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An international conspiracy to gain control over vast Arctic oil and gas resources touches close to home in Max Morgan’s riveting spy thriller Black Ice. |
Max,
Thank you for taking your time
Who are your
influences?
While inspiring books and authors clearly play an important
role, my most notable influences are people I have met throughout my life. In
the case of Black Ice, my influence is a long-term colleague I met some years
ago in Tirana. Despite having to operate in extremely difficult circumstances,
it was his integrity, his tenacity and his determination to make things right
that I wanted to acknowledge in this novel. This is a great man whom I am now
privileged to call a friend. He gave me the will to write about strength in the
face of adversity. If we look at the
current geopolitical developments, we must remain strong vis-à-vis growing
threats that some are taking way too long to acknowledge.
When did you begin
writing?
I began writing in my childhood, but I wrote exclusively for
myself. This presents numerous advantages in that you write for someone who
shares your ideas, values and views of the world. Black Ice came about because
I wanted to interlock fictional characters with real life world events. I did
not know if this book would ever be published, I was just curious to see if I
could intertwine my ideas into a good spy story.
How did you come up
with your story, characters, etc?
I decided to write this book because ideas were oozing out
of me. It was primordial for me to create characters that one could easily
relate to as a reader. I wanted Magnus Ose to be a government employee with
every day problems, a man who is at times his own worst enemy, rendering him somewhat
endearing to the reader. I wanted to play on Magnus’ psychology and emotions,
like a real human being. I did not want
to create a “super spy” normally associated with these types of novels. I wanted to flesh out the interplay between various
intelligence agencies and describe real places that readers could hopefully
recognize. Throughout the novel, my literary settings were inspired by real world
locations I have personally travelled to.
I’ve always enjoyed reading novels where there was an
intersection between literature and geography.
Do you work from an
outline?
I absolutely work from a very structured outline. With this
many twists and turns, I needed a road map to make sure everything was clearly
written. This is not to say that I did not deviate on a few occasions, but the
overall structure remained the same.
Favorite scene in the
novel.
It is a difficult task to pin point one favorite scene but I
do very much enjoy the scene in the hotel lobby where DGSE agent Grillet
watches Emile Lepoutre, the EuroTechnix executive, enjoy a football game with a
drink. Without wanting to give away the plot, this is a central scene where details,
which may at first escape the reader, suddenly explain major developments in
the storyline.
Thank you Max for taking the time with Buttonholed Book
Reviews
Max Morgan is a
former government official with insight into the workings of security
intelligence issues. Having traveled and worked around the world, the
author is currently employed as a private consultant. For the author’s
outstanding work, Morgan was awarded the State Security and Intelligence
Cross of Merit by a friendly country.
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