CERTAINTY will be published on April 28. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be giving interviews — a few on podcasts, most in a Q&A format.
Some of the questions are personal. I’ve thought carefully about what I will — and won’t — say.
But before any of that goes out into the world, I wanted you to hear it here first. I am impressed by the newsletters on Substack. It’s a tolerant and diverse community of writers.
Many readers have noticed that the violent scenes in my work are described in detail but rarely paired with overt emotion. That choice is intentional. Here’s part of the reason why:
Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’ve spent a significant part of my life in places where people don’t feel safe.
I once worked as a foreign correspondent in a country suffering from a genocidal civil war. As the situation deteriorated, I was threatened with execution and had daily encounters with death. One afternoon, I entered a war zone north of the capital on a 200cc motorcycle with my translator sitting behind me. We encountered burned huts, then dead civilians, then dead soldiers. My translator clutched my belt and started whispering “They can see us. They can see us. This is very bad.”
You don’t come out of that unchanged.
Even now, I sit with my back to the wall. Some habits don’t leave you.