Connect With Me – You Know You Want To
You don’t want to miss out on witty, intelligent, and realistic espionage fiction that doesn’t rely on car chases, gun battles, and irrelevant sex to keep you reading. Of course not!
My espionage fiction offers a strong, intelligent female protagonist who relies upon her wits not her…uh, anatomy. If you like Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawsky, Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone, or J.D. Robb’s Eve Dallas, you’ll love Mai Fisher. Add in a handsome, mysterious Soviet defector, current and past events “ripped from the headlines,” and adventures in some of the world’s hottest hot spots–what more could you ask for?
Grab some exclusive samples, only for my “need-to-know” assets by clicking on the links below. Then, stay on top of everything in my dark world of espionage by signing up for your SECRET BRIEFINGS and joining my Facebook Group.
Don’t be left out in the cold.
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Free Excerpts:
1. A Perfect Hatred: End Times, Book One of a four-book series.
2. A War of Deception
– Winner of the 2017 New Apple Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing, Best Historical Fiction
Newsletter: SecretBriefings
Facebook Group: Readers Who Love Real Spies With Real Lives
PLEASE NOTE:
When you sign up for these free excerpts, your email address will be automatically added to my newsletter recipients’ list. The newsletter comes out twice a month only. I DO NOT sell or give away the email addresses of subscribers to my newsletter list; that is my promise. When you receive your first email newsletter, if you do not wish to continue subscribing, scroll to the bottom of the email and select “Unsubscribe.”
Spreading the Word
The eBook of A War of Deception has been on sale for the month of December. With a week left in the year, would you give me a hand in getting that word out?
There’s a site called “ThunderClap It” which makes it easy for you to share the news of the sale on your social media platforms. It’s totally free and quick to use. (Hey, if I can figure it out…)
Click here to share the 99-cent sale for the eBook of A War of Deception.
Thanks, and happy holidays!
A Holiday Memory
Being joyful at this time of year has always been a struggle for me. Early in my life, my father was in the military, but we didn’t live on base with him. Quite often he didn’t get holiday leave to come home, which meant my mother was in a hellish mood. There were several December holidays without him.
There wasn’t much of an improvement after he got out of the military because of strains in his and my mother’s marriage. I often longed to be anywhere except at my house at this time of year.
One Christmas Eve when I was around sixteen and didn’t much care but my brother was nine and still very much into holiday decorations and what Santa would bring, we got ready to put up and decorate our tree. (I suspect because both my parents had British backgrounds, that was why our tree didn’t go up earlier in the month.) The fresh-cut tree was in its stand, the tree skirt precisely placed beneath it, and… There were no hooks for the ornaments.
I’ve always suspected my mother tossed them out because she was never much of a Christmas person. She saw the holiday as extra work put on her to cook, clean, buy and wrap presents, and decorate the house for the holiday. As a feminist, I can understand that. There was very much a division of “man’s work” and “woman’s work” in my house growing up. Her reasoning might have been, “No ornament hooks, no decorating, no tree, no extra work for me.”
This was Christmas Eve close to forty years ago in a small, Virginia town. Nothing would be open to go buy ornament hooks–no CVS, no Target, no Wal-Mart. Nada.
Being a teenager, I was “meh.” My brother, however, was convinced that without a tree it wasn’t really Christmas. He was close to tears.
My Dad went to the tool kit he kept in the house and got a pair of needle-nose pliers. Next, he went to his desk and took out a container of paper clips. He sat in his recliner and began shaping those paper clips into ornament hooks. True to his nature, each one was perfect. It took hours and hours: big tree, lots of ornaments. My mother eventually grasped the reality of it and improved her mood, my brother got more and more excited as each ornament went on the tree, and even this disinterested teenager got into the spirit.
This year will be thirty-seven Christmases without my father, more than I had with him. Each year I bring that memory of him to mind, sitting in his chair and doing what he could to make the holiday meaningful to his children. And it’s the best reminder of what the holidays should mean to families.
It’s my favorite holiday memory, ever.
What’s your favorite holiday memory? Share in the comments.
Sometimes the Little Things Mean the Most
Today, I was in a post office, mailing off two paperback short stories to people who’d recently subscribed to my newsletter, Secret Briefings.
(If you’re interested, click here and subscribe, and you can pick from four different short stories: “Best Served Cold,” “Blood Cover,” “Brave New World,” and “Spymaster.”)
One was to someone not far from me, and the other was to a fan in Africa. I’ve known this person on line since I used to participate in a Friday flash fiction exercise called Friday Fictioneers. She always commented on my 100-word stories, and I appreciated her comments and suggestions.
Indeed, she is one of my most frequent commenters on this blog. She’d indicated to me she wanted to buy my novel, A War of Deception, but where she lives there is no Amazon. However, she gleefully told me of her workaround: She had her sister buy it on Amazon.uk and ship it to her!
