Jonathan Dyer's Blog: The Nick Temple Files, page 11

Mark Valley, West Point Grad, Berlin veteran, actor, producer, writer, and all around good guy, has a podcast called The Live Drop. A while back he interviewed me. We talked about a wide range of matters including my time as a Russian Linguist in Berlin during the Cold War, and my more recent efforts at writing Cold War spy thrillers. Thanks to Mark for reaching out and including me in his pro...

A recent submission of mine to The Writers Club is their “Favorite Submission of The Week.” The poem, “Museum Piece,” was inspired by a walk along the South Carolina Coast one evening with my family, and my Uncle Tom, Aunt Anna, and my cousin Elizabeth. We passed a roped-off section in the dunes above the high tide mark. On the other side of the rope was a small, lovely stand of sea oats. The poem is below.

The Sonoma, California Coast

Above the tides the sea oats stand,

fr...

Espionage is conducted by nations to shape policy. Pretty simple. One country gathers information about another country, analyzes it, and then makes policy decisions based on the analysis of the information. The policy result is national in scope, although it is often not made public for a variety of reasons. Those policy choices can include reallocating assets, refocusing training, undertaking new initiatives or retooling existing ones, shifting pol...

[Author’s note: These are the notes I used to give a 30-minute talk via Zoom to the McMinnville, Oregon Lions Club on 9/2/20. I was invited to give the talk by Sam Justice, a fellow soldier I first met at the Defense Language Institute in 1981. We are still friends after all of these years. The notes have been modified to eliminate personal references, and edited for clarity.]

I’ve been asked to talk to you today about how to write a spy novel. I’m flattered ...

I was born in 1957, the year the Soviets launched Sputnik and the race to the moon began, a signal event in the Cold War. There are still a lot of us around for whom the defining geopolitical position of our early years was the Cold War. Truman’s speech in early 1947 set out the conflict in simple “us vs. them” terms, reflecting a reality that had been in existence since the end of World War II in Europe. Subsequent events such as the successful test ...

A maxim of jurisprudence enshrined in the California Civil Code is, “Superfluity does not vitiate.” What a beautiful sentence! Its meaning is its own abrupt precision. The rule it expresses is clear and unqualified; it sets an excellent standard for legal writing. I love that sentence. However, as a general matter, I don’t like rules about creative writing. Believe me, there are many of them out there.

I understand that readers expect and enjoy cer...

The political season, while never far away, is officially upon us here in the U.S. with the opening of the Democratic Party’s national convention last night. The quadrennial event is virtual due to the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, so the usual camera shots and stories about convention floor antics will be missing, as will the sight of cheering partisan crowds, all part of the pageantry of politics in a democracy. This custom we go through every four years alw...

The process of starting to write another book is never the same. Last night and this morning I was mentally paging through the typical spy novel plots and titles just for the hell of it. None of the results were particularly surprising. Plots included a rogue nation/group stealing a nuclear device; a weak nation trying to get strong through the development of a formula for synthetic oil or gasoline; destabilization of a major economy with...

Death. It’s the great mystery, right? Lots of ideas out there about what happens, what it’s like, whether it’s permanent, whether it’s just another phase, etc. Those are all broad metaphysical questions that humans have been pondering since just about forever, I suppose. My inquiry on the subject of death is narrow by comparison. How many dead bodies are needed for a self-respecting spy action thriller? How do you tell when...

The Shadow Chamber, as of about noon today, is available on Amazon as an ebook. This never gets old, at least not for me. As an independent author, I have complete control over the release process. I don’t have to wait on anyone else’s timetable. I don’t have to urge anyone else to make my work a priority. I don’t have to tread lightly lest someone take offense and either consciously or not adjust how they approach moving my project along. I’m well awar...