true it's been on the world have it i'm sure someone's going to do whatever you want with it you guys remember when like people used to do really good april fools yeah and jokes before before everything got you know too woke and too afraid of uh retribution and stuff but there were some good ones like i remember i got tricked by google you know they had one where it's like they talked about google mars and they were going to like you know start train up

astronauts because google was going to build and travel to mars i was like this is so cool i can't believe they're going to do this, should I apply? Oh, it was fake. Yeah, it used to be kind of a big deal, and I think people just got two big deals, and then when it backfired, it backfired hard. I think it was, and then nowadays with AI, every day is, every day is April.

Like, I have to spit, every time I watch a video, I got to be like, is that AI? Is that real? You know, my, my mom, she started bringing me TikToks and Instagram reels of, of Huskies, because, you know, I like huskies. And she'd bring them to me, and I mean, oh, Mom, I've seen that, but that is fake. She goes, they're so cute.

How come your dogs aren't that cute? I'm like, that's fake, Mom. That's a fake. And you're like, how can you tell? And it's just amazing. I mean, people are getting fooled by AI right now. And it's not even as great as it will be. Yeah, that's for sure.

It's crazy, man. It's crazy. So this First Ranger, is there a character in here we want to feature or talk about? Well, Thomas Nolton. So Thomas Nolton, the true story of Thomas, Thomas Knowlton is, you know, by 1776, as one might imagine, when you're a small group of rag-tag colonists fighting the massive empire of the UK, things were not going all that great. And it turned out that you line up in red and we'll line up in blue. And then when you say, go, we'll shoot at each other, was not really working in our favor.

And so, you know, you have to understand, and I think you do, Chris, but your listeners have to understand that in 1776, warfare was a gentlemanly thing. And there were things that were ungentlemanly that you just simply couldn't do. And so when George Washington in real life called Colonel Nolan, Thomas Nolton, into his tent and said, I want you to do something Akinetic. I want you to just to help us win this war by making this an asymmetric battle. He was basically talking about special operations. They were going to be intelligence gathering. They were going to be spies, which was very on gentlemanly. They were going to, they were going to do false flag operations. They were going to do things that would have seemed disgusting to both sides at that time in history. And that was truly

the birth of a special operation. No, no spoilers for those that don't know the historical things. I don't want to ruin the story for you if you don't know it. But how it turns out for Thomas Nolten is a fascinating and good story. But it truly is, you know, on the patch, of the Rangers, it says 1775, that's why. That's when it really started. Akinetic Special Operations began with Thomas Nolton back in that war. And so we take him from meeting George Washington, getting the call, meeting George Washington up through his major engagements and setting up snipers. Snipers, that's not okay. That's very ungentlemen. You're going to shoot someone from a distance and an officer, no less? Oh my God, that's a, it's a really interesting period in

history and I think we were able to set it in a story that reads like an Andrewson-Wilson novel and has got some excitement and some suspense. So we're excited to hear what people think about it. We've already started to get a little bit of feedback because it just came out and people seemed to like it. But it was really fun to write something that was, you know, to dramatize but be historically accurate and add the suspense was really fun for us. Brian, you want to jump in on that?

Yeah, no, I think he hit all the high points. The only thing I might add that sort of occurred to me when we were working on is like if you imagine your, I think you tend to look down, you know, as a modern warrior with the tools of modern warfare, we tend to look back in time and say, well, why didn't they just do it differently? And it seems like it's so, it's so rudimentary. And then you start digging into and you're like, okay, well, actually they did the best with the tools they had at the time. And so I sort of went down the whole bunny hole of, you know, muskets and rifles and, you know, their accuracy. And if we, if, if, if, if, if, if, wanted to stand up a sniper corps, how would he do it? And, and, you know, there was quite a bit of variability between musket makers. So you had, you know, these were all handmade, especially in the colonies. So, you know, David Ames, who was a musket manufacturer, you know, and he's known for making a high quality musket or a high quality rifle.

And if you have one from somebody else, it might be a piece of junk. And so there are all kinds of tricks and things, you know, just trying to increase the rate of fire. And so one of the things that in real life happened is that there was a Scottish officer in the British Army who invented a breach-loading musket. Now, think about this is revolutionary. and he had a crank with a screw plug that would lower and you could load your musket ball and powder into the breach and close it without having to ramrod it down there. And this is a technology. We know that, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. I think World War II is one of the greatest, you know, proving grounds for that, all the different military advancements.

