My New Book Available for Pre-Order! “The Dictator's Wife”

Drum roll…

I’m excited to announce my next book is now available for pre-order, and will hit the shelves in June! This is something of a departure from my normal work… a fiction, psychological thriller, yet based on many of my experience dealing with dictatorships from around the world.

Click Here for Pre-Order from my publisher DAP Publications (please support small business!)

Click Here for Pre-Order from Barnes & Noble

Click Here for Pre-Order from Amazon

Click Here for Pre-Order from Target

With a childhood defined by the palm trees of Beverly Hills and the mysterious confines of Mulholland Drive, all Anna Paradis wants is to make sense of a haunting vision and an unencumbered life serving others. But when she falls in love with the second son of a Middle Eastern dictator, her fabled existence is thrown into disarray after she unexpectedly ascends to become the next Dictator’s Wife and is forced to step into an unfamiliar fray.

At the same time, Anna makes a chilling discovery about her upbringing: a discovery that threatens to unravel that entire iron-fisted empire and could cost her life in the pursuit of answers and accountability. Caught in the crossfire of death and destruction – and becoming the target of global condemnation herself – Anna is forced to grapple with her fallibility as a government figurehead and navigate the complex web of who can and cannot be trusted in and out of her gilded Palace bubble. As the painful secrets of her past and the ramifications of an entire life fighting a psychological war come to light, the First Lady remains bitterly determined to record her version of events before it is too late.

An excerpt:

On the following day’s drive to the airport, we weave through the peaceful streets as people go about their business in a mixture of traditional, flowing dresses and tightly tailored suits. People buy halal street food from the sidewalk, and others stroll in and out of high-class cafes with briefcases tucked beneath their arms.

I read about all the discord in the Washington Post and heard analysts discuss it on NPR back home, but being here now; that all seems fabricated. The food is plentiful. People are working and happy. Only, I can’t wait to be home, to walk on the streets of New York, to be any person I want to be that morning or at that moment.

As the vehicle swerves into the main road approaching the airport, the traffic halts to a standstill. I am curious to know how the people of Cyra know that it is a car of importance. They’ve probably undergone extensive social training to recognize and react to elaborate convoys with heavily-tinted windows.

Except one. A single beaten-up old Honda wracked with dents and rust honks a few times, evidently puzzled why all the traffic has stopped. What transpires next is the worst thing I have ever seen in my two decades of life.

“Out! Out!” screams several guards, storming from the armored vehicle directly in front of the Honda, AR-15 rifles strapped at their necks. There are at least six of them, and they jerk the crooked-back old driver by the silver strands of his balding head. Realizing that he had honked at a Palace VIP, the man looks ashen.

As if watching a silent horror film, I sit pathetically as his coke-bottle glasses crash to the gravel. Doom washes over his wrinkled face, now squinting in the broad sunlight, his mouth opening and closing, begging for mercy.

I stare out at the motionless pedestrians, helpless, curdled in fear. Crack, crack, crack. I can feel the nausea rise again as guards hammer the head of a barely five-foot man into the road. I fling my head into Saif’s shoulder, his arms bringing me in tighter. Crack. Crack. Squinting my eyes, blood soars and plunges like a child squirting hose water on a summer day. I shut my eyes.

I could say something to stop it, but I don’t. I could say something to Saif to stop it, but I don’t. Saif could have gotten out of the car to stop it, but he doesn’t.

I do not see the old man die. But I hear it. His croaky yelps and the pops of his skull against the pavement go on and on. And then they stop. When I gather the courage to uncover my face from my fiancé’s shoulder, there is only a mangled body with limbs jutting at odd angles left. Guards quickly scoop the remains into giant garbage bags and push the Honda to the side with their raw strength. Now that the road is clear, we speed forward, and traffic resumes.

“I’m sorry,” Saif says softly, brushing away a loose strand of hair before drawing out his Blackberry to casually tap away again as though nothing unusual had happened.

Is he only sorry I had to see it? Or sorry it had happened at all? Silence envelops the remainder of the drive. An airport employee opens my car door and I almost fall out, struggling to find my footing, shaking. The piercing heat has given way to a cool breeze as I float into the VIP entrance, barely registering where I am. The weather is beginning to shift in Cyra. Autumn is arriving, and winter will soon be on its way—the heaving season of perseverance.

Tucana is the state-approved story I read and dreamed about as a teen in all those books. However, Tucana is still a partially told story.