From Combat to 'Florida Noir': Veteran & Author Jared Maxwell | Panhandle Pulse

Welcome back to the Panhandle Pulse! This week, host Chuck Asbury sits down with native Floridian, combat veteran, and grit-infused fiction author Jared Maxwell for an unfiltered look at what it truly means to stare down chaos—and live to write about it.

Growing up with parents in the entertainment industry, Jared always had a knack for storytelling. But before he ever picked up a pen professionally, he answered the call of duty following 9/11. What followed was a decorated military career spanning nine years, three deployments, and 35 months in heavy combat.

In this episode, Jared opens up about:

• The Baptism by Fire: From jumping out of airplanes with the 82nd Airborne to the initial push into Fallujah, Iraq.
• Surviving the Corngal Valley: Living out of remote outposts in Afghanistan, navigating brutal mountain terrain, and surviving nearly 200 daily firefights in one of the most dangerous sectors on earth.
• From the Frontlines to the Thin Blue Line: Turning the page to an 11-year career in law enforcement, navigating the grit and politics of modern policing, and dealing with PTSD.
• Pioneering "Florida Noir": How real-life combat skills and wild "Florida Man" police encounters birthed his viral new crime epic, Code of Vengeance, and how he successfully mastered the brutal world of indie self-publishing.

Whether you are a fan of military history, true-to-life tactical thrillers, or just love a raw, honest look at human resilience, this conversation is one you don't want to miss.

Connect with Jared Maxwell:

• Find his books (Code of Vengeance) on Amazon and Goodreads by searching "Jared Maxwell".

Subscribe, rate, and leave a review if you enjoyed the show!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Pain Handle Pulse, the show that dives into real challenges and honest conversations shaping the Florida Pain Handle. I'm your host, Chuck Asbury. Each week we sit down with the people who make our community strong, sharing real issues, real conversations, and no filters. Hey guys, welcome back to Panel Post. I got a great guest today, and Jared Baxwell. He's a former U.S. veteran and an author. Jared, welcome to the show today. I appreciate you having me on, Chuck. Great. So for the people in the tell us a little bit about your background. I grew up in Florida.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

So I'm my family's from New York. So Florida is really all that I know.

unknown 0:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

So I've lived here all my life except for the nine years I did in the military. And then, you know, a very small amount of time in New York. But for the most part, you know, I'm a native Florida, full Floridian.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Yeah. That's good. And what uh what led you to join the military?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

So, you know, my my family, I still have a lot of family up in New York. And uh the uh 9-11 attacks happened in my senior year in high school.

unknown 1:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

So the graduating class of 2002, you know, basically became the military class because of 9-11, um, you know, everyone was joining the military. So that was uh I wasn't really sure what I want to do when I got out of high school. My mom wanted me out of the house. So I figured that was uh the the best bet was join the military. So I uh was looking at uh I was just researching to see what I wanted to do. I you know, obviously I didn't know much about it. So something that stuck out to me was the Army Airborne. Yeah, I thought that was like that just sounded so cool to me. I'm like, yeah, I want to do that. I didn't even think about the fact that I'm from Florida, I'm not I've never been around heights. So I uh kind of had to learn the hard way on that one, but it still sounded fun. So, you know, the first jump, I was about to web my pants, but still it was uh Yeah, the same way.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

I don't want to, my son and wife wanted to do skydive, and I'm like, I don't want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. If it took off and land, I just want to stay on it.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

But they gave us uh it's a it's extra 150 bucks a month, and you get a cool uh red beret. It's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Okay. Yeah, that's that's what you get. So you got over your uh fear of heights pretty quick.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Yeah, I had to. The uh the first jump scared that right out of me.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

