It’s A(nother) Book!

A few years back, I finally completed writing my first book: RedStReam. I detailed the story of how I got the idea, and what eventually forced me to write it out (and publish it) in a blog post. That was about a year-and-a-half ago, and after a brief pause to do nothing at all, I got started on the sequel. As I alluded to in that blog post, I had the story line all set up. Being part of an intended trilogy, I had left some elements of the first novel hanging, and I wanted to give the characters their due.

One thing slowing me down was the 2024 Presidential election. I was writing about a fictional world which closely mirrors the real one, while not “naming names” and letting the reader decide if they think certain characters seem a lot like famous, real people. The first book ended very near that election, and I needed to know who was going to win to complete the plot of the second one. As it turned out, the results gave my sequel another interesting story-line. The President I had returning to the Oval Office was the only one the CIA Red Team had NOT briefed in with the full truth about their ability to “see the future.” And the new novel had an impending crisis which required that President to trust his intelligence advisors implicitly . . . which is something that character is not known for.

Likewise, as I was writing, the real world intervened with additional material. Nothing like the unforeseen arrival of an “American” Pope to spice up the moral-ethical implications of an American intelligence capability to know the future. If I had invented that part, no one would have ever believed it!

The story of a Russian source–or a “mole”–inside the CIA was one of the hanging elements from RedStReam. The second novel completes the cat-n-mouse game between Charles, the leader of the Red Team, and Susan, the highly-placed woman in Personnel who acts out against the President she detests.

Finally, one of the most underdeveloped characters from the first book, Margaret Chang, gets her moments in the spotlight. The impending crisis I mentioned, involving a Chinese attempt to take Taiwan in a lightning strike, puts her family (back in China) in peril, and reveals the fate of her long-lost brother.

Of course there are all sorts of personal complications for the characters: a pregnancy, some new characters, a retirement, a death, and a defection. Almost none of the character’s story lines are complete with this second novel, but a few are edging very close to it, and there are hints aplenty at what comes next, in the final book of the trilogy. And yes, there’s a (spoiler) cliff hanger ending in this one, too.

I may take another year off before completing the series. I’ll still be blogging, and I have an unrelated bit of historical fiction I will write up and publish in the meantime. The pace of the action among the characters in this series has been pretty intense, and all their story lines will come to a close in the next one. To get there, the characters themselves demand a little time and distance. So they’ll have it!

You can buy the book, titled “Interesting Times” from Amazon (link here). It is available as an ebook right now, and if you have Kindle Unlimited, it’s free to you! I also allowed it to be downloaded (a new Amazon option) so if you’re not into Kindle, you can still download an ebook version. It is available for the low, low price of USD $5.99 for the ebook, USD $9.99 for the paperback!

If nothing else, you’ll learn that we do indeed live in interesting times. You might also find out there is no Chinese curse to the effect, “may you live in interesting times.” The real Chinese saying is even better! I trust you will enjoy the book; note I don’t use the word hope . . . there’s a reason for that, which becomes obvious in the book!