Today’s the day—my long-gestating Dox origin story, AMOK, is available at last! Hardback; trade paper; Kindle; audiobook narrated by yours truly…whatever you prefer.
The gist:
1991. A restless young man called Dox is back home in Texas. His friends have missed him and his mother and sisters need him, but after four years as a Marine and another two as a CIA contractor fighting alongside the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet Union, small-town life in Abilene is a suffocating dead end. Another secret war, this one in Southeast Asia, offers a big payday and the solution to his family’s dire straits. But secret wars are never what they’re billed to be, and Dox is about to get the education of his young life—among the lessons, that the only thing more dangerous than a secret war is falling in love with your enemy.
If you’re curious about how I got around the pandemic to research the Huntsville “Walls” Unit (yes, the same Texas prison depicted in the 1972 Steve McQueen movie The Getaway), life in Abilene and Tuscola, and Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, all as they existed in 1991, you can find my notes, a bibliography, and a filmography here—and of course in the book itself.
And some research photos from Abilene and Tuscola here.
A small request: if you’ve read the book already via NetGalley or otherwise—or whenever you read it—please don’t be shy about posting a customer review here. For whatever reason, Amok didn’t get much in the way of pre-publication coverage, so the book will have to rely more than usual on word of mouth. Thanks very much in advance.
AMOK is a thriller; it’s a love story; most of all, it’s a bildungsroman (even though my editor wisely declined the opportunity to put A DOX BILDUNGSROMAN on the cover). I laughed and cried a lot while writing it—of course I did, it’s Dox, and he’s never been better! Enjoy and happy holidays.
Cheers,
Barry