So yeah. And now uh I I see talking through your profile here, you were deployed uh multiple times and over in uh Afghanistan and other areas.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Yeah. So I uh when I initially enlisted, you know, the after the 9-11 attacks, you know, they they had sent troops in Afghanistan. And so Afghanistan was basically the focus, but at the time, for the most part, things had winded down and they just had a situation in Iraq that was popping up at the same time. So by the time I enlisted, it was in August of 2002. Afghanistan wasn't really the focus anymore. Uh it was more like what's gonna happen if we go to Iraq. So, all through basic training and all through um everything that I did, the focus was you're probably gonna go to Iraq. So once I got to my unit, I was in the 82nd Airborne up in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. We were on standby to parachute into Iraq for the invasion. And then that um they decided to not do that because they didn't want to fly us all the way from Fort Bragg, I guess. So instead they pushed us back a couple months and we deployed right after the initial push, and we took over the west side of Iraq in Fallujah, which became, you know, became famous later and all that, but at the time no one really knew what it was. It was just a it's a really big city just west of Baghdad.

unknown 3:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

So that was my first deployment.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

How long were you deployed over there for?

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Eight months. We uh the 82nd of the time, basically it's like a contingent unit. They don't really do regular rotations, so they only deploy when it's an emergency. They just they needed us to go. So typically when they would do that, the deployments would last anywhere from three to six months. So we weren't sure how long we were gonna be there, but we ended up being there for eight months.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

And during that time period, uh, did you travel? My sister was deployed over there for a while, so she would travel to Germany for uh short stents, or were you there the entire eight months?

SPEAKER_01 4:20

No, I was there the entire eight months. They had they had um RR rotations that were going to certain areas, but um, I wasn't there long enough to do a full RR, so I wasn't gonna go home or anything. A lot of people were going to, I think, uh Qatar and uh a couple other places, like in the United Arab Air Air Metal's places, the um some of the Allied countries. But so for me, my only R I got was uh midway through I got a break that was like I think it was like three days long, where I was in a local base in Iraq. But and it was a nice resort area. Um it wasn't bad, but the problem is that it was in the middle of this base that was getting rocketed and mortared all the time. So, you know, I'm still I'm still listening to bombs go off while I'm supposedly on R and R, but you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Right. What did that experience uh teach you to to, as you said, dealing with uh the fear of jumping out of the out of helicopters and planes and that before to the stress level of being over there? Like, how did that shape you dealing with stress, fear, and and uh everything that was going on?

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Well, I think I had a I had quite a few jumps before we before we deployed, and uh the jumps that we did in Fort Bragg were not like we did in airborne school. Those were actual combat jumps where we would jump in with full combat load and we would do like a 72-hour mission. So I had a lot of training at the time. And, you know, once you've jumped out of plane so many times, you kind of lose a lot of fear. So I don't feel like I wasn't really afraid of anything when I went there. It was just kind of doing my job.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

So the deployment wasn't the most intense thing in the world, I don't think. I mean, we did a lot of raids and stuff, and there were some shooting. Um, there were a couple critical incidents, but nothing that I could really say was really anything that wore me down.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Gotcha. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

So that one uh really just motivated me to keep pushing. So I re-enlisted after that and I stayed in. I was gonna I was going into um Special Forces at the time. And the uh during the pipeline I got sick and I got recycled in one of the phases. So in the meantime, again recycled, I didn't really feel like doing the phase all over again. So I they let me go back to like to Big Army for a little bit. And what happened was I went to not I went to the actual Big Army, I went to the not the airborne, the um the regular standard infantry. So I went to uh um the 10th Mountain Division in Fort Drum, New York. And they were slotted for Iraq as well. So when I got there, for one thing, I got there during a blizzard, you know. So in New York. In New York, yeah. And it's it's also it's not even like like it was in like I'm from Long Island and like the New York City area and stuff. It wasn't even like that. It was uh it's on Lake Ontario and it's right on the Canadian border. Yep. So this it's like these Lake Ontario leads into swamps just east of it, and then it goes into the mountains, the Adirondacks after that. So the area that I was in, it was all these frozen swamps basically. So it's like this super wet cold, it's like negative 30 in the winter, it's crazy. Yeah. So that was that wow. I never thought I would see cold like that in my life. You know, and I'm just like, yeah, I'm from Florida, like I don't even have a tan up here. Like, what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 7:39

