#Interview with Edward Hochsmann, author of the Cutter Kauai Sea Adventures series

Take a deep dive into this contemporary action/adventure series, Cutter Kauai Sea Adventures, with an excerpt from the first book and an interview with author Edward Hochsmann. Be sure to follow the tour for even more after you download your copy. Best of luck entering the giveaway!

An aging Coast Guard patrol boat is all that stands between the world and nuclear annihilation!

The world is on the brink of war, with NATO mobilizing to counter a Russian threat to Poland and Lithuania and leaders openly discussing war options. In the midst of the crisis, a Russian bomber collides with a U.S. fighter off Florida causing the accidental launch of a nuclear-tipped hypersonic missile.

A Coast Guard cutter on a routine patrol finds a drug-laden sailboat smashed and adrift north of the Florida Keys. The boat’s damage is from a near miss by the Russian missile which has not harmlessly flown deep into the Gulf of Mexico as initially thought, but crashed somewhere in the Keys.

The Coast Guard crew is in a race against a vicious and powerful international crime syndicate to find and recover the Russian nuke before its discovery can trigger a nuclear war.

Exploring the friendship and teamwork of a typical ship’s crew, in the face of unexpected and hazardous challenges, Dagger Quest provides a fast-paced, taut story – excellent fare for both sea adventure and military thriller fans.

Read an excerpt:

Kauai joins the fight at Resolution Key:

On the Puma’s video display, Sam saw Bill take the fatal hit and fall back dead. His heart was in his throat until he leaned forward to peer at the screen, then a wave of relief when he saw the long hair and beach clothing, apparent even in the low-resolution image. It must be the prisoner. He noted a pause in the action and saw the figures behind the westernmost vehicle aim a mortar-like device and fire it. The camera picked up a flash of a small object, then a burst overhead Ben and Simmons’s redoubt. Either Ben or Simmons—from the camera aspect and mist, he couldn’t tell which—fast-crawled to the other briefly, then returned to his position. Sam was unconsciously pounding his right fist on his thigh as the scene played out before him.

“Getting something,” Williams said. “Yes! Two targets on long-wave IR.”

Sam leaned in. “Surface action starboard, train on the target on the far left and standby. Deffler, illuminate the hostile vehicle farthest west.” Standing up, he shouted, “OOD, Crash Back Now!” He keyed his handheld radio. “Pickins, haul ass back to the boat deck now!”

Hopkins shouted into the telephone, “Main Control, Conn, Crash Back, all back full!”

“Unmasked,” Deffler piped up. “Target illuminated.”

Sam held on to the safety rail as the patrol boat pitched down and violently shuddered while shedding speed quickly in the emergency stop. He watched the firing resume on the screen, and the figures started moving from behind the vehicles and closing on Ben and Simmons’s position. 

“Main Control, Conn, All Stop!” Hopkins shouted into the phone when the speed dropped to zero. The roar of the engines immediately died away.

“Conn, Mount 51, more continuous gunfire bearing zero-six-zero relative, no visual target!”

“Conn, aye!” Hopkins replied.

“Target identified, target confirmed, on target and tracking!” Williams said.

“Batteries release. Commence fire!”

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Mission: Five days to destroy the enemy in the Caribbean before a catastrophic weapon is unleashed—but all he can think about is the woman he left behind…

The deadliest nerve gas ever made has fallen into the hands of a murderous Caribbean drug cult. The criminal 252 Syndicate has the gas in a secret lab on an oil rig servicing ship, but the ship has been taken for ransom by the Salinas Cartel in a violent drug war. The U.S. can’t use airstrikes and calls on Coast Guard Officer Ben Wyporek to lead his crew through a risky covert raid on the Salinas cult’s fortified island base. He accepts the assignment, but remembers a previous lethal encounter with the 252s and struggles to say goodbye to the love of his life, Victoria Carpenter.

Ben and his crew aboard the stealth-equipped Cutter Kauai must sneak into the harbor and tow the ship away. But if Kauai is detected and defeated, death by gas or at the hands of vicious adversaries will follow. Now, every decision Ben makes will determine the fate of his entire crew—and the chances of reuniting with Victoria.

This second book of the series builds on the friendships and teamwork of Kauai’s crew, this time in the face of several challenging missions and one potentially lethal encounter. It is a worthy sequel to Dagger Quest that sea adventure and military thriller fans will enjoy.

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A New Captain’s First Patrol Turns into a Fight for Their Lives

Young Coast Guard Lieutenant Haley Reardon has not even gotten her feet on the ground on her new patrol boat command when she finds herself and her crew supporting a dangerous covert mission. They must insert and retrieve a Defense Intelligence Agency operations team trying to seize a transnational criminal syndicate boss from a small Caribbean island controlled by a front company of the Chinese government and protected by a superior military force.

