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...

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...

My debut novel,  Columbia ,  is available for pre-order now on  Publishizer . The pre-order campaign lasts thirty days, and during that time, I am going to use my blog to post responses to frequently asked questions about the book, its inspiration and its development. Please click SUBSCRIBE on the campaign page to get updates sent automatically about each new post. ============== Day Two - Tradecraft in Columbia - "False Flag" I enlisted in the US military on October 23, 2001 and spent the better part of the following years in training and later in the practice of intelligence collection, analysis and counter-intel. So how much of that training and experience in operations made it into Columbia ? A lot! Movies and popular spy fiction might have you convinced that all spying takes place in glamorous global cities, behind the wheel of a racing Aston Martin, or at the business end of a Walther ( Bond ) or Tanfoglio ( Allon ). For some in the IC, it may, thoug...

My debut novel, Columbia,  is available for pre-order now on Publishizer .  The pre-order campaign lasts thirty days, and during that time, I am going to use my blog to post responses to frequently asked questions about the book, its inspiration and its development. Please click SUBSCRIBE on the campaign page to get updates sent automatically about each new post. ========== Day One - #WhoisTomTinker Columbia is a spy thriller based on my own experience working in intelligence and counter-terrorism between 2001 and 2006. But, you may not realize that Columbia's  earliest historical inspiration reaches much farther into history. In  Columbia ,  Sami is an off-the-books intelligence operative who is pulled into an investigation that implicates his estranged grandfather, a well-known DC-area imam. Sami quickly realized that while his grandfather may be involved, the operation has all the hallmarks of a false flag being run by a mysterious per...