Take me home, country road with Alma Katsu

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Adam Sockel:

You are listening to Passions & Prologues, a literary podcast. For each week, I'll interview an author about a thing they love and how it inspires their work. This week's guest is Alma Katsu, and wow was I excited to have this discussion.

Like a lot of other readers, I discovered Alma through her historical horror novels, The Deep, The Fervor, and The Hunger. And it wasn't until after I had read those books that I discovered that she also writes these kind of political thrillers that are based around the CIA and the FBI and intelligence in general and national security.

And the reason is because she spent an entire career in that line of work. And so, when she wrote Red Widow, it was very much based on just kind of her experience in her life.

And then the book that's just come out, Red London, same thing. She tells me in this conversation that you'll hear in just a moment, that these books to her, it's like second nature, being able to write them and how she loves writing historical horror. But these ones, it's just like these things are in her brain and she knows how to write them.

So fascinating. And the books are so delightful. I will say they are connected, but you do not need to read them in order. You can read Red London before you read Red Widow or vice versa.

This discussion is about a home away from home that has become a place that she loves to be with her partner. After she retired, they moved to a quiet town in West Virginia. And that is all the stuff we talk about in this discussion.

I don't really want to get into it too much because she breaks down basically how they fell in love with this place. How their lives are different, but somewhat connected to the hustle and bustle of living in Washington, DC and the surrounding areas.

And this is really, really fascinating. It's incredible to hear how her life has changed and what it entails for her now. So, you're going to hear that in just a moment.

Before that, I want to get to a book recommendation for you. Keeping in line with the theme of mystery and secret plots, I wanted to bring up the first conspiracy by a past guest of the show, Brad Meltzer, as well as Josh Mensch.

This is a really, really incredible story about, basically a untold piece of American history that reveals how there was a secret plot to kill George Washington. It's really fascinating. Brad, just like Alma writes these books that are somewhat based in truth. He writes them in a way that really makes them feel like fiction.

So, if you've never read one of Brad Meltzer adult books, kind of his twisty, again, mystery thriller type stories, the first conspiracy, The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington is really, really great. Highly recommend it.

If you'd like some customized book recommendations from me, you can always find me at [email protected]. Send me any review or ratings that you've posted of the podcast, whether it’s in Spotify or Apple Podcasts or iHeartRadio, wherever you listen. Just show me that you've done that, and I will happily give you some customized book recommendations there.

You can also find me on Instagram and TikTok at Passions & Prologues. I do book reviews and book reveals and stuff all the time over there.

Okay, that's enough housekeeping. I am so excited for you all to hear this conversation with Alma Katsu, author of the brand-new book, Red London on Passions & Prologues.

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Okay Alma, just before we started recording, you told me that you have a curve ball for me. So, what is something you're super passionate about that we're going to discuss today?

Alma Katsu:

Well, it happened a few years ago and it completely changed my life and my husband's life because right before COVID hit, we had decided that we wanted to get a little vacation place. I had retired from government, I was still writing, but I was super busy as a consultant and I was always running into Northern Virginia, and I had a crazy, horrible life.

And so, we decided to help with the writing that we would look for a cabin kind of close to home and we couldn't find it. And just on a fluke, we ended up going what was like for us, we thought outside of the radius, about three hours away in West Virginia, which really I'd never been to in my life.

And we went to this vacation place I had heard about and fell completely in love with it. Bought property, built a house in the middle of nowhere. It's literally in the middle of nowhere. We're on a mountain and we back up to a national forest and went from being these busy Washington, DC based people to now living in the middle of nowhere. And just loving it completely.

But you had to have the determination of I don't know what, it was really a force of will, to make this happen.

Adam Sockel:

Okay. I love this so much. So, I'm in Cleveland, Ohio. I'm born and raised in Northeast Ohio. And when I was growing up and in high school and in college, I played baseball. And so, that meant traveling a lot to random places.

So, I've actually driven a lot through West Virginia. My dad and I like to joke about a tournament I played there in Beckley, West Virginia, which is also in the middle of nowhere.

