Feild kills people in print
CRAIG COUNTY – George Feild kills people. In print, that is.
Probably most of the people who know the Johns Creek resident realize he writes adventure novels. Field is the author of four Alec Caldwell thrillers, the latest of which is “Kingdom of Pawns.”
Johns Creek resident George Feild has published four thriller novels.
The galley of that novel has been selected as a candidate to go into the publisher’s Hollywood Database as a potential screenplay for either a movie or one made for television, according to publisher Xlibris.
The farmer who retired from banking describes the latest adventures of his protagonist: retired CIA agent Alec Caldwell is called back into service to find a former colleague who went missing while on a covert mission to track down terrorists supposedly hiding in Florida’s Everglades.
And then Feild just happens to mention that Saran gas is “one of the most deadly chemical agents on earth and is classified by the United Nations as a Weapon of Mass Destruction?”
You can bet Saran shows up in “Kingdom of Pawns.”
Although Johns Creek is light years away from the fast world of Alec Caldwell, Feild says driving his tractor on the farm has gotten him over writer’s block at least once.
“I had developed ‘writer’s block’ in the middle of one of my novels, and just couldn’t put together the information I needed to carry the theme forward. I was on my tractor one day cutting my pasture when a thought came to me out of the blue that would move the story off dead center, and in the right direction.
“I immediately turned the tractor around and headed for the house, ran inside and began writing again. Just about the same thing happened in Kingdom of Pawns. I stopped writing for about six months, then, when vacationing in Florida, got the urge again and finished the novel,” he said.
Feild’s protagonist has some of the characteristics of his brother-in-law, Alec Rhudy of Roanoke, and a friend of Feild’s from New Mexico whose military exploits, “are the stuff books are written about.”
Alec Rhudy guides bear and sheep hunters in Alaska, and his friend “possesses a photographic mind, is a regular Las Vegas gambler…and was secretly in Cambodia before anyone over here knew how to spell the name of the country,” according to Feild.
He describes his character Caldwell as “a man with exceptional shooting skills who was raised in the Montana wilderness, and who uses his woods lore skills to help him with his work with the CIA.”
Feild has been writing and publishing his adventure stories since shortly after he and his wife, Nancy, moved to Craig County to live in 2001. The couple had bought 12 acres because they wanted to retire to Craig near Nancy’s other brother, Frank G. Rhudy, who lives with his wife, Yvonne, on Johns Creek. Feild and Alec Rudy had gone hunting and fishing in the county for years. Feild said his father gave him his first shotgun when he was 10.
Feild recalled how he got his first notion to write. He said he was sitting on a wooded ridge near their home, surrounded by white oaks and plenty of acorns that had dropped off those trees. “Acorns are a favorite food source for turkey and deer, and I assumed if I sat there long enough the flock of turkeys I knew ranged in these woods would come by.”
He noticed several deer moving out of a nearby hollow where another hunter he knew was in the area would pass. “He was a good half mile away from me, but the small band of deer had already sensed his presence and were beginning to move out of harm’s way, always taking advantage of as much cover as possible to avoid detection. None of the deer were aware of my presence. They never looked in my direction, always concentrating on where they were going and from where they had come.”
Feild said he was fascinated studying the deer herd’s tactics to avoid being detected by the other hunter. They seemed to be in no hurry but constantly looked back over their shoulders and testing the air for scents of the approaching hunter. “They had vanished well ahead of his arrival,” added Feild, who realized that if a person understands tactics wild animals use to avoid danger, that knowledge can be used to help locate and be prepared with an enemy who might be in the area.
The Feilds moved to the Roanoke Valley in 1962 with what then was The Bank of Virginia.
His first novel was “The Irish Connection,” published in 2004. Feild said he was not happy with the results and later rewrote it under the title, “The Irish Conspiracy.”
His other Alec Caldwell novels are “Betrayed” and “Deadly Agendas.”
Feild says he writes “at all times of the day and night, and in all places.” He mentioned one time when he and Nancy were sitting around the dinner table in the country club at Beach Mountain with friends, and something came up about the book he was writing.
“We were talking about the subject of the book and where it was going. I began to take notes on a linen napkin about what they were saying,” he remembered. “The conversation lasted for quite a while, and when it was over, I had notes on materials I would use to carry the book’s story forward and to completion,” he said.
Nancy Feild grew up in Salem and graduated from Andrew Lewis High School. Her husband grew up in Courtland in Southampton County in the Tidewater area of Virginia. They have three daughters and seven grandchildren.
Their daughters are Beth Pisculli who lives just outside London with her husband and three children; Ann Taboada who lives on Lake Norman in North Carolina with her husband and two children, and Laura Holland who lives in Greer, S.C., with her husband and two children. The Feilds live with their Labrador retriever, Abby.
His books are available at Barnes & Noble and through Xlibris at www.aleccaldwellnovels.com.