You may get a little dusty and never get any snow down here at all compared to where where it's up there.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

I remember like we were training up there, and I was I got in a sniper team when I first got up there. And when you're in a sniper team, you train, you build uh what's called hide sites where you you dig in and you set up an area for observation. So we were marching through this, uh like I remember at one point where we walked across a frozen creek to get to where we were going. So we're walking across like an ice over creek, and uh we sat in the snow, and they were saying, Oh, uh, the roads are about to go uh white out on the roads, I think they said. And I'm like, what's that mean? They're like, it means we need to go. So we had to pack up, and like, so like we're dug into the snow, and like I'm putting all my stuff together, and I start seeing these snowflakes fall that were about this big. Like, and it looks peaceful too. Like, there's the really beautiful snowflakes coming down.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

But then you realize that there's millions of them and they're not stopping. So we had to move fast. So on the way back, another like windstorm came through with like another like mini blizzard, and we're walking through a total whiteout. And I remember like my hands were frozen, I couldn't feel my face, you know. So yeah, that was crazy. But uh Yeah. So that unit was going to Iraq, and then right around the time it was in 2005 in summer was when the issue the incident happened with uh the Lone Survivor. You remember that with uh the Navy SEALs? Yes. So that whole thing happened, and there became this need for a push to go into that area of Afghanistan. Uh the Marines owned it at the time, but the Marines were doing exactly what we did in Iraq, where they work out of a forward operating base and then just patrol the valleys and then come back. So, and they were warning us like they took heavy contact inside the valleys, there were IEDs everywhere. Um, they were just like, yeah, it's just it was too dangerous to go out there all the time. So the idea was that they wanted us to now go there instead, to Afghanistan, to those mountains, and basically set up outposts and actually take over those valleys and basically live out there where the enemy was. So that was totally different from the Iraq deployment. But that was like something out of Vietnam is what it was. Okay. Like we were living in small outposts, we took enemy contact every single day. We were getting shot at every single day, all the time. And when we're out on patrol, we had to go instead of the ambushes. You know, we're setting out Claymore mines and trip flares and stuff, all the stuff that you saw in those old Vietnam movies, that's what we were doing.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

So basically everything that you ever learned as an infantryman, we had to do. Um, so the mountains were really rough too. Um, high elevation, very steep, and it looks like Colorado. Like it's uh rocky mountains that are covered in forests. So these forests are like, you know, very thick spruce and holly and stuff like that. So if we took contact there, most of the time we couldn't see who was shooting at us. We were totally blind by all the trees and the and the rocks and everything. So yeah, it was rough. That was we were there for 15 months, and the contact was endless. Like it was just not stopping. It was uh like I think so. Uh one of the areas that we took over was it later became famous as well. It's called the Corngal Valley. Okay, yeah. So, yeah, the Corngal at the time no one knew what it was. We were the first ones to go in there, us and the and those Marines. And the Marines left when we took over and built a base. So the Corngal is only six miles long, it's a very small valley, but they there was this huge uh timber trade coming out of there, and basically, because of all the forest, they were deforesting and uh and using the timber to use for trade. That was their only source of economy inside that valley. Very, it's very tiny. So they wanted us to stop the timber trade because they put an embargo on it because they were using the timber to trade weapons with the Taliban. So, you know, foreigners go into a valley that's owned by maybe a couple thousand people, and they see that we just cut off their only source of economy. So that naturally led to violence, and the violence didn't stop. They were persistent. So they drew outside support, they drew Taliban support, foreign support, they had Chechens and Uzbeks come in there. And uh we ended up typically if if an infantry company went into the Korngal, they would, if they were there for a year, they would be in an average of 500 firefights. Right. Yeah, it's like more than one a day. Yeah. So I went in there and then I actually left the sniper unit I was in. I went over to a line unit and I was back and forth. I was inside the pesh and the cornal, and I was all over the place, all around that same district that surrounded that valley. So I was in uh myself like just under 200 firefights when I was there. So yeah, it was just basically like walk up and down mountains, carry a whole bunch of stuff, and then shoot, get shot at, and then keep walking. You know, that's pretty much what our job was.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Yeah, that's crazy. Most people don't even hear those stories or know that even existed over there.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

