What's in a SEAL?

Today my guest is Sharon Hamilton, who writes paranormal and contemporary sensual romance. She is currently working on a three-novel series involving Navy SEALS. Her debut novel, Angel, is launching in May. She also writes erotic shorts under the pen name Angela Love. And while Sharon is taking over Terry's Place, I'm over at The Blood Red Pencil talking more about using Track Changes from the author's viewpoint. Welcome, Sharon.

My son is a Navy SEAL. His graduating class started with 192 trainees, and by the time the class was through, 7 of the original men were left. My son was the youngest in the group.

You can imagine what goes through your mind when your child tells you he has elected to put himself in harm’s way. One of the first things I told him was that he was a better person than I was. But I didn’t realize what kind of a course they would be going through, and what kind of commitment it took to finish.

In the original class, there was a Senator’s son, an astronaut’s son, captains of several Annapolis and West Point sports teams, and several pro football players. There was a young man who gave up his chance to compete in the Olympics to try out. Most of these didn’t make it. No shame in that. The training teaches a young man what his limits are. The ones that remain would jump off a twelve-story building if they were told. Just like the young SEAL did in Iraq when he fell on a grenade and saved four other team guy’s lives, at the expense of his own. And he’d already been wounded earlier in the day.



My son says he feels lucky to have found something he loves doing at such a young age. He looks over at his mom and grins. I’m on my 3rd career and am now a full time writer.

My husband and I just returned from a few days to visit him in San Diego, where he had been sent for a special training. We went down to the beach while he was working, and watched the young recruits moving their boats over the boulders, getting “wet and sandy” and familiarizing themselves with becoming a team, thinking as a team, adjusting for each other’s capabilities and shortcomings, to achieve a desired outcome.

I am writing a series of SEAL stories now, and asked him to take us to a favorite tattoo parlor and one of the grills team guys would hang out. I asked him how he would know another guy belonged to a team. He told me it was the eye contact. And then he added, “Look for a group of guys who dress completely different, but are all doing the same thing.”

Just after he’d graduated and received his Trident, we bought some furniture for him and his buddies, who were sharing an apartment. They were using a cardboard box for a TV stand, and didn’t mind sitting on the floor to eat because they didn’t have a table. We brought them some boxes of furniture from IKEA, laid them on the floor. All of the guys came over and the 6 of us sat in a circle, without saying a word, and put the furniture together. Everything was done in about twenty minutes. There was no leader. No bravado. It was a lesson in total cooperation and commitment to an objective.

I hope my stories will let others know about these fine young men, from all walks of life and backgrounds. If I have even a thimbleful of his courage, I’ll achieve that goal of writing stories and characters you readers will remember for years.

For more about Sharon, you can find her at her website, blog, on Facebook and Twitter.