Monday, December 10, 2012

Ed Kovacs

Ed Kovacs has worked for many years as a private security contractor deploying to challenging locations worldwide. He is a member of AFIO, Association for Intelligence Officers, the International Thriller Writers organization, and the Mystery Writers of America.

His novels include Storm Damage and its recently released follow-up, Good Junk.

A couple of weeks ago I asked Kovacs what he was reading. His reply:
I just found a dog-eared copy of Tom Clancy’s eleven-hundred-page thrill ride, The Bear and the Dragon. I’m currently working on a security contract at a remote location in a former Soviet Republic, so Clancy’s Russian settings and characters, and insights into Russian thinking are all very germane, since I liaise with many Russian military, security and intelligence types on a daily basis.

Clancy is simply a Grand Master of commercial thriller fiction that rises above the genre. When I deployed here I had already started writing my 5th novel, an espionage/conspiracy thriller set in Central Asia with a security contractor hero. I can’t do much writing due to the long hours my duty requires, but I found the coincidence of stumbling upon his book in a “hotel” “library” curious (there are almost no English-language books to be had here, unless you have high-speed Internet and can download e-books).

The Bear and the Dragon is almost like a reference work; reading a bit of it here and there helps me stay focused on writing my own book, when I try to crank out some pages in my off-duty hours. Clancy sets a very high bar for the rest of us to emulate.
Visit Ed Kovacs's website.

My Book, The Movie: Storm Damage.

The Page 69 Test: Storm Damage.

Writers Read: Ed Kovacs (December 2011).

--Marshal Zeringue