It's it's actually rare. Um, most because I've been I was deployed three times, and you know, that's the only time I ever saw anything like that. And it's only in that area that it was really that that uh prevalent where they said that those six miles in the Corongall Valley accounted for an average of 60% of all enemy contact in the entire country. So that's why it was so intense. You know, it's just that small, concentrated area. Yeah. So yeah, not a lot of people have been have been there. So it's uh that's one hell of an experience. So that was rough. I uh that basically demotivated me. I was totally burnt out after that deployment. Um, I had a lot of friends get killed over there, and uh, you know, just had PTSD when it came back. So I uh wanted to get out, but I had just enough time in that it was gonna be stop loss for one more deployment. So like the the way it worked is if you have like so much time in then you're about to deploy, then you have to deploy, and you're basically it's kind of like being on overtime. You're getting paid time and a half while you're deployed.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

So I had there's no way around it. I was deploying again. So what I wanted to do was go back to what I knew. I went back to the airborne. Okay. Uh went back to 82nd and they were getting ready, they were deploying to South Afghanistan, which is a lot, it's a lot different. Still rough, but it's not quite as bad. So in that time, the 82nd was jumping on some of the major rotations. So we it was gonna be a year long instead of like the normal couple months. So uh we were actually deploying, we were training quite a bit. I got a lot of training on that right before that third deployment. Everything that I learned when I was in the Corn Gall and the and the Kunar and all that stuff, um, I basically sharpened all those skills where, you know, I'm I was already um, you know, I got a baptism by fire when I was over there, so I learned a lot. Right. But then uh all the skills were sharpened by all of these uh these amount of like training events that we were doing and schools that I was going to. So deployed for that third one, and yeah, it was still rough, it just wasn't as bad. I was down in like Kandahar and some areas like that, down in the desert. So yeah, those are my deployments though. It was a total of uh three deployments, about it was came out to 35 months in combat that I did.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah, and with that, I mean, all everything that you just talked through and experienced that there's something that you learned about human behavior that people have never seen that you're transitioning now into storytelling and leadership into the books that you're doing. Is that how you've transitioned to writing books?

