My brother was an improviser. He's now a lobbyist, but he used to perform improv in the city when he was in high school, and one of the funniest guys I know to this day.
I started to write in 2001. I wrote the books for the fun of it. It was an old idea I had had since the nineties.
If Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything in recent history, it is the unpredictability of war and that these things are easier to get into than to get out of, and, frankly, the facile way in which too many people talk about, 'Well, let's just go attack them.'