But I want to ask, okay so, where is this and what caused you to fall in love with a place that, to be fair, is normally very much a drive through state for people as they're going someplace else?

Alma Katsu:

Right, absolutely. We had no idea, and we were kind of afraid when we were going to tell our, oh, so sophisticated friends and family that they were just going to go, “You've lost your mind.” And a few of them do still tease us.

But the place we found is amazing. It is like a singular thing. So, it's called Lost River. You can actually look it up because there's been like articles written about it. We didn't know that at the time. And it's just over the Virginia line. So, we're on the other side of the Shenandoah. We're right up against the George Washington National Forest.

And it's very remote and it's in the hills, but it's not the rest of West Virginia, which I haven't even seen yet because I haven't had the chance to get out of the house. Which all looks lovely, but very rural.

It's very rural where we are, we are surrounded by cattle farms and poultry farms. But the neighborhood we live in is unique.

So, a couple decades ago some guys built this resort called The Guest House, which has been a magnet for the DC gay community for two decades. And so, the neighborhood sort of built up around it and it's very liberal and progressive as you can imagine.

And it used to be the majority, it would be gay couples on the properties here. Now I understand it's about half and half. And it's almost exclusively like second homes for Washingtonians. And so, the mix of people here are amazing, just amazing.

There's other ex-CIA people besides me, there's been journalists for the Washington Post. There's tons of doctors, of course, more lawyers than you probably want concentrated in one area. But everything.

And most of them are childless like us, most of them are retirement age like us. And it's just a really fun, fun environment. Especially on the weekends because there's not a lot of full-timers like me and my husband and the weekends people come out and it's a huge social community. I have more friends here and I'm busier socially here than I was in DC.

Adam Sockel:

I want to ask about the specifics of the home and all these different things, but the first thing I want to ask because this strikes me as so funny is like, it's so interesting all these people from this very specific style of life. I feel like there's certain places in the United States that just life is different.

Like Los Angeles, one of my best friends lives in Los Angeles and his wife is in the entertainment industry and he's just like, their life is just different than mine. They're always talking about screeners and these weird things that they're going to, and then friends who live in DC who basically, everything is about politics and government and things going on.

It's like, this is a longwinded way of asking what are the conversations that you guys are — is it still about that like DC world or are you guys talking about just wholly different stuff about your life now in West Virginia?

Alma Katsu:

Sort of a mix actually. So, the people who are still DC based and come out on the weekends, there's still a lot of asking about your job and how that's going. My husband's a musician and he hates that stuff, so he avoids it.

But then we also talk about certain things that are just part of our life out here. Because the weekend people want to know what's going on, who's having a party, what developments have happened since the last time they were here.

So, we get to trade in that kind of currency too. So, it's really the best of both worlds. It's just so completely different. People come out here and we do game nights on the weekend where we all sit around and play board games and there's a lot of drinking that goes on here and you can hike because there's tons of hikes and things like that.

All the men have gotten into a certain kind of motorcycle riding. It's called dual sports. So, you can ride on the road, but it's not really road riding. They ride up and down these mountains on gravel trails and things like that. And these are all retirement age things.

My husband's gotten into it. Yeah. It's really fun. So, there's roving motorcycle gangs. Friends of ours come up for the weekend just to ride motorcycles. Yeah.

Adam Sockel:

I love that this area is like a rural Martha's Vineyard for DC people. It's like everyone is flocking to this one place for weekends.

Alma Katsu:

Yeah. And it's funny, you invite some people and they never take you up on your invitation because it's West Virginia and they just picture something out of deliverance, right?

Adam Sockel:

Mm-Hmm (affirmative).

Alma Katsu:

But then the people who do come up often fall in love and want to buy your place. There's no place to buy. Because it's just so charming, we have little things for us. The guest house has a wonderful restaurant and bar that's like a top-rated restaurant and bar, it's only open on the weekends, but if you need sophistication, you go there.

