What will you do before you die?
That question is on the cover of Scott Chappell’s TAKE COMMAND OF YOUR RETIREMENT.
We put it there on purpose.
Retirement books often sell comfort as the goal. Scott’s book asks a harder question first, and the cover shouldn’t soften it.
Scott didn’t approach retirement as a set of financial decisions.
During more than 30 years in public safety and emergency response—including fire service command, Urban Search & Rescue, HazMat, and disaster deployments—he spent much of his career assessing changing situations and making decisions with incomplete information.
In the book, the reader is the Incident Commander. Retirement planning becomes an Incident Action Plan. Pension and benefit decisions become intelligence requirements. Financial preparation becomes logistics.
Retirement isn’t just the point where the paycheck stops or the benefits begin. For someone who has spent decades answering the radio, deploying when needed, carrying responsibility, and knowing where they fit in the mission, leaving the job can remove much of the structure that organized their life.
Then what?
Scott treats that as part of the planning problem, too.
Not as therapy. Not as inspiration. As another operational question:
What is the next mission?
The compass on the cover names what you steer by: priorities, goals, tactics, legacy.
TAKE COMMAND OF YOUR RETIREMENT
A Field Operations Guide for Retirement
Scott Chappell
Coming this fall from BOOKNOLOGY, an Adducent nonfiction imprint.
About Us
Adducent, founded July 5, 2000, is a story and book development firm based in Jacksonville, Florida. Founder and Creative Director Dennis Lowery is a U.S. Navy veteran who spent the 1990s in aerospace manufacturing and more than eight years in business consulting with M&A attorneys and investment bankers before the company shifted its focus to writing and publishing in 2009.
Adducent has published 114 titles under its imprints — FORTIS (nonfiction and memoir), BOOKNOLOGY (business and educational nonfiction), ESCRIRE (fiction), and STANDFAST, established in 2026 for titles from the special-operations and intelligence communities. Every one was developed, edited, and produced under Dennis Lowery’s direct editorial direction. Fourteen arrived as standard nonfiction and were rebuilt as creative nonfiction.
Read about our Editorial and Publishing direction (and a subset list of client endorsements) here.
Read about ‘Who We Publish’ here.
Read about ‘Who’s Endorsed Books We’ve Published’ here.
Two have been selected for United States military professional reading lists: Fortune Favors Boldness, by Vice Admiral Barry M. Costello, on the U.S. Navy, Chief of Naval Operations Professional Reading Program; and What Now, Lieutenant?, General Richard ‘Butch’ Neal’s memoir, on the U.S Marine Corps Commandant’s Professional Reading List.
Distribution is global print-on-demand through Ingram, a network that, by Ingram’s account, reaches 50% of the world’s population. Clients own all rights to their work. Dennis, who also ghostwrites for clients and other publishers, is a member of the Authors Guild, the United States’ oldest and largest professional organization for writers.