William Christie is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a former Marine Corps infantry officer. He is well into middle age, and is the author of eight novels, five under his own name and the latest two under the pen name F.J. Chase, which was basically a publisher’s marketing ploy. He also wrote SEAL Team Seven: Direct Action, for Berkley Books, under the name Keith Douglass, because he needed a new car at the time.Christie's new novel is A Single Spy.
Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. His reply:
This is hard, because when I'm writing a novel I try not to read fiction. Or at least the genre I'm writing in. Because when I'mVisit William Christie's website.impressed I sometimes find myself writing in that writer's voice. And when I look at the day's work I find myself saying: what the hell? But in writing a historical novel I kept coming back to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies. Not just that it is brilliant writing and brilliant use of history. But because she took as her hero Thomas Cromwell, one of history's great villains. Henry VIII's consigliere and brutal fixer. Showing us that with enough skill any character can claim us, if shown according to their own time and their own lights. Hilary Mantel and her novels have nothing to do with my character Alexsi in A Single Spy, but she showed me what was possible.
My Book, The Movie: A Single Spy.
--Marshal Zeringue
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