There's some local places. There's the cutest little general store that gets the best local ice cream, all these little things. Some friends of ours just are opening a gourmet pizza place and a craft beer and wine place. And I can't tell you how excited we all are about that because there's no restaurants out here except for just a few. So yeah. It's so charming.

Adam Sockel:

So, has this become you guys' permanent residence? Is this where you guys’ live year-round now?

Alma Katsu:

Yeah, we're West Virginia residents. It's really interesting. We've lived in DC and Northern Virginia and Maryland and are used to those bureaucracies. And so, when we try to do things out here like normal citizens, pay taxes, register cars, stuff like that, we're always just blown away at how completely casual everything is. “Oh, I didn't pay my taxes for a year.” “Oh, no problem. Just drop that check in the mail.” Really?

Adam Sockel:

Oh, my God. So, what has been the biggest life adjustment for you guys since becoming full-time West Virginia residents and in this area of town or area of the world country where despite having these people that have been in your lives probably for a long time is a wholly different lifestyle and experience, aside from the fact that you went from working in the government now to being a well-known author. Aside from that aspect, what's been like the biggest life change for you guys?

Alma Katsu:

Well, it's practical things, really. One is food. The last town we lived in, I think had every grocery chain in the world within five minutes of my house and hundreds of restaurants.

And now it's 40 minutes to drive to the nearest grocery store. And that grocery store is a Walmart, which I had never even been in a Walmart before I moved out here. And all you can get is Walmart food. And I appreciate it, believe me, I understand. And the selection is probably better than I had any reason to hope.

But it's so different and there are no restaurants. I was so busy before; we got takeout or ate out at least twice a week and there's no place to get restaurant. I've cooked so much in the last three years. It's crazy. So, that's one thing, kind of silly.

But the non-silly thing is there's just not a lot of healthcare. And as I mentioned to you before, I have a couple ongoing conditions that require specialists and if there's an emergency, there's nothing, nothing. We just went through this flare up and I still have to wait a couple months before I can get into Johns Hopkins to see a specialist.

Adam Sockel:

And so, along those lines, you mentioned your husband and some other people doing these motorcycle things and stuff like that. And you mentioned cooking for you. Are there aspects of this lifestyle that not having a in-depth understanding of your conditions and things, has being able to go out and hike helped or your life slowing down, have those things helped your ability to stay healthy on most situations.

I know that right now you're experiencing a pretty bad … Alma's is playing hurt today. She's being wonderful and doing this with us. But are there aspects of the life that have kind of helped those situations? Or is it just sort of something that you've always had to live with and there's not much you can do?

Alma Katsu:

Well yeah, I try not to think about it. It doesn't flare up too often. So, this was a total surprise. But living out here has just changed me completely.

Before, I had an incredibly stressful life in the intelligence community. For a long time, I worked complex contingency operations, which means basically war. Anytime there was like a combat situation or humanitarian prices, I was in war rooms all the time. I was in the office of the Secretary of Defense for the Iraq war planning. Super, super stressful.

When we first moved out here, I realized I could not calm down and I thought, okay, this is a huge mistake. It took about six months. But then one day I realized I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking my coffee, looking out at the trees, and I had managed to calm down.

So, it's been super beneficial. Yeah. I just love it. It's so flipping beautiful. Everywhere you look, it's just mountains and trees. At night, if the sky is clear, you can see the Milky Way. You just stand there and gawk with your jaw open.

We see wild animals. A bobcat went across our yard a little while ago and it's just wonderful. We sit around and do bonfires at night, drinking like things. And really nice.

Adam Sockel:

I need you to know as a person who also is horrible at relaxing and slowing down, you're giving me hope because my boss literally this week when I was traveling for work, she told me that her like 2023 goal for me was, be lazy.

She's basically like, “I need you to be 20% less productive because it's just setting too many expectations for yourself from other teams. And it's just unsustainable.”

It's like hearing that someone who also had such a hectic life and couldn't relax can get there. You're giving me hope for the future. I need you to know that.

