I’m reworking the fourth Task Force 125 story.  (You may recall that Freedom’s Promise, the third book in the Task Force 125 series left Sarah, Vince and the rest of the team living the good life on a private island somewhere in the Arabian Gulf.)  The original draft of Stealing Liberties (or TF125.4) was a brief 40,ooo words, introduced seven new characters and threw Sarah and Vince’s world upside down.

My kind Editor gently informed me that it needed more.

When I took another look at the manuscript, there was a head slap moment.  There is no way I can do everything I’m trying to do in this story with only 40,000 words!  This story will be as long as, if not longer than, The Path to Freedom.  There are more countries, more action, more plotlines, and more characters than I’ve ever done before!  This needs to be my best story ever.

So, in an attempt to expand on some characters as well as build completely new ones from scratch, I’ve been jotting notes.  Some of these might make it into the final version and some might not.  Brock Benjamin is a character I introduced in Freedom’s Promise.  You’re going to see him again in Stealing Liberties.

 

Brock Benjamin sat at his oak desk, his starched white shirt open at the neck and his brown silk tie tossed haphazardly on a small stack of file folders.  He examined his receding hairline from every angle with the small drugstore hand mirror.  “I’m telling you, honey.  My hairline looks exactly like the Eastern seaboard now.”

A calm, low, woman’s voice came through the speakerphone on his desk.  “Brock, you own the biggest private military company in the Western Hemisphere…”

“No, technically, no.”  Brock looked at the phone for a moment before going back to his hairline.  “There’s that other company.  They’re under a decade of indictments but they haven’t been liquidated yet.”

“My point, dearest, is that you handle millions of dollars in government contracts and God knows how many more in private contracts every year and you’re spending the morning examining your hairline?”

“Well, yeah.”  Brock set the mirror down and shrugged.  “I have people to handle all those contracts.”

“Well, I don’t have people and I’m in the middle of a real estate deal so why don’t you spend some of your spare time thinking of a nice place to take me to dinner tonight?”

Brock picked up the mirror again and rubbed his chin.  “You think I should grow a beard?”

The intercom buzzed.  “Mr. Stanstead is here to see you.”

Brock pushed the intercom button.  “Great, send him in.”  He tucked the mirror into the desk drawer.  “Gotta go, honey.  I can’t sit around gabbing with you on the phone all morning.”

 

So what are your thoughts on Brock?  Feel free to share!