We met in ‘88
A couple of kids a trio of fellas all in Honors College agog at taking on this new world
Around that same time Three Men and a Baby came out and because there were three of us and three of them
we played a game
matching each guy to a character
Responsible Tom for Galen
Loyal-to-a-fault Steve for Keith
Flighty philandering Ted Danson for me
We lost touch the way people do
One went into the Army
One went to work for Coca-Cola
One went halfway around the world and landed in Hollywood
Then Facebook found us again around 2010
So let me ask you something before I go further:
what’s the version of that in your own life?
The friend you played that game with
decades ago
without knowing it was a preview
The people you assumed would drift for good
and then one day resurfaced
and you found out the story kept writing itself the whole time you weren’t looking
What shape did your life take?
Because here’s what I learned when we found each other again:
we’d all basically become the guys we joked about back then
One built a career in respectable management fell in love raised a daughter who wasn’t biologically his like she was his own
The other left the Army after two tours married a hometown girl and stayed
stayed with the job for twenty years stayed with the wife for longer
And me?
Building a business
Getting knocked on my ass
Losing at love
losing at life
failing more times than one person has the patience to count
Different paths
Same twenty-something men underneath it
still recognizable
still somehow making each other laugh three decades later
What happens if you never circle back to check?
That’s the real risk isn’t it
not that the friendship ends
but that you never find out how the story turned out
You assume
You guess
You let Facebook micro-updates stand in for the whole picture
and never actually ask
I think that’s true of more than friendships
It’s true of stories too
We assume we know how something’s going to go
the responsible one stays responsible the flighty one stays flighty
and then life throws a plot twist nobody saw coming
and it turns out the story was better
and stranger than the trailer promised
So here’s what I want to co-create with you today:
the ideal version of “getting lost in something unpredictable”
Not another scroll through a feed that already knows exactly what you’ll click
Something that actually surprises you
Twists you don’t see loading a mile out
Characters who turn out to be more
or less
than the label you slapped on them in Chapter 1
That’s the whole appeal of a good thriller
and it’s what I built into this collection
Twenty books one purchase your whole library populated at once
Conspiracies that don’t play out the way you expect
Ordinary people forced into extraordinary situations
Villains who are sometimes more competent than the people protecting you
The kind of stories where you think you’ve got the ending called
and you’re wrong
I’m not going to fake urgency to move this
No ticking clock
No “only a few left”
it’s a digital collection there’s no shelf running empty
The price isn’t jumping tonight at midnight If I’ve earned any trust with you over these posts it’s because I tell you the truth instead of manufacturing a reason to panic-buy
I’d rather you buy this because you want twenty good books not because I scared you into it
Appreciate you being here
Chris
PS Two of us named our sons Alex
Two named daughters Emma and the third Emily
None of us saw that coming back in ‘88 either
18 year old boys are not discussing future baby names
Life’s better when it keeps surprising you
on the page and off it
Asset
True Nature
Nominee
ECHO POINT
No Known Connection
The Shadowboxer
Dead Drop
Columbian Gold
Webb of Lies
Corrupt Caracas
The Venezuelan Conflict
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