Alma Katsu:

You're probably not too far away from us. If you ever want to give it a try, we will have you out here. We have a separate guest house, 900 square foot apartment actually in the trees. You're looking down on the forest. You are more than welcome to come out anytime, we feed you, we feed our guests the whole weekend. We take you places; you'll love it. The only thing we don't have is a hot tub.

Adam Sockel:

That's okay. Honestly listen, I'm a Clevelander. I'm used to the cold and wet. And actually Cleveland is surrounded by they call it the metro parks. It's basically, an emerald circle all around Cleveland. A lot of people don't know about it if they've never been here.

It's something like 3,500 square miles of parks all around Cleveland that people don't realize. So, when you mentioned hiking and stuff, I'm literally reading a book right now called On Trails because I'm a runner and I love trail running and I love just being out in nature.

And so, that stuff extremely interests me. And during the new year, for New Year's Eve, like I went to a remote cabin in Pennsylvania. So, this stuff very much is up my alley.

Have you found yourself becoming more of an outdoorsy person because of this new experience?

Alma Katsu:

I kind of hoped we would, but my husband is not very keen on hiking. If he can ride his motorcycle, he'll ride his motorcycle. So, I try to get out. Everything here is super hilly though, so I used to be in great shape, but I'm not anymore and I'm trying to get back into it.

So, I'm hopeful that I will start to be more physical. But the other thing is my business is really taken off between the books and other stuff we're trying to do. It's hard to … I really have to fight to sort of pull myself away from the computer, sadly.

Adam Sockel:

Speaking of your books, I am curious if this new lifestyle has — again, for most people, I ask them if the thing that they're passionate about and that they love has affected their writing. I imagine for you it is directly connected to your writing because like you talked about, you had this long career in the government and then you retired.

I think, I'm guessing, but I imagine a lot of your writing fans who especially discovered you from The Hunger or The Deep or The Fervor, might not know that you have this whole other life. And so, how does this new lifestyle affect your writing? I imagine you have more time and peace to be able to do it, but are there other aspects that this new style of life has influenced what you write about?

Alma Katsu:

Yeah, it's really interesting. Definitely I have more time because I almost completely dropped the consulting business. I just have one customer that won't leave me alone.

But so, I have more time to write and what that really equated to was more space to write in my head because I didn't have to juggle all this other stuff all the time. So, now I can dwell more. And also I'm finding I'm coming up with a lot more ideas for things. So, yeah.

And everybody finds it weird that I write these historical horror novels, but I also write spy novels and I admit it's weird. What can I tell you? It’s because I grew up loving speculative fiction and so back when I was still working in intelligence and they don't like you to write about it when you're working in it, that was just the natural go-to and I got the opportunity to start spine novels after I retired. So, that's part of it.

The other thing horror people find funny is I live in an area that has Bigfoot legends and UFO legends and all this stuff, that it would seem to be tailor made for frightening people, like abandoned cabins and noises at night. We've heard some really crazy noises. But it doesn't scare me us too much because I write horror novels. But it's a great atmosphere for them.

All my neighbors tell me these stories they make up thinking they're going to scare me. It's really funny.

Adam Sockel:

I was actually going to say that-

Alma Katsu:

And then-

Adam Sockel:

Oh, go ahead.

Alma Katsu:

Oh, that's okay. Well, and then there's the other thing where I have this idea for a project that I want to write a novel in chapters that's based in what is Lost River. Because Lost River is such an interesting place where this cauldron of opposites, it's a blue oasis surrounded by red state people. All these highfalutin city slickers surrounded by incredibly very nice, but country people. Gays, surrounded by very religious conservative people. Tons of Mennonites around here. It's just really interesting.

And then there's meth labs probably not too far from us, stuff like that. It's makes you think of very interesting stories, and I think it would be a great example of kind of what the country's going through right now where you have just the competing ideologies that have to live next to each other.

Adam Sockel:

I was just going to think to say, and if this ends up being a good idea for you, we could remove this part of the podcast. But it feels like this is a perfect blend of the two things you write about, horror and these historical, creepy stories blended with the government aspects of stuff because it really does — you're absolutely right. The setting you have is like a perfect dichotomy of exactly what's of going on in the world.

