The Line Between My Life and My Stories

(For the Readers Who’ve Asked: Here’s What’s True)

Today, I celebrate the release of book four (the final of this series) in the Flight Risk Spy novels. I have been publishing novels since 2016, and as I go into the year that will complete a decade in this industry for me, I have to say that the question I am most asked is this: "Which of your characters is you?" I can't say that I have based any of my imaginary friends on myself, but like any author, I infuse my own experiences and idiosyncrasies into many of my protagonists, antagonists, and everyone in between.

You may already know that my best-selling book, The Cheating Wife, is based on the time I witnessed graffiti on a woman's property, which felt, to me, like a public shaming ritual. Who deserves to wake up with those words spray-painted on their driveway? A cheater? Or just a woman who cheats? I hope that book continues to help us ask questions about these matters.

But after that book, I wanted to move on to something a little more fun. A spy-mance novel series that is not all that serious—a joy to read and write! But I wouldn't be the writer I am if I didn't do the thing I do: ask bigger questions through telling stories. And this series, though fun and sexy and glamorous, is no different.

If you haven't yet started reading The Flight Risk Spy Series, no worries! There are no spoilers here, but to celebrate the final book release, I wanted to answer the questions I've been asked so often. And I think I can best do that by sharing the epilogue included in Unfollowed. Just in case you're one of the readers wondering how much of this is me. Here’s a glimpse.

A Note to My Readers

December, 2025

In the winter of 1989, I watched the evening news, sitting in the living room of our small home in St. Louis, Missouri. A newscaster was telling us about the Cold War, about its victories and democratic triumphs, while a small image of a dictator, sentenced to death, flickered in the corner of the screen. It was called a “mock trial,” the reporter said—Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena, had been sentenced to death for atrocities I don’t remember them listing, but I’m sure they did. I was in my first year of high school that year, and the country of Romania was a place on a map I’d memorized the capital city of in seventh-grade geography class. In case you don’t remember: it’s Bucharest, not to be confused with the bordering country, Hungary’s, Budapest.

I had no way of knowing then that Romania would become my second home—the place where I would live nearly half of my married life up to this point. Because in 1989, on the other side of the world, a boy did more than watch a news report. He gathered around radios tuned to forbidden frequencies and listened as a man from Radio Free Europe told them their country had been liberated from the clutches of a tyrant.

If only it had been so simple.

What neither of us could have predicted was how our wildly different, yet eerily parallel, upbringings would help us understand each other years later. After all, I may have grown up in one of the freest nations on earth, but my family followed a charismatic spiritual leader who drafted his own commandments and turned us all into pint-size informants—reporting on each other’s slip-ups, policing one another’s behavior, and shaming us into compliance. To the point where we overlooked unreported crimes until the preponderance of them became impossible to ignore. I sometimes call it a cult—not to be dramatic or sensational, because it needs no embellishment—but because naming it helps me place a frame around what happened to those inside its walls.

As fate would have it, that boy came to the US for school and met that girl, and the two of them fell in love. Fewer than ten years after the wall came down—and the Cold War was touted as over—they chose to build a life in a country still finding its sea legs after decades of authoritarian rule. The questioning and unraveling of how I’d been raised was inevitable there, in a place reconstructing its own identity as I was also doing. The road was both beautiful and painful, as all growth tends to be.

The many lessons I’ve learned, the experiences I’ve had (all the locations mentioned in this series are ones I’ve been fortunate to either live in or visit), and many of the conversations that shaped me are woven through its pages. Some of the lighter truths: When Amanda tells the story in Book One about having singer friends, I wanted a little nod to my own friends who sang backup for Michael Bublé when he came through my hometown of St. Louis. Another: During a trip to the Canary Islands, I climbed to the top of Mt. Teide with my husband on the island of Tenerife—not all the way, just from the cable car station—because, obviously. 