SPEAKER_01 14:37

So yeah, when I first got out, I wrote a memoir from that second deployment, and that was more out of therapy than anything else. But um the reason that my family moved to Florida though was because my they my parents worked in the entertainment industry.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Um my dad, my dad was a film producer um and also an audio engineer, and my mother was a Broadway performer. So I grew up around storytelling and creatives and all those strange people you see in Hollywood. You I've been around all of them. Um so I had a knack for storytelling in the first place. So what I wanted to do was go into writing at some point. So when I got out, I was going to college for uh creative writing for English. And while I was still in college, is when I published that memoir, which it was before I had any real formal education. So, you know, it's just my editors probably made it look better than it was because I wasn't that great of a writer at the time. I could tell a story, but it was all about you know sentence structure, all that stuff, you know. So um, once I had education, it became a little bit different. So I I worked in law enforcement for a while, and um, because of writing reports all the time, I didn't really have the motivation to write anything else. So writing got put on hold while I was in law enforcement. I was in, I was a cop for 11 years. Got tired of that. It wasn't really not so much the job, it was just like the politics behind it. It's just not it's not very fun. Like they, you know, everything you do is under scrutiny. It's just not a good, not a good place to work. So I got out of that, and what happened was between that, you know, nine years in the military and 11 years in law enforcement, I had every story to tell now. Right. So, you know, and I have all the time in the world to write. So I sat down and uh last year I published I it only took me a month to write this one book. It was called The Last Gunfighter. Action Thriller. Uh well, it's like a neo-western action thriller, is what it is. And it I used some of my own experience, but it's all it's still fiction though. Wrote that and then it's been doing pretty well, but I had other ideas that I wanted to write that that I was more motivated for. So, you know, just this past month I published two. One of them is uh because the whole thing in the corngal happened exactly 20 years ago, like last month. So, or sorry, in March. March of 2006 is when I went in there. So since it's the 20-year anniversary, I figured, you know, there was a story that I had when I was in the Korangall. I came up with this idea of uh, you know, we're in there and it's it's it's a rough area. So I'm like, what if someone had to go here alone? Like that was the idea. So I wrote that only that didn't take but a couple weeks to write. It was I already had the idea down. I had it for 20 years, you know. So wrote it down, published it, and then I started I started finishing uh Code of Vengeance, which is my most recent, and it's probably the one that's been picking up the most steam and the fastest. So that basically is the idea is that I it was based on some experience when I was a cop, but it also talks about like it kind of makes fun of law enforcement culture, kind of makes fun of some of the politics and some there's uh there there is corruption, believe it or not, in modern-day law enforcement. It makes fun of that, and then it also uh takes aim at Florida. Um, the the strange, you know, cultural ecosystem that we have in Florida.

unknown 17:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

You had some Florida man jokes inside there, some degree.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Absolutely a lot of Florida man, and you know, it and it's everything that you see out of Florida, like on the news. It's uh you see some of the most some of the weirdest stories and some of the most horrific crimes, right? It's all in there. So it's dark humor is what it is. And yeah, the idea behind that was just, you know, I'm gonna make like this is gonna be hilarious, but it's also gonna be really dark. It's so I actually coined a term for it. I made the this genre doesn't exist, so I kind of made up the idea for a genre. I actually put it in the in the preface. It's called Florida Noir. Yeah. So the um the old noir stories that you saw, like the old Humphrey Bogart movies and all this stuff, like um all the dark, rainy areas and the you know, the uh morally compromised characters and all that stuff, like smoking cigarettes, all that stuff that you see in noir is in this, but in a Florida setting, in a modern Florida setting.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Gotcha. So, how do you balance that uh the new part of the Florida Noir with the the realism and the the fiction portions in your books and novels?

SPEAKER_01 18:50

So all I did was take stories that I already knew and kind of put them all into it's it's it's actually it right, it reads kind of like an epic, like it has a long character arc going through it. Where I took basically designed some characters that you know were all of them are a mess. Like you have a cop that's burnt out, um, you have like one that is decent as at his job, but he also has an uh absolute chaotic personal life. And basically, I drew the arc over over time to show like how basically everything falls apart for this one guy, and then it turns into absolute chaos. But it goes into the kind of chaos that you see in Florida, like a lot of it. So, you know, you get the crazy storms, you know, you get strange alligator calls. Um, and you know, you get you know, some of the strange uh, you know, uh the drug-related things, like you see the guys like they smoke meth and they do something stupid with a venomous snake or something. Like so, like it all it's all just kind of incorporated into that realistic story. Like everything about it is something that could actually happen. With and you know, people that have read it so far have said that like if you don't live in Florida, you would think this is absolute insanity. But if you live in Florida, you'll say, No, that's a Tuesday. Like that's just the way it is. Oh, yeah, the biblical thunderstorm comes through and someone got shot, and then a gator and a guy in a mobility scooter that's uh that's you know drunk and throwing things. Like, yeah, that's just a Tuesday.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Right. There are definitely some good Florida man uh stories and jokes from around here moving from the DC area where you think that area was in its own, but down here we have uh it's a whole nother world.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

