In the beginning, there was just a name.

About a year and a half ago, I was lying in my bed trying to go to sleep. It had been a long, tiring day; the kids had been randomly wild though entertaining into the night; my wife and I had relaxed (after they'd been forced into their beds) by watching a little TV; and now we were both attempting to lure that devilish, elusive wisp of a creature called "sleep" to come and take us away until morning.

Well, it took her first, leaving me awake and listening to her soft breathing as I attempted to join her in slumber when this name popped in my head: John Apparite.

John Apparite.

"Wow," I said to myself, my mind suddenly and fully alert. "What a damn great name for a spy."

I thought about the adventures I might put this man named "John Apparite" through (pronounced, by the way, as "Uh-PAIR-it"). Adventures during the Golden Age of Espionage, those paranoid days of the Cold War back in the Fifties. Adventures based on historically accurate principles and situations, filled with period references--as esoteric as I might make them--and espionage insights, and one thing above all: some level of humanity with which the reader might identify. This was my first impression of who John Apparite should be.

James Bond is a great spy; so is Jason Bourne. But, I wondered, does the reader really feel like they've gotten to know them after they've finished, say Goldfinger, or The Bourne Identity? Of course, Fleming and Ludlum are terrific, famed writers in the genre, but I wanted my spy to be different than theirs, or Le Carre's, or Deighton's. I wanted my spy to seem as human as possible, foibles and bad-habits and nerve-wracked emotions and all.

So that's the reason John Apparite is from the backwoods of Maryland. That's why the reader learns so much about him and his first twenty-five years on earth in the first chapter. That's why he has panic attacks, why he loves a doomed team like the Washington Senators, why he's left-handed, why he's only five-six and 141 pounds, why he can willingly kill an innocent man in cold blood in one chapter but later feels compelled to save a total stranger at the risk of his mission in another. I wanted the name "John Apparite" to represent a real person that maybe one of us might know; if not the whole of John Apparite, then maybe one of the parts that makes him up (for me, it's his fear of flying!).

As I say on the web-site, there's scores of spies like James Bond but there's only one John Apparite. I hope that by the end of Under Cloak of Darkness the reader feels he or she knows him as well as one of their neighbors--maybe even just as well as I do. And, of course, I hope they are looking forward to learning more about him.

Which is why I wrote Apparite's Revenge. And why I'm half-way through The Pursuit of John Apparite. And why I'm sorting out plot-lines in my head for book number four, for which I'm still trying on titles for size and fit, though I do know what the last line in the book will be.

For now, I'll be posting little tid-bits and clues about Mr. John Apparite, or the writing of the book, or Cold War espionage, or the publishing biz, or the occasional odd or end I'll let you know about myself.

Or maybe I'll just put down what's on my mind depending on what the world is throwing all of us on any given day. Feel free to contact me per my web-site (www.imkoontz.com) and I'll try and answer your questions or address any comments about the book, the blog, or myself.

And thank you, most of all, for reading: book, web-site, or blog. For now, expect the occasional post here (after all, Under Cloak of Darkness doesn't come out from Five Star/Thomson Gale until July, 2006!) when the mood strikes me, and I'll try and keep it interesting.

I'll see ya' around--

I. Michael Koontz