That touched me deeply, that someone would want my book enough to go through hoops to get it. So, I was excited to see she subscribed to my newsletter and picked a short story to receive.
However, sending a small package overseas to Africa wasn’t as easy as sending the one to someone down the road. First, you have to fill out a customs form and bring that with you to the post office. Silly me, I thought the region, city, and country information would be sufficient, but the small town postal clerk couldn’t find the country on her list and informed me she’d never heard of “Guana.”
“That’s because it’s Ghana,” I said.
“G-a-n-n-a?”
Mind you, I printed the country name on the package. “No. G-h-a-n-a,” I said.
“Still never heard of it.”
“Not to worry. There are millions of people in the world who’ve never heard of Virginia.”
Well, that didn’t go over too well, but the clerk finally found Ghana on her list of countries, applied all the labels, inked the various stamps on the envelope, and entered all the details into her computer, not simply one-handed, but one-fingered.
The short story is winging its way across an ocean and a couple of continents, and I hope my first fan–I trust she doesn’t mind being called that–enjoys “Best Served Cold.”
Little things like this make it all worth it.
Thank you, Celestine.
Sign Up for My Newsletter; Join My Facebook Group; Books for Sale
Here I am, an indie author begging again.
NEWSLETTER
I have a newsletter where you can learn more about what inspires me, get excerpts of my upcoming works, and learn a thing or two about the world of espionage. I won’t fill your inbox with countless emails; it comes out twice a month–and you can always opt out once you sign up.
To sign up for SECRET BRIEFINGS, click here.
Oh, and if you sign up for SECRET BRIEFINGS between now and the end of the year, I’ll send you a free paperback copy of a short story. You can choose from one of four:
“Spymaster” – The heads of two intelligence organizations clash in a mini-Cold War.
“Blood Cover” – Mai Fisher talks a doctor into marrying a man she doesn’t love so Mai can have access to his secrets.
“Best Served Cold” – Computer guru Nathan Hempstead loses his son in an horrific manner, but his hot anger becomes cold revenge.
“Brave New World” – A U.S. president wants help fixing an election, but Mai Fisher refuses, something she may come to regret.
FACEBOOK GROUP
In addition to my Facebook Author Page, I’ve also started a new Facebook Group called “Readers Who Love Real Spies with Real Lives.” If you join, we’ll talk about books and movies in the genre, with an emphasis on those with strong, female protagonists.
There’ll be posts to stimulate conversation and some fun things, too, like “What Would Your KGB Code Name?”
It’s free and fun, and you can join on the group page itself.
CELEBRATING MY NANOWRIMO WIN
This year I won my tenth NaNoWriMo and what better way to celebrate than to put some of my books on sale.
From November 28 through November 30, you can get the ebook of Blood Vengeance and The Better Spy for 99 cents.
From November 28 through November 29, the ebook of Spy Flash II will be 99 cents.
Any of these three books are a great introduction to my canon of works about “real spies with real lives.” Definitely money well spent.
You can buy them by clicking here.
Okay, done begging. For now. 😉
NaNoWriMo Update, A Change in Book Distribution, and Holidays
It’s been a busy November, as it always is with NaNoWriMo. This year, however, I was co-municipal liaison for the Shenandoah Valley Region, with some added responsibilities, like write-ins (online and in-person) and cheerleading. On top of that, I made some changes to how my ebooks are sold, and there’s the whole holiday thing.
NaNoWriMo Update
I passed 50,000 words on November 17 and officially validated my win on November 24. This year’s NaNoWriMo was my first as a co-municipal liaison for my region, Shenandoah Valley. I had a lot of fun, met some great writers online and in person, and hope to do it again.
My project this year was a bit different from my usual work. It takes place present day, instead of in the past. And a couple of interesting and unplanned things happened–NaNoWriMo just does that.
First, I reached the logical conclusion the existence of my super-secret, fictional intelligence organization, The Directorate, needed to be acknowledged. Without spoilers, I’ll simply quote one of my characters, Alexei Bukharin, “The time for that secret is over.” That freshens things up a bit and adds a new protocol to any further stories about it.
Second, I created a character initially for perhaps two or three scenes. I had no intention of making her a permanent character at all. Remember, your NaNoWriMo project is a rough draft. I’ve removed whole threads of plots and characters in subsequent edits. However, as I was writing what I thought was the character’s final appearance, my other character, Mai Fisher, and I recognized something interesting: This character deserved to have a future.
Enter into my canon, Cybill Fleming. For now, all I know about her is she’s a Directorate operative-in-training and that Mai Fisher spotted something of herself in Cybill. This coming year while I work on publishing two books (Books One and Two of A Perfect Hatred), I’ll be fleshing Cybill Fleming out a lot more. Stay tuned.