But also, I feel like there could absolutely be horror undertones because of, like you said, being in the back woods, in an abandoned cabin and these extremely differing ideologies. And people seem nice, but in reality, they really hate each other. And then all of a sudden … I feel like this is a perfect blend of the two styles of writing you have.

Alma Katsu:

Thank you. Yeah. I think there's a lot of potential here, but I think my agents are a little afraid of it because it's such a mix of genres. Almost everything I do is a mix of genres anyway, but this is like so hard to define. So, who knows?

I’m starting to write the stories when I have a few minutes and sneak them in there. One's a bigfoot story. I never thought I'd write a Bigfoot story.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. And honestly, that is really interesting though because I'm currently querying a novel and I am finding as a unpublished author, even one who like does have a pretty good connection to this point of the author community, I am finding that literary agents very much want you to be in a genre. You need to be able to define what your book is and it makes sense, they need to be able to sell the book.

But it is interesting for someone who has so many books published and so many extremely popular books published that even your agents are like, it needs to be at least sort of genre specific so that we can, I assume market it and all that interesting stuff.

Alma Katsu:

Well, it's kind of, I don't want to say worse than that, but it is worse than that. This has come up a lot actually as I've been talking about Red London. And that is, it's kind of rare when you're already established in one genre for publishers to let you even write in another genre.

And it's not because authors can't do it. Most authors I think could write in multiple genres. It's the marketing side. It's so hard to market.

And if you think about it, I have no right to expect anybody who likes horror novels to also like spy novels or vice versa. So, all the marketing tends to be about, follow this author, follow this author.

But if every other book you write is something they're not going to be interested in, they're not going to be as interested in you. They may not pick up any book they see with your name on it, when they walk into the bookstore. It's really been eye-opening and we're still trying to figure out how to square that circle.

Adam Sockel:

Okay. I want to get into that a little bit. That's really interesting point because again, for people who are listening to this, they may know you from, like I said … I discovered you from The Hunger and then I devoured The Deep and then I loved The Fervor. And I know that you wrote Red Widow like a couple years ago.

So, like you said, you had already established yourself as sort of a horror novelist. This person who writes these historical based, very creepy, very wonderful stories.

And then your Red Widow, which I don't want to say based on your background, but it's much closer to the career that you had, and Red London is kind of the second book in that aspect.

So, what was that process like for you when you wrote Red Widow first and you were basically like, okay, I'm going to write this book that is much more spy based and things that are from my “past life.” What was that process like? And I guess sort of like if it also extended into Red London as well?

Alma Katsu:

Well, for me, I always have like a reason why I want to write a book. If you read the historical horrors, you may feel like there's certain political undertones that come out. And that's because the first question people ask you when you write historicals is why should we care about this event that happened in the past?

So, you try to show the parallels between the past and what we're going through today. And as I was doing that, I realized how important that is to have in a book. To have a reason why you're writing it, a theme, something that you're trying to drop people's attention to and make them think about.

And I definitely had that in mind. I actually had no idea for the book before. My publisher, my editor and I were having breakfast one day and she said, “You're retired now. I know you've always wanted to write a spy novel. Do you want to give it a try?”

And I was like … because there were two things. One is, I kind of wanted to prove something that, I really like some writings, spy writing, but a lot of it I don't and a lot of people feel the same way who've been in the business because it has very little bearing to do on the actual job.

And there are a lot of interesting questions that you have to face as an individual, moral, ethical, all kinds of that stuff, when you work in the business. And I thought it would be really doing a service to the public as well as my former colleagues, if we can raise more of this, as part of the discourse.

And also, because I wanted to have female leads because the intelligence community has wonderful, wonderful professional women in their force, and you just really don't see them well represented in TV or movies or books. They're always — no disrespect to Homeland, but we're not all like that. Okay. We're not …

And so, I really wanted to show just really how wonderful the women in intelligence are. So, I had this mission.

