Andy’s Blog

Every now and then a seminal event arrives without much notice by the public. What has been occurring this past week aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in the Pacific Ocean may well qualify as such an occurrence. For the first time ever an unmanned or “drone”-type fighter-size aircraft, Northop’s X-47B,  is being launched and test-landed on an aircraft carrier at sea. Anyone even remotely familiar with US foreign policy over the past 50 years, our projection of …

The Dragonflies series is of course fiction. But how drones are used in law enforcement and investigation is a topic that should be of concern to all.             Lawmakers eye regulating domestic surveillance drones Published May 19, 2013 FoxNews.com April 27, 2012: Seattle Police officer Reuben Omelanchuk is at the controls of the department’s new, small radio-controlled Draganflyer X6 drone with a camera attached, in Seattle. (AP) Amid growing concern over the use of drones …

When I first started writing Dragonflies: Shadow of Drones, the technology used in the book seemed almost far-fetched. I was soon to learn otherwise.  Check out this article by Chris Anderson from  sUASNews: WHEN THE FUTURE SNEAKS UP ON YOU Last month, at a Congressional hearing, Sentator Patrick Leahy quoted an FAA prediction that there would be “as many as 30,000 small, lightweight unmanned vehicles [drones] operating in the national airspace by the end of this decade”. That was considered a lot. And …

In the run-up to next month’s publication of Dragonflies: Shadow of Drones we’re running a sale on the third Frank Pavlicek novel, the Shamus Award-winning Cold Quarry, temporarily lowering the e-book price to $0.99. The book has spent some time in the top ten on the Barnes & Noble NOOK Bestsellers list yesterday and today, peaking at #8. Cold Quarry also flirted with the top 100 in Amazon’s Kindle store this morning, moving to #1 in “hardboiled mysteries”, #1 in “men’s …