Recently retired from a career in international business, I’m currently a contributor to OCA (Open Central Asia – circulation over 50,000), a London-based magazine run by Central Asian emigres and Westerners like myself with experience in the region. Additionally, I lead a projectdedicated to countering foreign malign influence (MFI) through humor, using video production facilities in my native Pensacola, Florida, and social media influencers throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

In 2004 I successfully predicted revolution in Kyrgyzstan– this article was published in the journal “Politika i Obschestvo”. I would go on to witness Kyrgyzstani revolutions in 2005 and 2010, and to just miss the one in 2020. I have always written fiction, but until now have not attempted to publish. I am leading with ALTYN: the Fall of Empire Gold, which takes place during a fourth revolution in Kyrgyzstan (yet to occur as of this writing). It is the product of my career in Eurasia.

I have already secured an endorsement quotation from author David McCloskey, the former CIA analyst who recently published two popular spy novels, and I will aim to garner more. I grew up in North Florida, attended college in Virginia, where I majored in Russian Studies, and went on to spend much of the next three decades doing business in the former Soviet Union.

While working in finance, defense and government relations for Western firms, I found time to fly Cessnas and MI-8 helicopters through mountain gorges looking for gold-bearing quartz veins. I rode an emaciated camel through the deserts of Uzbekistan. I addressed, several times, the Russian Duma (parliament), and the last time had my microphone shut off so the chairman, the second-ranking man in the Communist Party, could admonish the “foreign gentleman”. I nearly lost two front teeth in a car accident on a Siberian ice road. It was April first, and the temperature was minus thirty Celsius. I helped the US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan get the American Chamber of Commerce off the ground in that country two decades ago.

Most recently, I played the part of a Russian-speaking Swede looking for a wife in a Russian rom-com which is now being turned into a TV series. So, am I a movie star? No. What about in Russia? Also, no.

But it was quite the experience. Now I’m back home, fifty-one and fit, and elated to be once again dedicated to my first love -- exciting, authentic fiction. As an accomplished public speaker, I will accept engagements forthe promotion of my work. I hope to collaborate with an agent who is ambitious.

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