As of today, this year’s NaNoWriMo project stands at 70,776. Four days to go and four more planned scenes. I like it when a plan comes together!
Going Wide
No, not talking about a football play or race cars passing each other. Last month I decided to take all ten of my published ebooks out of exclusive Amazon distribution. After seeing the success others had had using a service called Draft2Digital, I decided to give it a try. Coincidentally, two of my ebooks were nearing their automatic KDP Select renewal, so I “unchecked the box” and a few days later uploaded Spy Flash and Who Watches the Watchmen? to D2D. An easy process over all, though formatting was an issue in places. That is, you can’t simply take the Kindle version file and upload it; you have to make certain the formatting imbedded in the file doesn’t glitch. I’m pleased with D2D and its ease of use and may use it for the release of my second novel next April.
Not long after, three more ebooks were due to automatically renew in KDP Select. I unchecked those boxes too. Now, the ebooks of my novellas My Noble Enemy and The Yellow Scarf, as well as my first novel, A War of Deception, have wider distribution.
Some of the places where the ebooks will appear are Kobo, iBooks, Barnes&Noble, SCRIBD, among others. You can also purchase ePub versions of these five books via PayPal right here on my web site. From the home page, look for the tab, “Shop for Books.”
Let me say, I have nothing at all against Amazon’s distribution of my paperbacks and ebooks. KDP Select is optional; however, it is one of those “opt in” processes with an automatic renewal unless you take a physical action to change it.
As with the new directions my NaNoWriMo projects took me with my characters, my other books will be going off in new directions as well.
Change is scary but good.
Happy Holidays
No flames please. December happens to be the month where a lot of religions celebrate winter holidays. Unlike KDP Select, I don’t want to be exclusive, rather inclusive.
I’m not a fan of the winter holidays. Lots of bad childhood memories abound, and the crass commercialism turns me off. The holidays also take a lot of time away from writing, but family is family. I’ll do the shopping, I’ll wrap the gifts, and I’ll take delight in watching my grandchildren unwrap their presents. As six-year-old Emory says, “It’s about giving not getting.” Love her.
What holiday traditions do you fondly remember? What are those you’d just as soon forget?
Book Launch, a Bookversary, and NaNoWriMo
Hidden Agendas
Today, Hidden Agendas, the sequel to Who Watches the Watchmen?, launched. Yeah, it’s rather lost in the hoopla over National Novel Writing Month, but I wanted it out before the first anniversary of last year’s election.
These two novelettes aren’t exactly historical fiction but more current events or… How about “current political thrillers”? That works.
Both novelettes were certainly cathartic for me to write, and I hope they are for the readers, too.
If you’d like to take a look, go to my Amazon Author Page, and you’ll find them there.
Celebrating The Yellow Scarf
The Yellow Scarf was one of my first novellas, and Facebook just reminded me it came out two years ago.
This novella started out as a 5,000 – 6,000 word short story, which I workshopped at Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop. My fellow writers in the workshop and its instructor, Edgar-Nominated Laura Benedict, suggested that it needed more backstory, that perhaps it was too much of a story for a short story.
Armed with their suggestions, I added the backstory, beefed up a character, inserted the imagery of a yellow scarf throughout, and extended the story over the period of a year. The result? A novella based on real events in the Balkan Civil Wars. It’s a story I’m particularly proud of and am glad it’s out in the world.
To celebrate its second birthday, The Yellow Scarf will be on sale for 99 cents Friday only. Again, go to my Amazon Author page (link above) to have a look and buy a copy if you like.
It’s NaNoWriMo Time!
It’s the mad month of November where several hundred thousand people around the world write a 50,000-word novel rough draft in 30 days. Crazy, right? But we’re writers, so it’s expected.
I guess you could say the novelettes, Who Watches the Watchmen? and Hidden Agendas are prequels to this year’s project, A Squalid Procession of Vain Fools. Again, this will be a current events political thriller with some family angst mixed in, just to make it interesting.
This will be my 10th NaNoWriMo, and this year I’m a co-municipal liaison for the Shenandoah Valley region. My municipal liaison and I have lots of online and in-person events planned, and if you’re local to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, come join us. Check out our Facebook page, Shenandoah Valley Wrimos, for times and places.
I kicked us off last night right at midnight with an online write-in, and, boy, I was up way past my bed time! But it’s great fun with great writers.
I’ll also be occasionally posting about my project here, including some (unedited) excerpts, but if you follow me on Instagram (@paduncan1), you’ll see some NaNoWriMo-related graphics along with my other posts.
If you’ve never tried NaNoWriMo, give it a go. No pressure. Well, there is pressure: 50,000 words in 30 days, but for a type A personality like me, bring it on!
Cover Reveal, Pre-Order, and NaNoWriMo
A couple of weeks ago, I teased the cover of the upcoming sequel to Who Watches the Watchmen?, and now, it’s time to show the whole thing!