It is, because you have all the elements of the Southeast and then some other stuff from like that you see, like people like tran uh transplants from around the country that come in. So uh you have this strange mix of cultures um put into its own like Florida culture. And to us, you know, chaos is just part of the part of the week for us. It's just you know, it's always something going on down here. Like I live on the space coast and we just had an earthquake.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Yeah, yeah, I've seen that out there this week.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Yeah, it hit most of Central Florida and yeah, it was that was absolutely and I didn't even think anything of it. Like I felt shaking. Then I I'm like, oh, like did a did a neighbor drop something? I don't know what that is. So uh and then or I live near the highway, so I thought maybe something happened on 95. Yeah, and then I see in the news, oh no, it was a magnet, uh, what was it, eight magnitude? I don't know what how do you measure that, but some like moderate size earthquake that happened in the Gulf, and I guess it trickled over across uh central Florida. So Yeah. And you know, this is like a week after we just had, you know, I live on the space coast, we just had a uh rocket explode.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Yeah, the Amazon rocket totally lit the entire uh the entire night sky in the in an orange. So fun place to be.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Yeah, it is a great place to be. When I first moved down here, we have a bunch of uh air bases over here, Tindo, Eglin, and that, and they do test bomb drops. And so the house was shaking at the beginning. You're like, Wow, what is that? What is going on? Until you realize what it was, you thought you're in an earthquake or something.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Yeah. But they call um so the panhandle, they they they call that the l the lower Alabama panhandle, right? Isn't that?

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Yeah, yeah. So uh I'm trying to think what it used to be called. The Redneck River area is what it was. We've we've changed it to the Hamptons of the South, is the new term.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

They say the north the the farther north that you go in Florida, the more southern it gets.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Yeah, that is true.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

Jet Jacksonville, everything north and the panhandle feels like the south. And then once it goes south of there, it becomes a completely separate culture, you know. Right. And then you get to Miami and you go, I don't know what that place is.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

It's kind of a totally different culture. Yeah. Yeah. So do you self-publish uh all your books? How uh and how did you learn and figure that out when you started publishing after you'd done write all your books?

SPEAKER_01 22:43

So I have a publisher for Last Gunfighter that went through my publisher, Palmetto.

unknown 22:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

But the most recent two, the uh Wolfhound Dawn and Code of Vengeance. I wanted to see, I wanted my own control of certain things into these ones because they were uh stories that I put a lot of work into and I really wanted to make sure that everything was correct. Yeah. So I I took it, I tried out the self-publishing, and it actually worked out great. Good. So I'm probably gonna some of the larger stories I'm probably gonna go back through my publisher for those. But for things like these that were, you know, I can I can easily self-publish something like this.

unknown 23:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

And it was that easy to figure out how to self-publish through uh an online publishing stuff.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

So are you familiar with Microsoft Word? Like, are you are you like are you really familiar with like the intricate workings of it?

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Uh I'm yeah, I use it for just note-taking and normal stuff, so not anything deep inside it.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

So uh formatting on Microsoft Word, I learned it in college, but I still had to go back and research again because it's so easy to forget all of this. Yeah. That is not fun to do. It's it's a lot of work. Um typically, this last when I was publishing Code of Vengeance, uh, I was behind my computer in this office for I think about a about a week straight. And I was running on like two hours of sleep a night because I was just like running through every single chapter and trying to format and make sure everything correct on the page and all the headings were correct and everything. And Word is very finicky when it comes to that. So I'm fighting with Word the entire time that I'm doing it. So, no, that was rough. You know, it is much easier to go through my publisher for sure. And then same with uh designing the cover, that takes very very a lot of precision when you're doing that. Because um, you have to make sure that it fits the exact dimensions of how it's gonna look when it's you know actually printed on that cover. You know, if you get the spine wrong, the spine's gonna be off or it's gonna be overlapping, you know. So it's you know, it came out great. You know, I'm very happy with the way it came out. But yeah, it definitely was a lot of work. It's very labor intensive.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

Yeah. And how did uh where do you publish them on for people to go find your books, either through your publisher or the stuff published that you bought on the on Amazon, Audible? Uh where can people find your books?