A honeymoon period would be lovely, but, as always, the world gets a vote.

Can Haley avoid leaving the DIA team to their fate, when attempting to rescue them could destroy her crew and boat and lead to war?

This third installment of the series conveys the humor, friendships, and teamwork of Kauai’s crew from the previous books, with a new series of exciting actions from search and rescue to combat. The crew and their new skipper must come together for the toughest mission they have ever faced.

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Buy the whole Cutter Kauai Sea Adventures series

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Do you have any tattoos?  Where? When did you get it/them? Where are they on your body?

Sorry, I’m old school – no tattoos or piercings, just scars.

Is your life anything like it was two years ago?

Yes and no.  Life is a road whose sole destination is the grave. At any time t, my life was different from what it was at t – 2 years.  I think all our lives are quite different today than they were in the Summer of 2020.  However, the fundamental things are unchanged: be true to your oaths and yourself, take care of your loved ones, consider the other person’s point of view before taking action, if practicable.

How long have you been writing?

Two answers for this one.  I’ve been writing non-fiction (reports, analyses, etc.) for almost forty years.  I first started writing fiction in earnest a little over two-and-a-half years ago.

What advice would you give a new writer just starting out?

1. Pick a topic you know and like. Writing is hard work—it’s far more difficult when it’s a topic you don’t care for.
2. Invest in your characters and bring them to life. It’s OK to be friends with them and love them in spite of their faults. The goal is to hook the readers and make them want to know more. The greatest complement I ever had in a review was from a reader who said the end of the story felt like she was leaving the crew, and she didn’t like that.
3. Find a good editor and “beta” readers. Because of (1) and (2), you will be far too biased to review your own work.
4. Getting published via the traditional route is like winning the lottery (with about those odds) unless you are an emerging J. K. Rowling or Stephen King. I have been to writers’ conferences where people have been trying without success for ten years to get published. The “stink” of self-publishing is mostly going the way of brick and mortar bookstores in the face of Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and the like. You have to decide whether you are going to forgo the promotional advantage of traditional publishing or hold out for the miniscule chance of getting picked up—be honest with yourself before you decide.

Tell us something about your newest release that is NOT in the blurb.

Dagger Quest—it has some features of a “coming of age” story in that Ben is confronted with the reality that his decisions can have far reaching effects. His “going along” with Simmons put not only his life at risk, but the lives of his crew and the career of his best friend and CO, who had to “throw away the book” to save his life. Hopkins privately reams him out about this afterward in a subtly emotional scene.

Caribbean Counterstrike—the story includes an airliner crash at sea similar to the USAIR forced landing in the Hudson River in 2009, ultimately featured in the Tom Hanks movie Sully.  The details of the story’s version trace from this mishap and the Garuda Indonesia flight 421 mishap in 2002.

Bravely and Faithfully—the “bookend” vignettes in this story both involve the critical dilemma facing first response units of putting your own people at risk to save others.  In the first, Sam takes Kauai into a hurricane, putting his crew of sixteen brave people at serious risk to save the young family of four.  In the last, Haley is faced with a similar quandary—putting her crew’s sixteen lives on the block (plus defying her orders) to save six. I have personally had to make the GO-NO-GO decision where there is a real risk your crew will be lost, but if you don’t go, people will die. It’s not fun.

Edward Hochsmann is the pen name of a retired U. S. Coast Guard search and rescue and law enforcement professional. The veteran mariner, aviator, college professor, and defense analyst has added “author” to his list of experiences. Ed likes reading, police procedurals, contemporary music on the road, and classical music in the office. After a career traveling from Australia in the west to Italy and Germany in the east, Ed has settled into a quiet life in the Florida Panhandle to focus on writing (and not shoveling snow!) 

Ed has two novels published right now (plus one launching in August 2022) in the Cutter Kauai Sea Adventures series about a Coast Guard patrol boat assigned to “special” missions. Dagger Quest takes place in the Florida Keys and involves an aging Coast Guard patrol boat dragooned into a search for a lost Russian nuclear weapon in a time of international crisis. The second, Caribbean Counterstrike, features the same patrol boat and crew, now with equipment and training upgrades, sent to recover a deadly nerve gas from a murderous Caribbean drug cartel. Bravely and Faithfully has Kauai, under a new captain supporting a covert raid on a Caribbean island held by the Chinese.

Ed’s second series, C6S: Patrol Force deals with a combined defense establishment and constabulary for a galactic economic empire called the Confederation of the Six Systems (C6S). Ed has published two novellas and a novel-length collection late last year. 

Stay connected with Ed – 

Website: https://www.edwardhochsmann.com/ 

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20594307.Edward_Hochsmann

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edhochsmann/

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/edward-m-hochsmann

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