10 years ago a young publishing house took a chance on an unknown author… me. I am proud to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the ‘Fallen Angels Trilogy‘ with Double Dragon Books! ‘Fallen Angels‘ will always have a special place in my heart. Even thought it took over eight years, numerous rewrites and re-starts, it was the first novel I completed–a feat I had been trying to accomplish for as long as I can recall. I started the original manuscript while still a freshman in High School around 1992. It wasn’t until 1999 that I dug it out of my files and finished it (I found the original floppy disc with my save files!). The only characters from the early drafts to survive the purge were Private Investigator Jake Silver and alien abductee Christina Anderson. Everything else was scrapped, including the original setting of rural Montana. The majority of the novel now takes place in and around Las Vegas and Area 51, the not-so-top-secret base that resides in a dried up lake bed known as “Groom Lake” on the Nellis Air Force Test Range in southern Nevada.

The book grabbed a few good reviews along the way, a few bad ones, and eventually became known as a “beach read” (one of those books you can take with you to the beach and enjoy while relaxing). I always felt it was like a summer “popcorn movie”: an adventure with lots of explosions, car chases, barely two-dimensional heroes and villains, ultimately forgettable, but is a helluva a lot of fun. You know, like Nicholas Cage movies like ‘National Treasure,’ ‘The Rock,’ or ‘Con Air.’ It’s interesting to skim back through the book now. My influences were easy to pick out and often heavy handed, the dialogue was a bit stiff and stilted in places, the generational subtext of the strained relationships between fathers and their children felt a little forced, and I was trying very hard to channel Chris Carter… but it didn’t turn out too badly, and I’m still proud of ‘Fallen Angels.’ Despite it being the year of ‘The Da Vinci Code’, ‘Fallen Angels‘ managed to become one of the best-selling ebooks of 2005. One of my favorite moments related to this book came when my daughter Alexis was born: Lexi decided to arrive just about a month after ‘Fallen Angels‘ was published. While in the hospital waiting for my daughter’s grand entrance, I noticed one of the nurses checking her Palm Pilot. Hand-held devices like that weren’t as common as they are today, and I had been considering buying one. Striking up a conversation with the nurse, I asked her how she liked the device and what she used it for. She answered that she used it primarily to read books and admitted that she had just purchased a few new books. One, she said, was about Area 51, alien abductions, and some private investigator. That sounded pretty familiar… I asked her what the title of the book was. I couldn’t help but grin when she answered “‘Fallen Angels‘ by Terence West.” One of the nurses that was helping to deliver my daughter had just purchased and was reading my first novel. Mind blown… I offered to autograph her Palm Pilot. She politely declined. It seems hard to believe that a decade has passed since ‘Fallen Angels‘ was published, but here we are. “Fallen Angels” was published by Double Dragon Books in January of 2005, and its two sequels, ‘Biogenesis, and ‘Crusade,’ were published a month later. It’s the 10th anniversary of the Fallen Angels Trilogy! Thank you to Deron Douglas, my publisher at Double Dragon Books. Despite being a time in the ebook industry that felt very much like the lawless wild west, Double Dragon Books was always professional, friendly, and incredible to work with. Deron was always fair, honest, and an awesome graphic designer to boot. I can’t say enough good about Double Dragon Books. I am proud to call DDP my publisher. To Chere–My editor and one of my closest friends: Thank you for the words, the advice, grammar lessons, and two strong shoulders to lean on. And thank you to all of my readers. I know I’m not the greatest writer, but I believe in the stories. Thank you so much for choosing to read my novels and spend some time kicking around in my head. It means the world to me. Thank you all. So much. Read More: Terence West’s Bibliography