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Uh my Amazon author page is just Jared Maxwell. Okay. They can just look on there and it has all of my books listed right there. Um Goodreads under under my same name, Jared Maxwell. And then really just you can Google one of the titles you want to look at and with my name, it'll pop up. Uh Wolfhound Dawn is a very unique title. So if you look up that, it's only gonna come up with that book.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

So Code of Vengeance comes up. Uh if you put Jared Maxwell, it comes up with that. If you put Code of Vengeance, it will, but it'll also show uh a couple other things. Like there's the the word vengeance is used quite a bit. So you have like uh some of these, I don't want to judge them, but they're like they're like AI written um tactical thrillers, like the I call them tactical bro novels. Yeah. Like where you know you spend like, you know, you spend uh, you know, 30 pages talking about someone's uh gear that he's wearing, you know, things like that. But I do see some of that on there. But um, that's not what this is. This is totally this is just a a crime epic, is what it is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

And so what uh well what's your goal for the next uh few years on publishing books? It seems like you really enjoy it and you can crank them out when you get into it. There's a passion behind it. You get get locked in and start writing. Any new ideas that are coming up uh in the future?

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Yes. So I have I actually so I I have one book that I totally finished that is not ready. I'm not gonna put that out just yet because I want to make sure that I build enough of an audience before I put it out because it's uh it's like I'm I'll try to dumb it down as best I can, but it's like almost it's like 650 pages long. It's a dystopian epic, and that it's very dark and you know, it takes place in a totally messed up future and everything. And but that also has the same kind of world building that I did for Code of Vengeance, but Code of Vengeance is also only 400 something pages, so it's not quite, you know, it's that level. So that one's fine, you know. A lot of people want to read it. But that one was done a long time ago. I am just letting it sit there until I'm ready to publish it, really. I'm gonna go through my publisher for that one, probably, just because of how large it is. I need someone else to take care of that for me. Then I have uh one that I have started a rough draft for, but I'm actually gonna redo it. But basically, I have a romance uh or a espionage adventure romance that I wrote. Um it's like it's both at the same time. It came out good. It's uh it's very it has a lot of tension and um you know uses a lot of real uh you know intelligence trade craft that you see in like in uh intelligence agencies and stuff. And it also has a love story that goes along with it. So nice.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

And how do these ideas pound in uh into you? You just walk around one day and you something pops in your head and you're like, that would make a great book.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Kind of, yeah. So the first one that I ever came up with the idea for, actually both of these, were uh when I was, like I said, when I was deployed, I thought about the idea of someone having to go into the coin all alone. And I uh I kind of when I was in college, I actually developed a character for that idea. Because when you're in creative writing, you have to learn how to develop characters and how to develop uh you know your plot and everything. So I wrote a character sheet for the main character for that. Then I wrote, um, we had one of the times we had to write a screenplay and I named it Wolfhound Dawn. And the screenplay was basically the first act of what of what this story would be. So I wrote it. The professor, I got an A on it. She said that it was some of the most marketable materials she's ever seen. Um, but that was a long time ago, though. Nowadays, people are a little more burnt out on when it comes to war. So it's not quite what it was before. So that was more of an honor of the reason that I published it, you know. But Code of Vengeance, I came up with the idea out of catharsis. Uh okay. I was angry when I was um when I left law enforcement. I was just so tired of all the politics and everything. And it just came up with a story. I'm like, well, what if like someone went through all of this and they chose violence? Is what the idea I was like, what if they did that, you know? So I'm like, so I wrote this story and I looked it over and I'm like, no one would ever read this. Like, I'm like, and if you if you saw what it looked like, you you wouldn't, you you would just want to put it away. No, I don't, no thanks. Because it was just it was so angry and hateful and mean and like so I didn't look at it again for about six months. And I looked at it and I'm like, you know, this needs to be entertaining. Like, I if I want to publish this, you know, otherwise I'm just gonna throw it away. Right. So that was when I came up with the idea. I'm like, well, it takes place in Florida, and there isn't a single alligator in this book, there isn't a single hilarious tweaker doing hilarious tweaker things in the book. Yeah. I'm like, so I'm like, no, I'm like, this needs to be a comedy. And I'm like, and it has law enforcement in there. I'm like, there is so much, so such an intricate culture inside of law enforcement that you can you can find comedy out of all of that. You can easily make fun of all the different types of cops you've met, all the different types of units you've seen. I'm like, this is yeah, I'm like, so I went back through and I totally revamped the book and it came out to what it is now, which is a dark comedy. And you know, when I was editing, when I was editing that, you know, when actually when I was formatting it, I was reading back through it, and I had to take breaks every now and then because I was just laughing too hard. I'm like, did I really write this? This is hilarious! Like, and like I just had to like step away and drink some water. I'm like, you can't stop laughing.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

