Judith Price's Blog

Jill Oliver
A Character Interview

INTERVIEWER:  How would you describe yourself?

JILL:  I think I am a pretty tough cookie.  I'm five feet eight inches tall.  I weigh around 125 pounds with my BMI hovering around eighteen.  So I have some muscle on me.  My hair is jet black and now has grown out to a cute bob.  My eyes are green and my heritage is one of a Navajo Indian from my mother's side.  My father who is white, I have never met.

INTERVIEWER:  You look fairly fit, what type of fitness regime are you doing?

JILL:  I keep in share sparring in several martial arts.  I also run three miles pretty much everyday.

INTERVIEWER:  I know you've told us that you will not answer questions about David Brown, your husband … but we are all curious about what happened to him.

JILL:  No comment.

INTERVIEWER:  Fair enough.

INTERVIEWER:  What made you decide to become a US Marshall?

JILL:  Well I worked for the FBI for several years as part of their remote viewing team.  Then I decided to make a career change. 

INTERVIEWER:  You mean because of Matthew McGregor?  Are you aware that Matthew is producing a book about his story, his killing spree.  How do you feel about that?

JILL:  It sickens me that a maniac criminal who has caused such horrific harm to other humans is able to profit from such acts of horror.  So much violence.

INTERVIEWER:  What is remote viewing?

JILL:  Remote viewing is a proven science that, once trained, a human can tap into the matrix of energy and when you do this, you are able to feel the five senses of a target.  This technique was part of the Stargate project in the CIA.

INTERVIEWER:  What do you do for the US Marshall service?

JILL:  I'm a terrorist profile for the special operations group.  Basically we help the counter terrorism unit with homeland security. 

INTERVIEWER:  What is a typical day like at work?

JILL:  Without breaching any confidentiality, I work mainly on my computer doing research.  Occassionaly we go out in the field.  But not very often.

INTERVIEWER:  We've heard that you are taking on a field assignment full-time.  What will you be doing?

JILL:  I've taken an international assignment with Interpol.  I will be based in Turkey.  The assignment is confidential, but what I can tell you is, that it has to do with money laundering and a new form of terrorism.

INTERVIEWER:  That sounds dangerous being so close to Syria and the Arab springs.

JILL:  Well I just got back from the Middle East and Afghanistan wasn't a bowl of cherries.  I think I will do okay.  Our country has to squash any upstarts with this new technology before it gets in the wrong hands.

INTERVIEWER:  How long will you be there?

JILL:  I'm not sure, but if you purchased INDECENT DECEPTION: A JILL OLIVER THRILLER.  You will find out and more about David.

Buy SUDDEN DECEPTION: A JILL OLIVER THRILLER Now

Before Mallory Kane, the black ops soldier and fictional character of the new movie Haywire, played by Gina Carano — and Jill Oliver, the fictional audacious character of the Deception series — there have been real-life fearless women.  A heroine and a group of them, immediately come to mind. They are women who showed up to the plate in the game of life and hit the ball out of the park.

If you don't know who Margaret Moth is … you should.  She was a true champion of life!   In 1990 she became a camerawoman for CNN.  She specialized in filming war zones.  In July of 1992, she was severely wounded in Sarajevo.  Two years later, she returned to the war zones to continue her mission to show the world what war looks like.  In 2007, she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She passed away in March 2010 at the age of 59.  She would have turned 61 on January 30, in a couple of weeks 2012.

The CNN documentary Fearless: the Margaret Moth Story, which aired in October 2009, was a heart-warming tribute from Margaret’s admirers. One was the renowned reporter Christiane Amanpour. While visiting Margaret in the hospital, she was summoned by the CNN international desk to return to Sarajevo. 

[Christiane Amanpour] “I said I’d go back, and I know to this day,” she says in the documentary, struggling to contain her emotions, “that if I had not said yes then, I probably never would have gone back and I probably never would have done this career, but I said yes because I couldn’t say no…”

It's well worth watching the documentary to see how Margaret, larger than life and full of life, who has inspired so many other women.  You can see it on Amazing Women Rock!

"Life is like a game of tennis. You have no choice over how the ball comes to you; it's how you hit it back that counts." ~ Margaret Moth

In the spring of 2011, a mere year after Margaret's passing, US Army Special Operations Command deployed it first team of thirty female soldiers into Afghanistan.  These fearless combat women achieved the high training standards of the Special Forces and Rangers and moved to the front line as 'Cultural Support Teams'. There they interfaced with the local female population to gain vital intelligence and provide social outreach.

I have to believe that Margaret has inspired at least one of these women.  And more women will aspire to be like Margaret and the women in the USASOC unit. 
Margaret said it best … "I guess I would ask: what's there to be afraid of?"

Now that's fearless!

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Rachel Simeone @Zetablue mentioned you: Sudden Deception by @judith_price is "a page turner and the action and intrigue begin on page one!"

I wrote this sometime ago and was speaking to a friend over the holidays, who was also a victim of a similar brutal crime, and she spurred me to make this my first blog post ever. Welcome 2012!

Lara Logan: [in-spuh-rey-shun]

I don't know anyone who works for the CBS “60 Minutes” news show.
I have never met Lara Logan and I do not know her.

But having followed her career for almost a decade, I feel a sense of synergy that connects strong women like Lara Logan to others around the world.

Lara is a role model for my story.  It's the inspiration and hope exuding from her that embodies my protagonist, US Marshall, Jill Oliver.

Why?  Because over the years, Lara Logan has taken on the big guns.  Literally!  She has the strength and courage to go into war zones to find news stories and bring them into the hearts of her audience with such assertive calm.  She is not just a journalist, but a woman  journalist who has traveled all over the world — often considered a man's world. She has gone places where even most men would not dare go.

I watched the heart-wrenching interview with fellow CBS reporter Scott Pelley in May 2011 where Lara Logan articulated and shared her feelings about her traumatic experience in Cairo—a situation that went terribly wrong.  I know that women are gang-raped, exploited, abused everyday, in a variety of scenarios. And yet, I could not absorb what happened to her.  I write fiction.  This is real life.

But even my fiction reflects current events and humanity—whatever it may be, from social terrorism to sex slavery.  I can only hope to have the voice and impact that Lara Logan has.  I think she said it best: “I want my work to define me [not the single event of sexual assault in Egypt]… I have so much more to give.”  It's great to see her on the road back.

All I can say, Lara, is thank you for your inspiration—for me personally and for women around the world.  And when Scott Pelley asked you if you will be going back to these dangerous places, you said: “I will be, oh, I will be.”  And when you do, Lara, we will be with you in spirit, cheering you on.

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