And then the other thing was I knew this thing — Red Widow was actually based on a true story. All the details have been changed, but it was a true story. It's something that happened when I was at CIA and when it happened I was like, “Man, this would make a great story one day.” So, I resurrected that and we went to town.

So, I love writing this spy novels. One reason is because they're so much easier for me, because that was my life for over 30 years. So, it's automatic when something happens. I should also say part of what I do as a consultant is I'm a futurist. I'm a futurist in emerging technologies.

But what that means is we're always thinking about what are the implications of a development, whether it's technology based or societal, what are the implications for the intelligence business? How is this going to change?

So, I have this automatic mindset, so when I see something happening in the news, I'm automatically thinking of what's the story there? So, it's so much easier than writing the historical horrors, which are so much work.

Adam Sockel:

So, it was actually going to be one of my questions, but you sort of answered there as like, does it feel different to write these versus the historical ones, the historical like horror. And obviously it does click, you said it's sort of like second nature for you at this point to just — a lot of people say like, write what you know, and this is like that to the truest form.

But you mentioned one thing that I wanted to ask you, to get back a little bit before we get into Red London, to get back to about where you're living now. You mentioned that you're a futurist and a lot of what you did was basically being like, what is going on with this technology and how will it affect everything, I suppose?

And you live in a aspect of the country that is like, I don't want to say slower to catch on to historical things, but it's interesting to me that you guys have chosen a place that is so much slower and much more at peace with what's going on around them.

Do you feel that contrast is like either when you're writing or thinking about consulting since you still have like the one client, does it feel strange to you to have those two aspects in your world, this life around you and then this thing you're thinking about for the future?

Alma Katsu:

It probably would if not for the pandemic. The pandemic really changed our relationship to work, the availability of information, our ability to interact with people virtually. And so, that I think introduced a lot of tools that just make my life easier.

And I follow a lot of tech news and now they're very conditioned to push information, so I don't have to attend conferences or go meet with somebody or something like that.

The other thing is this is our little secret here. We have the best internet in the entire state of West Virginia. It is actually better than most people in DC. We have fiber optic to the door.

Adam Sockel:

Oh, my God.

Alma Katsu:

I know. It's because one of the lawyers for the county telecommunications company had a place here. And so, he made sure that we got upgraded first and we pay for it. Not as much as you think. We pay for it, but it made all the difference.

And that's a big draw for a lot of the people here because they can work from here at least part-time and still enjoy. Yeah.

So, it's funny. But I really think it was the pandemic made a big difference in our ability to say, yeah, let's give it a try and live full-time out there.

Adam Sockel:

I will say, no one else will know this because you and I are the only ones who can see the video we're on. But you do have a very clear video. I will say, it's much crisper than most people that I interview over Zoom. So, job well done with the fiber optics.

I want to ask you a little bit about Red London because you mentioned Red Widow being sort of based on a true story. Obviously, like you said, everything was changed for obvious reasons. Can you kind of tell my listeners a little bit about Red London and then where the ideas for that one came from, as much as you can share, I suppose?

Alma Katsu:

Sure. So, Red London is the second book, but really, it's the main character from the first book continues over. You could read Red London first. I just want to say that because it's almost a standalone.

So, in this book, Lyndsey Duncan, who's the main character, she's forward based out of London now. She's going to be handling a very dangerous high level mole asset that they have in Russian intelligence. So, she wants to be a little closer to him, so it's easier to meet.

While she's in London, she's asked by MI6, with CIA's permission if she would work with them. They're trying to flip the wife of a Russian oligarch who's living in London. And the woman is British, she's a British aristocrat, and in this world, Vladimir Putin is gone. He disappeared.

There's a new Russian president, very mysterious, came from nowhere, ex-KGB like Putin was. And while he's saying all the right things on the international stage, Russia wants to be a good world citizen, et cetera, et cetera, MI6 and CIA don't believe him and they think there's something else going on.

So, they want to take the Russian oligarchs billions of dollars off the table, so the new Russian president won't get his hands on it. And of course, all that money is being kept in these hidden offshore accounts and only insiders would have that information. So, that's why they want to try to get Emily the wife to flip on the husband.

