COLUMBIA is based on Joe's experience as a US Army intelligence officer and interrogator working on counter-terrorism between 2001 and 2006.
COLUMBIA is a crackling story that draws its inspiration from inside the mind of an intel officer who is familiar with the most grave threats to our country and the nefarious ways in which divisive groups plot to exploit weaknesses in our nation and its security infrastructure.
The story has its genesis in Joe's desire to tell an espionage story that moves like the genre's best page-turners but challenges the trope that the spy hero is always a ruggedly handsome man who can kill ten bad guys with a toothpick.
Sami Lakhani is a different kind of spy hero. 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 represent historically underrepresented groups in mainstream fiction.
Second, Sami's sexual identity plays and important part in shaping the early plot as the presumed driver of the estrangement between him and his conservative grandfather. As readers soon discover, there is a dark family secret that Sami has long suspected that truly lies at the heart of their separation.
Third, in spite of every movie and book portrayal, the people of the IC are not all square-jawed muscle men or women with cunning to match their knockout looks. Sami represents the cerebral and immensely talented people who serve in our IC, many of whom are newly-arrived Americans with strong cultural, linguistic and family ties throughout the world.
A first-time novelist, Joe holds undergraduate degrees from Boston University (BA, English) and the Defense Language Institute (AA, Russian), and a JD from Suffolk University Law School. As a lawyer, he was writing assistant on one of the definitive legal reference manuals for energy and environmental law. Joe's freelance writing has featured in the Wall Street Journal and been syndicated by Reuters.
COLUMBIA is Joe's first novel. If it is wildly successful and publishers are willing to let him write anything he wants next, he has already prepared a nonfiction proposal for SOCCER, SAVE MY SOUL, a soccer travelogue and guide to the beautiful game for Americans.
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Columbia Supporters --
Thank you again for you all of your support of the book! The campaign has 21 days to go in order to hit the 500 pre-order goal and we are closing in on 50%. If you could share the campaign with friends and colleagues, I would be most grateful.
Please also send along any questions about the book or suggestions for future updates. I have heard from a lot of supporters that they enjoyed the George Washington/Whiskey Rebellion update and so I will have another historical update coming soon.
Meantime, I poked the Russian bear in my last message to you. In fairness, the bear poked me first, and you don't have to be a former intelligence officer to get poked by that particular bear.
Today's update concludes in the form of a Public Service Announcement.
Anyone's data can be breached these days. In fact, your data probably already has been compromised. If you want to avoid FSB apparatchiks setting up fake Instagram accounts for you, might I strongly suggest you proceed to https://haveibeenpwned.com and check whether your data might have been compromised in previous data breaches.
Other tips from the pros:
- Enable two-factor authentication whenever possible,
- Never use the same password twice,
- Never use any password that is predictable/guessable (birthdays, etc.),
- Use a random password generator (I like and use Roboform),
Thank you again for your support of the book!
Best,
Joe