Hidden Agendas
And here it is, the cover for Hidden Agendas!
Lots of secrecy and hiding implied there. I found the graphic of the hand and eyes on pixabay.com, where you can download and use public domain images for limited commercial use.
I’m no graphic artist, but I’m becoming more adept at using Canva to design covers for some of my smaller work. For my upcoming series of novels, A Perfect Hatred, I’ll be using professionals!
Pre-Order
Pretty cool, and even more exciting is it should be ready for pre-ordering for your Kindle by Monday, October 16, 2017.
As I explained in the previous post, this sequel details a significant change for The Directorate. I didn’t know it at the time I wrote it, but Hidden Agendas perfectly sets up the story I want to write for this year’s National Novel Writing Month.
NaNoWriMo
This year’s NaNoWriMo project has a working title of A Squalid Procession of Vain Fools.
I love it, right? But where does it come from, you ask?
I recently finished re-reading John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Toward the end of the book, the protagonist, Alec Leamas, is having a heated discussion with his former lover, who questions the ethics of spies. Taken back by her naiveté, Leamas says,
“What do you think spies are: priests, saints, and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists, and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.”
That second sentence stood out for me, and I decided it was a perfect working title.
What do you think?
And if I have a working title, I should have a working cover, right?
This cover holds a certain amount of symbolism as well. The final scene of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold takes place at the Berlin Wall in the 1960s. The public domain image I used for the cover is a portion of a photo of graffiti on the Wall before it came down.
I’m ready for November!
Sometimes You Get It Right
One question people often ask me when looking at my books’ subject matter is, “Were you a spy?”
Sometimes, I joke and reply, “If I were, I couldn’t tell you.” Most of the time I tell the truth. No, I’m not nor ever have been a spy. I merely write about them.
The reaction to that is usually, “Well, then, how do you know what to write about?” or “How do you know you’ve gotten it right?”
I don’t know that one hundred percent. What I do know is with a background as an historian, I’m a great researcher, and I work as hard as I possibly can to “get it right.”
What if I Don’t Get it Right?
That plagues me. I’ve written a novel about two spies who struggle to balance their personal lives with their work. That part is real. The mechanics of espionage is what I don’t have personal experience with beyond cheesy novels and B-movies. For myself, I like real world espionage, as found in John Le Carre or Alan Furst’s novels, over James Bond and Jason Bourne.
I’ve read nonfiction works on the history of espionage and tradecraft, the memoirs of Soviet defectors, and declassified reports of actual operations. I borrow from that for my fiction, but I keep it as authentic as I can. What helps is having acquaintances from a certain counterintelligence agency who’ll take a look at what I’ve written and tell me honestly what’s authentic and what’s not. Even then, I take some dramatic license.
Was I ready for a real spy to read A War of Deception?
Nope. Never. No way.
Almost Like a Covert Op
A couple of weeks ago, I was at an outdoor book festival in central Virginia, hawking books and making a couple of sales. At a break in the activity I look up and who should be standing there but one of those acquaintances mentioned above.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m buying one of your books,” was the reply.
I had to bite my lips to keep myself from talking the buyer out of it. Money was exchanged–man, I wish it could have been a dead drop.
“Would you like for me to sign it and make it out to you?” I asked.
“Make it out to [opposite gender name],” was the reply.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“A retired spy I think will like this.”
Once again, I reminded myself a sale is a sale and what said acquaintance does with a purchased book is no concern of mine. I wrote the transcription.
And said acquaintance’s departure was as quiet and unobtrusive as the arrival. I rather felt as if this had all been some version of a covert op, but, then, I do have an overactive imagination. Help, I’m a writer.
Then, it hit me.
Oh, s**t, a real spy was going to read my book about spies. Here comes a bad review, or at the least a list of what I got wrong. Because I’m me, I braced myself for the worst.
Validation
I’d put the incident completely out of mind, though yesterday when I noticed A War of Deception had a new review on Amazon, I had a momentary hesitation before I looked at it. Whew, it was posted by my niece.
Then, I got a message on my Facebook Author Page from said acquaintance who’d bought a copy. Here it is, I thought, the list of what I got wrong.
Instead, I read:
“This weekend I brought A War of Deception to my friend who retired from the Intelligence Community (where she actually DID espionage-related activities for many years). She just wrote to me saying that she couldn’t put the book down. High praise, indeed, for a thrilling tale.”
After about the fifth time I read it, I believed it. A real spy liked my book.
At first, I couldn’t describe what that meant to me. One, it meant my research skills are undiminished. Two, I’d done a good job of making the characters, whom I’ve worked on for decades, believable. Three, I got it right.
And not only was this a real (retired) spy, but it was a woman–just like one of my protagonists.
I got it right. And. That. Feels. Good.