And then there are darker truths: being in a facility where I wasn’t allowed to leave campus without signing out with an escort—a place where strange rituals and lessons were lauded as God’s work, and etched phrases like, “I might not fit, but I’m not going to quit,” in my memory forever. Knowing girls whose babies were taken from them because they had “messed up,” as if their sexual activity determines their entire worth—as if babies were commodities rather than beloved human lives like they claimed. As if a man’s role in the equation meant nothing, and a girl’s choice to protect herself and secure her own future would be an unpardonable sin.

Through the years, I learned the truth about the propaganda behind the Satanic Panic I was forced to watch videos about, the unfounded reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the exaggerated Soviet threats that shaped generations (and perhaps made us all live in a self-fulfilling prophecy). This knowledge allowed me to view my own oppression through a new lens—one that compels me to write.

The year I left America to live abroad, the high school mass shooting at Columbine that seemed to popularize this heinous pattern took place. I heard about it, of course, but the gravity of its truth barely brushed my children as I raised three little ones far from guns and violence. Until I didn’t. When I returned in 2013, I felt as though I’d stepped into an America I didn’t fully recognize. Not completely foreign—but changed. And I too had changed.

Writing this series has been my way of making sense of that dynamic. Of understanding that no person, no place, no system is entirely good or entirely bad, and that balance only comes from weaving together questions that haunt me with truths that ground me.

Like Amanda, I have sometimes felt like a “flight risk,” and this concept became the perfect way to depict both the danger and beauty of chasing your own path.  I hope I’ve captured that nuance among these pages. I’ve long been fascinated by the lingering shadows of the Cold War and the realities of espionage, and these threads naturally draw me toward darker, high-stakes stories. 

The globe still turns beneath nearly twelve thousand nuclear warheads—some ninety-six hundred poised in active stockpiles, most held by Russia and the United States—a reminder that the Cold War’s ghost continues to trail behind us, whispering its unfinished history.

Yet my life is anchored in love—peaceful moments with a devoted spouse, a meaningful family life, and the belief that tenderness can and does exist alongside chaos.

I wanted Amanda’s journey to mirror that coexistence: the verity that danger is real, but so is love. And at the end of the day, I hold to the conviction I try to live by—life is messy, but love endures and, sometimes, even conquers. So perhaps it’s true—what millions of us have been lucky enough to sing in splendid melody for decades—all we need is love, love, love. 

May you find it, may you live it, may you be it. Love from me to you, my fellow global citizen. Love to you.

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Research Resources

My gratitude goes to the many podcast creators whose work feeds my audio obsession, the filmmakers who dedicate their careers to investigation and education, and the many authors who pen their experiences and findings in a profoundly human way—each has enriched my research behind this series. I will forever be thankful for the lives of the women who have gone before me, walk alongside me, and inspire me to use my voice for those who come after. I am equally grateful to those who allowed me to ask difficult questions, and validated memories some might prefer I leave behind—thank you for your courage and your kindness. The following list is not exhaustive by any means, but it highlights some of the sources that helped me ground Amanda’s world in truth.

Podcasts:

The Spy Who by Wondery

The Making of Musk by CBC News

Liberty Lost by Wondery 

Preacher Boys Podcast by Eric Skwarczynski

A Little Bit Culty by Sarah Edmondson and Nippy Ames

Television: 

Turning Point: The Bomb And The Cold War by Netflix

American Manhunt Osama Bin Laden by Netflix

Shiny, Happy People by Amazon Studios

Let Us Prey: A Ministry of Scandals by Investigation Discovery

Flavours of Romania by Charlie Ottley on Netflix 

Books: 

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellion by Gloria Steinem

The Spy Who Saved the World: How a Soviet Colonel Changed the Course of the Cold War by Jerrold L. Schecter and Peter S. Deriabin 

I Must Betray You by Ruta Septys

Finding Me by Viola Davis

Wayward by Alice Greczyn

A Thousand Tiny Paper Cuts by Katherine Spearing

On Being Human by Jennifer Pastiloff

A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings

And so many more. Another heartfelt thank you to those who report, write, and create stories that help us make sense of this life. I am in awe of the human experience at every turn, and those who choose beauty are who drive me to continue my own pursuit.