There's a lot of other little things going on in it and I guess we can talk about that. The other major theme is the rise in private intelligence, but as for how I got the idea for this, it's not a stretch to say that it goes all the way back to 1994.

In 1994, the British Prime Minister created a new class of visa for foreigners, so they could live in the UK if they invested roughly a million pounds into the British economy.

And they did this at the exact same time that the Soviet Union was falling. And we were seeing this new class of businessmen, now the oligarchs rising up. But these were not like, what's the word I'm looking for? People who were pulling themselves up by their boots strings, they were pretty much looting the former Soviet infrastructure, taking all these government things and privatizing them for their own gain.

And also, the KGB, which had been seeing that this was going to come about, that the Soviet system was going to fail, started funneling money to some of these guys to make them beholden. And it's reflected today, to this very day where you see the closeness between the oligarchs and Putin and the security service.

But at that time, I was an analyst who was looking at a lot of basket case countries. That's what we call them. It's a term of art. It's a country that can no longer govern itself, like Somalia or Afghanistan, that kind of thing.

And we were wondering if Russia was going to become a basket case country. The economy crashed; the people were plunged into chaos. Drug use was high, illness was very high. It was just insane and wondering what's going to happen and wondering what the hell were the Brits thinking? They're opening these doors to this criminal enterprise, how is that not going to catch up with you?

So, it's taken 20 years, but it's caught up with them. And it started in 2018, when Sergei Skripal was poisoned by the Russians. Brazenly came on UK. It really caused this sort of crisis among the Brits, what have we done? The Russians are just emboldened to do whatever they want.

And then, they had to make a decision with the invasion of Ukraine and whether or not they were going to support the sanctions and punish all these people who had really rooted their tentacles in the British economy. So, it was just really that my book was coming out just as — I was writing that book just as it happened, but it is very timely.

Adam Sockel:

I was just going to say I need people to understand that it often takes an author, call it, even if you're very quick four to six months to write drafts of novels, then you have your back and forth with your editors and then you have the marketing that needs to go in and you have to announce the release of the book. And that's usually a year later, for this book to be coming out now with everything going on in the world.

And I think, like you said, it's crazy that it's happening at this exact time. And you mentioned the sanctions. I remember that all happening at the very beginning of all this. I am a soccer fan in addition to all these other things.

But I remember Chelsea football club's owner was Roman Abramovich who, he was an oligarch and Britain basically for more or less, they forced him to sell the team because they're like, “Alright, you are the most public connection to us in Vladimir Putin.”

And you're right. It's just so interesting to think about all of these things. And I want to ask, this is somewhat connected, I mentioned reading this book called On Trails and the author said that one of the things he does for a living is he's like a trail builder, which has been really fascinating to learn about the fact like when you walk through, like he says on the Appalachian Trail.

But like one of the things he talks about is like once you become someone who has to think about where do you put certain angles and switchbacks on this stuff. He's like, “It's impossible for me to go out in the woods and just be there. I'm thinking about how would I create this path or what sightline would I use?”

And so, this is all to say for you, knowing so much about the world that most civilians will never understand and will never know, are you able to just sit back and look at the news or events in a way and just be like, huh, and take it at face value?

Or are you constantly, are your wheels constantly turning, not just from a ooh, that would make a good story standpoint, but I imagine you can understand things several steps ahead from any civilian that could possibly grasp what's really going on.

Alma Katsu:

Well, that's a very nice thought. Well, it comes down to whether or not it's a topic I worked on. Like any intelligence professional, if it's not their area of expertise with the exception of some case officers, they're not going to bullshit you. They're going to say, I don't know, that's not my area of expertise. I would imagine it might be something like this or that.

So, for instance, I am not a Russia expert. I had to do a fair amount of research on the oligarchs, and I remembered the whole thing with the Brits because I had to watch basket case countries while it was happening. So, I had to watch Russia.

