Song May is a beautiful, capable, undercover agent in the Chinese Secret Service, and an integral part of a program developed by the Chinese Communist Party to train undetectable spies to steal secrets from top U.S. technology companies. She grew up a blue blood of the Party and is considered one of the agency's rising stars. Her current assignment is to monitor an American English teacher who, unbeknownst to him, is training future spies. The espionage is causing extreme paranoia in Silicon Valley and making billions for the Chinese Communist Party. As each month passes, an increasing number of Chinese companies are announcing groundbreaking technologies, listing their shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and surpassing the technological prowess of even the premier blue-chip U.S. companies. The CIA has no leads, the spies are performing brilliantly, and the Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party is basking in the glory. Every facet of the operation is proceeding like clockwork. Nothing can go wrong until little by little hubris and arrogance lead to carelessness and mistakes, threatening the survival of the program. The entire operation begins to unravel, but the Communists will not go down without a fight. They are determined to continue recent successes and preserve the long-term viability of the mission through murder, indoctrination, and intimidation. Song May must ultimately decide between exposing the spy ring and assisting the love of her life in escaping the grip of the Communist Party or honoring her deceased grandfather and protecting her family's reputation by remaining loyal to the Party.
About the Author: I began writing and writing and writing. It was spring 2001 and I had just gotten laid off from my second dot-com in the last six months. I was living in Seattle, one of the hardest hit cities from the dot-com bust and I was most certainly a casualty. I moved to Seattle in December 1999 - drove cross-country from Connecticut without a job, broke down twice along the way, and was unprepared for mountain passes, but I made it. Within weeks, I was working and within months I was sent to China to do a continuing education class with Chinese lawyers. Met a girl, had cash in my pocket, and was loving my new home. Ok, sorry, wrong story, let's get back to the writing and writing, and writing part. After college, I spent about 2 1/2 years in Taiwan teaching English and a few years later spent a few months in China traveling and living in Beijing. Along the way, this story started percolating in my head about an English teacher training future spies. As I thought about it more, it seemed like I had a pretty good story on my hands. So, what did I do about it ... NOTHING! Yes, I talked about it a bit to friends, wrote down some notes here and there, and even wrote the first page. I had a good idea, but pretty consistently convinced myself that there was no way I could write a book. But, after that second lay-off, some sort of spark led me to say, just go for it and so I did. I wrote and wrote and after 60 pages, I realized ... that I DID NOT have a story on my hands. I had to delete almost 50 pages of writing. No fun! So, I decided to actually learn the mechanics of writing a book. I bought books on how to write a novel, how to develop characters, and how to do a proper outline. I read a ton of articles and got inspired (I still was not working at the time so really had nothing else to do). After about a year, I finished the first draft!!! YIPEEE! It was pretty bad. It needed a lot of work! I had read an article from a writer who said she doesn't write, she re-writes so I just started rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. I tried the traditional way to get published, sending query letters to agents. BIG GOOSE EGG! So a few years ago when it became easy to self-publish, I went for it. Now, a few years later and after hiring a professional editor, I have produced a book that I am really proud of, have gotten some amazing feedback on, and think you'll enjoy. I would love to hear from you. Thank you! Shawn Lipton