When I’m writing, I’m trying to create something as beautiful as possible, but the books have to work well, first and foremost, as dark, kick-ass novels that engage the reader entirely. The bar is to write compelling stories that are effective on many levels – like Dickens and Hitchcock and Shakespeare.
My latest, is the ninth Orphan X novel, though like the others, it can be read as a stand-alone. My lead character, Evan Smoak, aka Orphan X, was taken out of a foster home at the age of twelve and trained to be an off-the-books assassin for the US government. When we meet him in the novels, he’s gone off the radar, fleeing the program that created him, and he now undertakes pro bono missions on behalf of the truly desperate
