"Is It Not Monstrous That This Player Here, But in a Fiction, in a Dream of Passion, Could Force his Soul So to His Own Conceit..."

Or something like that from Shakespeare. Does writing expose our vanity? Our self-importance? We believe we have stories that must be told, be shared with the masses. Are we reflected in our characters? We construct them how we want them to be, to think, to act. Or is writing a catharsis to cleanse our souls of regret, loss, desire, purpose? Did Billy contemplate these questions before putting quill to paper? Or was he just hungry and trying to make a buck on the way to The Globe Theatre?

The journey to publication has been a long, arduous quest most comparable to self-flagellation, I'm told. The scars just aren't as visible. False Flag was years in the making evolving over five iterations. From memoir to novel, from first to third person omniscient, the format changed but the story stayed the same. I apologize to the purists out there. False Flag is not a true crime police procedural; nor is it a standard spy thriller. I intentionally designed it differently to tell an entertaining story inspired by true events. My experiences and reflections are woven throughout the fictitious tapestry as seen through the eyes of False Flag's protagonist, Sean Riley.

Although inspired by true events, public personalities and references to those true events were used fictitiously in the plot of False Flag. Characters were inspired by various individuals from spies and investigative subjects to case agents and FBI executives. In some cases, the characters were entirely the product of my imagination.