And so we work that into the story, too, that, okay, this rifle, this, this chain, this step change. and firearms technology, you know, appeared during the Revolutionary War. And what if, what if that rifle had been mass produced? I think the Americans would have lost, right? So there's all kinds of little nuance in the story when you realize that, no, these guys were just as courageous. In fact, probably had a lot more metal because than the average American today, because they weren't paid for fighting.

They didn't have shoes and socks. They were always starving. The weather was terrible. You know, I mean, the sacrifices and the things that these soldiers put themselves through their bodies through is sort of unfathomal, I think, today. Yeah. And then back then, you stub your toe and you can dive. Right. Like infection.

You get a little cut and you're dead. You're like, oh, shit, there went to the neighborhood. You get like a hang nail. And, yeah. Did you guys, now this is a historical fiction novel or historical accurate novel? How do you categorize this? We took a lot of liberties. Yeah, we took liberties with the storytelling, but it is definitely based on true events.

And the events, I would say this, the events that we write about are true. We weren't there, so we don't know if the dialogue is accurate, and we don't know the relationships and stuff. So we definitely took some license to bring it to life. So I think calling it historical fiction would be accurate. We definitely took some license, but the people in the story are real. all of them. And, um, we made some assumptions, but I think we probably made some accurate assumptions on those relationships. So did you guys, no one didn't keep any journals or write any

letters and so that, that have been at least discovered. And so when we're researching it, what, what we found is here's this true American hero, um, that all the, all the, sort of his life and service is all anecdotal. There's nothing, there's never been a definitive book on the guy. There's been, you know, a gazelle. billion books on Washington, and Washington was a prolific letter writer. So some of the only little pieces of details that we know about Nolan come from, you know, one or two of Washington's letters and just some, you know, a few historians that have sort of put some markers in the ground about, okay, well, Norton was at, you know, served at Breeds Hill, and he was under command

of, you know, so and so at the time. And just sort of placing Nolton's locations over the 1775, to 76 period and then what we did, I think this is why we thought the project was so fun, is that we sat down and sort of talked about, okay, well, what would it be like? How would Washington recruit him? And so Jeff and I sort of like almost play acted what that scene would look like. It was super fun. Anyway. And warriors are warriors.

Operators are operators. Your time and service, my time and service, Brian's, the way it is in the ward room, the way it is in the Chow Hall, my guess is it was pretty much the same 500 years ago. I mean, I think that the brotherhood of camaraderie that exists amongst warriors is relatively unchanged. And so we worked a lot of that in like we do in all of our

books. Those relationships are really the key to the whole thing. I can see the first question, George, Washington would probably ask him, hey, you ever cut down any cherry trees? Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. My teeth look yellow.

Do these teeth look like wood? Tell me, because the girls are talking. But, yeah, did you guys cover, you know, since you're covering the Revolutionary War, President 2019 featured, you know, that battle where the Continental Army took over the airports. Remember that? Did you guys cover that in the book?

Yeah, you know, it's a short story. You probably would have gotten more into it if it was longer. They were still perfecting the drone technology back then. They didn't quite have it down. And they need a couple of years more in research and development. But, yeah, they're trying to. It's really, let me ask you that real quick.

I know we're running a little long, but let me ask you this. How is it, how is it challenging to keep up with the technology now? They've got like new, you know, they've got new drone planes, I guess, coming out that I saw some stuff on. You know, they don't even require an operator sitting in a box in Vegas. They're just, they're on their own thing going there. we're really lucky for two reasons. One, you know, being veterans and being just curious people, professional students of contemporary warfare and geopolitic, we read about it anyway. And so we're all just professionally reading and keeping ourselves in the loop. But the other thing that has been good for us is sort of a combination of two things. One, we have plenty of friends that are still out there on the pointy tip. And so we have those assets that we can reach out to. And then because we got to write these three books, in the Ryanverse for the Clancy estate, we sort of built our career, Chris, on audacity. So when we got that first call, we reached out to the Navy and said, you know, you should

give us unfettered access to everything that we want to see. And here's why. And we, you know, we want to honor the Navy. We're Navy veterans. And our mission is your mission. And somebody said, yeah, they're right. So the chief of naval operations sent out a letter saying, show these guys what they want to see. And so we were able to get, not just to see things.

