"Vampire, Vampire!" Said the CIC interlocutor aboard Ticonderoga. "We have numerous missiles coming. Loose weapons."1 Tom Clancy, the best writer of modern fiction and probably one of the best of all time. Above was an excerpt from his second number one bestseller, Red Storm Rising. Tom Clancy is a civilian genius who knows more about top-secret weapons systems than the men who designed them. This creates an explosive story, which could be real. It is because of his gripping plots and powerful descriptions of battle scenes that drew me, along with millions of other Americans, to his masterworks of art. Ironically, Mr. Clancy's dream of becoming a writer was not realized until he wrote The Hunt For Red October in 1984. Until then, he was an insurance salesman whose previous stories had been rejected. That's another thing I like about Mr. Clancy, he doesn't give up. Clancy once said, "In America there are no excuses. You can go out and do whatever you please, if you try hard enough." sleep with a cup of warm milk.Thomas L. Clancy Jr., the son of a mail carrier and a department store credit clerk, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1947. He attended a local Catholic elementary and secondary school. Most of his friends were interested in sports and followed their favorite teams throughout the season, but Tom had more important things on his mind like guns, tanks, and planes. He went to Loyola College, a Jesuit liberal arts college in Baltimore, where he majored in English. While attending college he joined the ROTC to serve in Vietnam, but poor vision prevented him from fulfilling his desire. The first story he wrote was rejected by Analog Sci-Fi magazine, dashing another dream of having his name on a book. In 1973 he became an insurance agent, as he was making no progress as a writer. He eventually joined his wife's father's insurance agency and later purchased it in 1980 for $125,000. It was an established business with around 1,000 customers. Tom was so efficient, and the business so profitable, that he could do all the work in the morning and have the rest of the day to devour all manner of magazines and technical documents.3 After his writing career took off in 1984, at eventually moved to a 400-acre estate on the Chesapeake Bay.