Two Trees, Two More Miles

Columbia is over 350 pre-orders, and I hope that it goes a lot higher! I think most creators want their work to be well-received, but many of us also want to provoke a reaction: we have something to communicate and we want lots of people to hear the message and think about it. I want readers to meet Sami Lakhani, a different kind of spy hero. One of the most frequently asked questions about Columbia is why I wrote a book about a gay, Muslim spy? I think that question can be broken down into many sub-questions: Why did I write a book about a gay , Muslim-American  spy ? Why did I write a book about a gay, Muslim-American spy? Why did I write a book about a gay, Muslim-American spy ? Why did  I  write a book about a gay, Muslim-American spy? The decision to make the protagonist of the story a Muslim-American and part of the LGBT community arose from three choices.  First, the artistic choice to do everything possible to rep...

The movie 300 is based upon the real-life Battle of Thermopylae.   Columbia is poised to pass 300 pre-orders! I am so thankful to everyone who has bought a book, or a couple of books, or invested in hosting a book party. 500 is the goal! If you have not bought a book yet, I hope today's update gives you reason to click over to the campaign page and make a buy. The spy thriller genre is well-known for pulling plot lines from the headlines. For example, 9/11 spawned a whole new subgenre . And, after the 2016 elections, there was a resurgence of titles focused on Russian ops and some of the genre's great heroes found themselves up against the FSB and conspirators in the US . While some thrillers exist in the real world (I'll use Grisham's Pelican Brief as a familiar example: real Washington, real institutions like the Supreme Court), they recreate that real world from whole cloth (fake justices, fake President, etc.). Other thrillers rely on the reader...

My first novel, Columbia , is poised to pass 250 pre-orders on Publishizer today. That sends a great message to publishers who will be bidding on the book that there is an audience for spy thrillers in the tradition of Graham Greene, but with modern twists on characterization and plot that are from the new school of fiction. 250 is awesome! But the goal is 500. I thought it would be instructive in today's update to show some other movements that had a stop at 250 along their way to even bigger things. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Ferrari 250 - Built from 1953-1964, these racing and road cars lent the Ferrari brand some of its earliest credibility before giving way to the 275 and 330 series cars. I hope we can top 330 pre-orders next week! 1824 US Presidential Election - There were only 235 electors for the 1820 US Presidential Election. The US passed 250 electors and settled on 261 by the next election in 1824. No candidate won a majority of the presidenti...

Saint Basil's Cathedral and the GUM Department Store in Red Square - Photo by Jorge Lascar Saturday marked the conclusion of the first week of the Columbia campaign.  Based largely on some LinkedIn posts and a few emails to my own and my family's personal networks, the book has 156 pre-orders. By Saturday night, it seemed it was time to start working hard. I asked my wife and daughter to share the book on Instagram and planned my own return from five years of self-imposed social media exile, re-establishing a Twitter presence. It quickly became clear that this phase of marketing was going to result in all the right people taking notice. Who, you ask? Well, just hours after my wife and daughter posted Columbia to their Instagram, I was the recipient of this charming message from the social media site (note the Red Square*): See, when your public LinkedIn profile indicates that you were an intelligence officer and that you were educated in Russian at the Defens...

Yesterday, I posted the first chapter of Columbia for readers to get a sneak preview of the book. Today, I have posted an analysis of that chapter . One of the most common questions that I am asked is how the novel takes shape: how are the characters established, how do I choose the places that they inhabit, and why are other specific choices made? Why do readers need to know what kind of tobacco or whiskey Seymour prefers? I hope I will answer some of those questions, and interest you with some other comments on the structure and framing of this first chapter. Take a look at the redlined chapter analysis here .

The first chapter of my debut novel  Columbia    is now available for free at: https://bit.ly/2HLdQp8 . If you have already bought the book, I hope you enjoy the sneak preview. If not, I hope it whets your appetite and convinces you to pre-order a copy . In the book's opening, readers will meet Gerald Seymour, a powerful but mysterious White House aide who is committed to breaking tradition, even if it means breaking Washington. Fair warning, there is a little bit of language in this chapter (it seems Seymour is not a fan of the Attorney General or the Director of the FBI). In my next post, I am going to analyze this chapter, including factors like the choice to write Seymour with colorful language coming out of his mouth, and a bunch of other writing choices I made when shaping this all-important opening chapter.