things that we needed for the books that we wrote. We went out to see on Virginia Class submarines, and we went out on the Ford, the newest carrier. And we did a, you know, Brian got his first carrier landing in a cod, and we flew the F-18 simulator. We did all of that stuff. But what we mostly did that was a value was we established really good relationships with subject matter experts, either serving currently or having just served that have that cutting-edge view. And they have remained connections for us. And so in this book, the adversary, we reached out to some folks. And in the next book that's going to come out, we reached out to some folks that we made relationships with through those Navy connections and the Clancy Estate. So we always have

that ability to find out what's the new and most exciting. And if you look at the open source stuff and then bug your friends a little bit, you can fictionalize things in a powerful way that are probably close to where we are technologically. Yeah, technologically. So guys, give us a final pitch out for people to check out the book, sort of up all the stuff and check at your dot coms, et cetera, et cetera, as we go out. So, yeah, our website is andres-wilson.com.

And if you sign up for our newsletter, you will get a free copy of Sons of Valor. So that is really, that's a new. We just rolled that out. So I'll get you a taste of the type of stories that we tell. and get you started on that series. We don't share or trade your information, so if you do sign up, rest of sure it stays with us.

We won't spam you. We just give you new release details as part of the Tier 1 family. Our social media is, same thing, Andrews N. Wilson, or Anders Dash Wilson, for social media. And, Jeff, what else we want to say? That's it.

We have like three books coming out next year. Is it three next year? We release four books this year. I think there's three next year. So just follow us on the website. Like he said, we don't send you a newsletter every other day. We get one every couple of months just when there's real things going on. But that's the best way to find what's coming.

We have three books coming out. But we also have these short stories coming almost monthly on the non-release date. So best way to keep on top of it and get the links to get to those things is there. But we have a fun website because the fans interact there. They send pictures. and I think it's kind of a fun place to be. There's a lot of information about our film and television stuff there. So it's sort of the one-stop shop.

The one-stop shop. Well, guys, it's been wonderful to have you on. Do we get the dot-coms there? Yes, Andrews-Wilson.com. That's the only one. Okay. I wasn't sure if you guys had your own socials or anything. But thanks for coming the show, guys.

We really appreciate you guys being here. We'll look forward to have you on for your next guys' work. And you're done with the Tom Clancy series, then. There's no more forthcoming books. None from us. Yeah, that was a really hard decision like we talked about. But yeah, no more for us. But the series will live on, I'm sure.

They've got some great writers following in our footsteps. I know the next one's coming out from actually a good friend of ours. I don't know what, is it out now? Are we supposed to talk about that book? It's not out yet, but it's pre-orderable. Yeah, Ward Larson is writing the next Jack Ryan book. Oh, well, thank you very much for coming on. the show. We really appreciate it. Chris, we always like talking to man. Now, be careful saying

our next project. You don't really want to have us on once a month, right? Like, that's, you know, you're welcome to. We have some writers like you, I swear, they're on every month or every third month. You know, they got all the, all the threads that you guys have and the craziness. I think there's some that they pump like every three months or something. And they just book the show. Like, they'll book the show a year out. And I'm like, what's going on there? And they're like, oh we're going to have a book out then and I'm like stick to a plan we're a little more kinetic

yeah we'll come back tell you what next time we come back we'll bring a friend we'll bring one of the other AWE authors yeah yeah yeah that'd be fun did you say Don Henley who did you say Don Bentley Bentley

you can read Don Henley if you want I love the year yeah maybe you come you might have to book that one Chris I'll try he just yeah I don't know He just says, I don't know, call Stevie Nix and bother her. That's a Don Henley, Stevie Nix joke if you don't know the inside story. Inside straight.

So thank you very much, guys. We appreciate having you. But yeah, please come as often as you like and you guys are pumping out so much great stuff and we'll look forward to seeing it, guys. Thank you. Appreciate it. Anything we can ever do for you, Chris. Appreciate you.

I'll talk to you after about loaning me some money. You got it. Thanks a much for tuning in, folks. Order up the books, wherever fine books are sold and get the, wonderful series they have there. The adversary. The Tier 1 Thrillers out, November 4th, 2025, and their audio book as well. First Ranger's short stories. Check that out. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodrease.com, Fortresschus Christchristch,

Christfoss, LinkedIn.com, Fortresschus Foss, YouTube.com, Fortresschersch, Chris Foss. Beg into each other. Stay safe. We'll see you 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 Wall 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 bleed. All right, boys, we'll have this up on the show.