Under/Cover's Senior Editor, Bill Harlow, spoke with J.R. Seeger, author of Mike4, about the journey from CIA Officer to author.
J.R. Seeger served as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne and as a CIA officer for a total of 27 years of federal service. As a CIA officer, he served in multiple field locations both as a field collector and team leader. Since his retirement, J.R. has written articles and book reviews in the CIA professional journal "Studies in Intelligence" and the T.E. Lawrence Society newsletter. Mike4 is his first novel and the first in a four-part series about a family that served in the special operations and intelligence community from World War II to the present.
Under/Cover: You come from a professional background that is secretive by nature - what made you want to write a novel?
Seeger: Several years ago, the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs asked me to engage with a writer named Doug Stanton. I knew of Doug from his work on a book called Horse Soldiers, which focused on Special Forces soldiers who rode to war in Afghanistan against the Taliban in the fall of 2001. Doug thought it might be interesting to conduct a series of interviews with newly-hired CIA employees as they moved through their training. I explained to Doug how hard this would be to do, given the classification and security concerns. After a few weeks, Doug realized I was right, and moved on to another project.
But during our discussions, I realized that it would be possible in a work of fiction, to address some of the issues which intrigued Doug, such as the changes in personal world view that take place as one goes through Agency training, and what happens to a person when they enter “the wilderness of mirrors” that is intelligence and counterintelligence.
I was also fascinated by the fact that many within the current intelligence community are the sons, daughters or grandchildren of CIA, DIA or NSA officers, and I thought I might take a crack at telling this story through fiction.
At the same time, I was providing training support to the U.S. Army Intelligence School at Ft. Huachuca and the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. While there, I met young men and women assigned to learn case officer human intelligence (HUMINT) skills in support of counterterrorism special operations. Among those I trained were “wounded warriors” who had been grievously wounded in Afghanistan or Iraq and decided to remain in the fight. So, I drew on that experience. In Mike4, my main character is a “below the knee” (BTK) amputee who decides to remain in the Special Operations community.
The two stories fused in my head, and I decided I needed to write it down. Initially, I had no intention of publishing the story. But I shared the manuscript with some Agency colleagues and finally, one of my Agency mentors insisted I pursue publication. Nearly three years later, after getting clearance from the CIA’s Publication Review Board (PRB) and going through the mission of searching for a publisher, Mike4 saw the light of day.
Under/Cover:What was the process when you started to write?
Seeger:Once the idea came to mind, I created a storyboard that gave me the three acts that became the novel. After that, I started to write. I will be the first to admit I am not great at descriptive prose. I have always been a fan of the works of Dashiell Hammett and Elmore Leonard, and while I make no claim to be good in copying their style, I found that it was easier to proceed along the plot line if my characters talked about what they were doing and why. Once I decided on this style of fiction, it took a relatively short time to write the novel, probably no more than 4-6 months working part time. It would have taken less time if I had been a full-time writer. However, I still work part time in the Intelligence Community and I write book reviews for Studies in Intelligence, so part-time was all the time the characters were going to receive.
Under/Cover: What was the hardest part for you? Writing dialogue? Figuring out the plot? Deciding how to make it unclassified? Figuring out how much detail to include/exclude?
Seeger: The hardest part of the work was building consistency in the plot. I am by nature, a person who captures a strategic idea pretty quickly, but doesn’t always remember to build a foundation for the “big idea.” The same goes for writing a novel. You build the foundation on scratch paper and then type like mad.
Deleting my own favorite parts of the story was one of the painful lessons I learned. Mike4 was originally twice the length it is today. To get anyone to read the manuscript, I had to make decisions on what was essential and what was not. That was advice I received from early readers, and it has been a part of my learning curve as I have written the sequels. I remember an interview with Elmore Leonard about writing. He said: “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”
As to issues of classification, I knew up front that there were going to be limits on what I could and could not say about our world. I did not find that a difficult or onerous requirement. It was simply like playing any sport. You have to play inside the boundaries.
Under/Cover: When you started the novel — did you know how it would end? Or did that become clear to you only as you worked on it?
Seeger: As an avid reader of novels, I have read authors who say they simply tell the story that the characters create. It always sounded a bit screwy to me. After all, the characters are not real or alive, so how could they “create” the tale? In the long run, I have to admit there is some degree of schizophrenia in this effort. The characters do become real in the author’s mind and they do drive the story. My characters went in ways that I did not expect in the beginning. I had a “storyboard” designed for a simple three-act play and, generally speaking, the story did end where and how I expected. However, there are specific scenes and specific characters that occurred as I was writing them rather than through careful plot design.
Under/Cover: What was the experience of getting the novel cleared by the CIA's Publication Review Board like?
Seeger: I have been through the PRB process now three times with my fiction writing. I think the PRB clearance process is appropriate, necessary and fair. I do believe the current process which requires a further DoD review, can be challenging because unlike the PRB, that does not appear to be a transparent process. At least in my case, the DoD review added many months to the review and was entirely opaque. In contrast, the PRB staff were very willing to give me updates and explain what needed to be accomplished.
Under/Cover: Once you got it cleared — what were your next steps in getting it published? Have you learned lessons that would be useful to pass on to fellow intelligence community alumni who also want to get published?
Seeger: Finding a publisher was nearly impossible. First, there are more than enough successful “thriller” writers out there. I was jumping into a pool that was already jammed with Olympic quality swimmers. I have my share of rejection notices, which I can say, were based on two things: I was a first-time author which made me a liability, not an asset to any publisher, and my novel was too long. Annoyingly, many of those rejections were unnecessarily rude. Eventually, I found a small publishing firm that was willing to send the manuscript to a beta-reader to determine if the story was worth reading. The beta reader told the publisher the book was worth the candle and that was that.
I have learned some hard lessons from this effort. First, if you don’t have a major firm willing to publish your work, you are going to spend real money and real time to get a good product. Second, you have to work hard in the editing phase. My publisher is a small firm with no proof readers. That is my job. Graphic art? I had to find the artist. Line editing? I had to find the line editor. All of these folks expect to be paid for their hard work. This would be true if you “self-published” using CreateSpace or any of a number of other firms. So, the lesson up front is, it is harder to get a book into print than it is to write the book.
Under/Cover: What is next for you in your writing life?
Seeger: I am not completely done with the O’Connell family from Mike4. I have two additional novels, Friend or Foe? and The Executioner’s Blade, both have been cleared by the PRB. Friend or Foe is with the publisher now and we are working through the editing process. The three novels focus on the life of my main character, Sue O’Connell, and her family (both real and work family). I am almost through with a “prequel” titled O’Connell’s Treasure which is set in World War II. The PRB has informed me that as long as I don’t cross into the world of the Central Intelligence Group of 1946, I do not need a formal review. Needless to say, the story will end without a single mention of CIG or the CIA.
