Life is often more a sweat than a pleasure but, paradoxically, it is the sweat that gives true meaning to all of life's pleasures. This is the message from Mack Bolan, book after book, and it is the only thing dignifying this type of fiction.

Ashton Ford will come as something of a surprise to those of you who have been with me over the years. This is not the same type of fiction that established my success as a novelist; Ford is not a gutbuster and he is not trying to save the world from anything but its own confusion. There are no grenade launchers or rockets to solve his problems and he is more of a lover than a fighter. I have grown, I hope, both as a person and as a writer, and I needed another vehicle to carry the creative quest. Ashton Ford is that vehicle.

Hell was not for the living, it was for the dead, even the hallowed dead. Let the dead rest in peace. Someday Mack Bolan, too, would rest. For now, he had to find his way among the living.

As you grow older, you will discover that your mind is the only truly limiting factor in your life. With a well developed mind you can go anywhere and do whatever. But nothing comes automatically and the best things don't come easy.

Every writer is working from his own individual world view, and that can become as characteristic as a fingerprint.

When I wrote War Against the Mafia as a Vietnam statement, I didn't expect much to come of it-but quite a bit came and it captured me. I continued the books to feed the obvious hunger that was there for heroic fiction.

The violence in the Executioner books is merely stage-dressing for dramatizing the commitment and dedication Bolan has to his ideals and the lengths to which he will go to honor them. We can learn this message of love and commitment and carry it into our own lives without the violence and bloodshed, and of course it is this wish that fuels the writing. I do not want my readers to pick up a gun and follow Bolan's example; I want them to be stirred by his commitment and to find ways to meet the same challenges without resort to violent means.