But so, sometimes I can say, tech stuff I'm very good at. What's the ramifications, what's the implications of this particular kind of technology? How far are we out? I can do forecasting.

But some geopolitical stuff, not so much. And my area of expertise is something that thank God we don't see very much, which is genocides and atrocities. That was very big in the 90s, 1990s. Luckily, we've moved away from that. We're probably moving towards it again.

Adam Sockel:

Seems that way. I was just going to say, I feel like every other story you see, whether it's the Washington Post or Politico or whoever it is about the war in Ukraine, it's just like X agency says that there are war crimes going on. It's like as just a everyday civilian, I'm like, “Yeah, that seems fairly obvious to me.”

Alma Katsu:

Yeah, yeah. But holding people accountable for them is very hard. And unfortunately, a lot of times these types of conflicts create militias and these partisans who take things in their own hand and that's when we really start to see things going out of control. So, yeah. It bears watching.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. So, from a writing standpoint, are you going to continue doing, like you mentioned kind of beginning to work on a story about where you're living now. But is your plan to kind of go back and forth between horror adjacent, historical horror novels and then spy things, is this something you want to keep doing or do you find yourself drifting more towards writing the thrillers and mysteries and spy stuff? Or is it just you enjoy doing both?

Alma Katsu:

I am just in trouble. I don't know. So, the next book is going to be a horror novel, but it's not even historical. I wanted to try a contemporary, so there's that, that's already going to change.

I've been embraced by the heart community, which is wonderful and it's a great community too. So, I want to continue in that, but I don't know, we'll see if the next novel is not that popular then I'm really going to have to regroup and try to figure out what's going on.

On the spy side, I really like writing that stuff and I'm really good at finding things in the news and saying, “Damn, that would make a good story.”

I branched out this year and I write stories for Amazon. Amazon original stories, they produce novella length stories and so I did a historical horror for them that came out last year and we've got a kind of spy science-fictiony one that's coming out this year and hopefully I'll do some more.

So, I have outlets, but it all goes back to that marketing thing, that it might be limiting my ability to grow an audience. Yeah.

Adam Sockel:

Okay. I have one last question for you. You've been very gracious with your time, having not felt well, I really appreciate it.

I always end my conversations by having the author give just one recommendation. It can be a book, it can be, somebody recommended go for a walk. Mallory O’Meara, who we both know recommended a protein powder, just one recommendation that you think more people should know about.

Again, it can absolutely be a book, but what's something that you recommend more people know about, that you adore?

Alma Katsu:

Oh gosh, that's tough. I'll recommend something that recommends other things. There's a newsletter put out called Recommendo. I don't know, have you heard of that?

Adam Sockel:

I have, but I'll let you tell everyone else about it.

Alma Katsu:

Kevin Kelly, I believe, who is one of the co-founders of Wired Magazine, started this and he's got a couple other authors with it. You can subscribe to the newsletter, it's absolutely free. And every Sunday morning in your inbox will be the newsletter and it'll recommend six things and they tend to be sort of the kinds of things you think Wired would be interested in.

It's like self-improvement usually through technology or how to manage modern technology better or something.

But there's other things in there too, like a new puzzle company. That's absolutely great. So, if you like recommendations, you want to subscribe to Recommendo.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah, that's a perfect one. Well Alma, I absolutely adored Red London. I loved Red Widow. I’m gushing because I've loved all of the books of yours that I have read, and this was so much fun. I was so excited when your name came up on a list recommended from your publicist. So, thank you for saying yes and thank you for joining me today.

Alma Katsu:

Thank you for having me. This has been so much fun and I'm absolutely serious. You got to come on out sometime because they do run on the mountains, and it'll kill you.

Adam Sockel:

Yes. Yes, it absolutely will.

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Passions & Prologues is proud to be an Evergreen Podcast. It was created by Adam Sockel. It was produced by Adam Sockel and Sean Rule-Hoffman. And if you are interested in this podcast and any other Evergreen Podcast, you can go to evergreenpodcasts.com to discover all the different stories we have to tell.