That's pretty funny.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Yeah, the ideas just kind of come every now and then. I'm not sure. So the the dystopian epic came, I came up with that idea because I saw something. Oh, it was I think it was on one of the streaming channels, maybe it was Netflix or something. They had this uh this whole documentary series about the rise and the rise and fall of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler, right? And a lot of it is really interesting. I'm like, I was actually surprised how interesting it was with how this guy was able to build a reputation, you know, and become this dictator when he was basically a nobody before that. So that actually is what kind of sparked that idea. I'm like, well, what if, you know, modern times or near future, someone was able to rise similar to that. Or um, so the idea was building a character that was based kind of not it wasn't totally on him, but it was actually closer to like uh to Joseph Stalin. But that was the idea behind that was uh how I could, you know, see an archetype that turns into like someone that is seen as a hero, but he's actually a villain, right? Right. So yeah, it's just when they come to me like that, I'll just kind of jot him down on notes on my phone and just like come back to him later and think of what I could do with it. The romance idea, I don't know where I oh, you know what? I do. That was a fever dream. I had a fever dream. The fever dream was that I was a I don't want to actually I don't want to say what it was because it'll give away the story, but right, yeah. But the idea for that book actually came to me in a dream that I had. I woke up and I'm I thought about it. I'm like, uh went over to my Microsoft Word and just jotted down some quick notes on it and what I dreamt. And then I came back and uh started actually writing a story out of it. And actually, it's coming out pretty good. All right, yes, it's good.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Well, we look forward to uh to reading those. Yeah, I appreciate it. So uh it's been great having you on the show today. I think the guests we're really gonna like hearing your background, especially some of the military experience that you shared today and and the novels that you're putting out there that seem entertaining. Um I'm looking forward to grabbing one of those and reading those uh this weekend now that you you you said that. So everyone can find you. You listed it on Amazon. Uh, are you on any social media platforms? I'll post the links to that through here so people can get to that.

unknown 31:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

So the Amazon author page I can give you right now, and then I can give you my my author Facebook, if someone wants to contact me directly, is uh is uh Facebook.com slash author Jared Maxwell. And that's if they want to message me directly. I don't post a lot on there, it's more for people reaching out.

unknown 32:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

But my author page is uh Amazon.com and then you do slash author slash Jared Maxwell.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

All right, perfect. Yeah, I'll post those links in here so there'll be hyperlinks for the people that go to the website and view it. Jared, thanks for being on the show today. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

If you have any flirtings listening, then um definitely check out Code of Vengeance. You'll probably recognize quite a few stories in there. Chuck, appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Thanks for listening today's episode. If you liked it, be sure to follow and subscribe. I'll leave you with this what's the biggest issue you see in the pain handle right now? Join the conversation with me at Chuck Asberry IINX. I'd love to hear your thoughts.