Vince with a Fan During the ‘American Assassin’ Book Tour (2010)
There are few celebrities that I ever get upset about when I hear that they have passed. Jimmy Stewart was one, but, of course, that was to be expected due to his advanced age. Michael Jackson was probably the biggest shock to me and my generation, however, when I heard about the loss of Vince Flynn this morning, I was devastated.
This is the first time I have ever experienced the loss of a favorite author and there is something profoundly different about the emotional connection that we have as human beings with the written word and no one could spin a better yarn of suspense than Vince. Today’s news came as a huge shock and the sense of loss has been a bit more overwhelming than I would have expected for a man I never met, almost as if I had lost a friend. When you think about it, you really truly do get to know someone intimately by their writing and unlike Tom Clancy (who Vince was often compared to), Vince wrote characters, first, and it’s in the characters that we find a greater insight into ourselves.
Vince announced to his fans (us) before anyone via his email newsletter in 2010 that he had stage three metastatic prostate cancer but vowed to fight it and as far as we or anyone else knew, he was winning the battle. That being said, Vince was also a very private man and no one but his closest friends and family knew the extent of the progression of his illness.
Vince Flynn was 47 years-old and leaves behind a loving wife and three children who were with him at the time of his death.
Vince’s biography from his website:
The fifth of seven children, Vince Flynn was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1966. He graduated from the St. Thomas Academy in 1984, and the University of St. Thomas with a degree in economics in 1988.
After college he went to work for Kraft General Foods where he was an account and sales marketing specialist.
In 1990 he left Kraft to accept an aviation candidate slot with the United States Marine Corps. One week before leaving for Officers Candidate School, he was medically disqualified from the Marine Aviation Program, due to several concussions and convulsive seizures he suffered growing up. While trying to obtain a medical waiver for his condition, he started thinking about writing a book. This was a very unusual choice for Flynn since he had been diagnosed with dyslexia in grade school and had struggled with reading and writing all his life.
Having been stymied by the Marine Corps, Flynn returned to the nine-to-five grind and took a job with United Properties, a commercial real estate company in the Twin Cities. During his spare time he worked on an idea he had for a book. After two years with United Properties he decided to take a big gamble. He quit his job, moved to Colorado, and began working full time on what would eventually become Term Limits.
Like many struggling artists before him, he bartended at night and wrote during the day. Five years and more than sixty rejection letters later he took the unusual step of self-publishing his first novel. The book went to number one in the Twin Cities, and within a week had a new agent and two-book deal with Pocket Books, a Simon & Schuster imprint.
Term Limits hit the New York Times bestseller list in paperback and started a trend for all of Flynn’s novels. Since then, his books have become perennial bestsellers in both paperback and hardcover, and he has become known for his research and prescient warnings about the rise of Islamic Radical Fundamentalism and terrorism. Read by current and former presidents, foreign heads of state, and intelligence professionals around the world, Flynn’s novels are taken so seriously one high-ranking CIA official told his people, “I want you to read Flynn’s books and start thinking about how we can more effectively wage this war on terror.”
October 2007 marked another milestone in Flynn’s career when his ninth political thriller, Protect and Defend, became a #1 New York Times bestseller. A few months later, CBS Films optioned the rights for Flynn’s Mitch Rapp character with the intention of creating a character-based, action-thriller movie franchise. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who previously launched the Harry Potter and Matrix films as head of production at Warner Bros., and Nick Wechsler (We Own the Night, Reservation Road) will produce the films. Filming on the first film is set to begin in the fall of 2013. Bruce Willis has already signed on to act in the project.
American Assassin and Kill Shot, published in October 2010 and February 2012 respectively, are prequels in the Mitch Rapp saga and both reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
His most recent publication, The Last Man, published in October 2012, was also a #1 New York Times bestseller.
Works by Flynn include American Assassin, Kill Shot, Transfer of Power, The Third Option, Separation of Power, Executive Power, Memorial Day, Consent to Kill, Act of Treason, Extreme Measures, Pursuit of Honor, The Last Man and Term Limits (not part of the Mitch Rapp series).
Influences: Ernest Hemingway, Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Gore Vidal, and John Irving.
The SuperGeeks Super Blog 
I had no idea he passed away. I’m sorry, bro. I remember how you had recommended some of his books to me a while back. I did notice at the downtown library, here in Rochester, that they had a ton of Flynn’s hardcovers on display perhaps as a result of his passing. I’ll be sure to get around to checking out some of his work.