My Novel: Flight of the Starling

I wrote a book. Not a memoir, which having been a blogger for close to fifteen years, you might have expected. Not a non-fiction book about my time in business and philosophies surrounding it. It’s a novel.

Yup, I wrote a novel.

Ok, it took a while. Five years. Five years ago, just before Covid hit, my college friend was visiting me and saw a copy of the start of it. She’s a great editor, and over the course of the next five years, Carol Rea, and I worked on the story. Together. What started as my made-up story, is now the collaboration of both of us.

Flight of the Starling is about a wealthy divorcée, who has a friend who is a billionaire mover-shaker type. Twenty-five years earlier, his daughter Caroline, was trafficked. All the years since, he worked with a hired team of ex-CIA and military personnel to find her. They are close. He asks Justine to go in and lead the black ops team in Saudi Arabia as they seek to find Caroline and extract her.

But as with all things, it’s complicated. Three women protagonists. One is a bad person, but not necessarily all bad. The story is about Justine finding a new life, which she had no idea she needed or wanted. It’s about finding yourself. It’s about women having agency and needing to use it. It’s about trafficking.

We launched it a short month ago, and it’s doing well. We are picking up speed and have lots of marketing initiatives rolling out each week. We have already been with one book group and loved every minute of hearing their thoughts on what they read.

Friends and family who have read it are asking if they are so and so, or who is so and so? I tell them if you like being so and so, then you are that character. If not, I made the person up. I did an interview with the author of War of the Roses and Random Hearts, Warren Adler. He told me that when he wrote War of the Roses, people who he knew who were divorced were angry at him. He told me you can’t write a good story if you are afraid of what your family and friends might see in it. He’s gone now, but he championed me with my writing, and I am remembering his sage advice now.

The goal? A film. The book is the first of a trilogy and Carol and I are already working on the sequel. But more on that later.

Yes, I’d love it if you buy the book. It’s on Audible, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Kindle, and some bookstores. More to follow. Reviews are starting to be published, and we are so pleased that reviewers are reading what we hoped we were writing—and liking it.

I’d be happy to attend your book club. We are scheduling signings in places like Omaha, New York City, Cape Cod, Palm Beach, the Hamptons, and more. I will keep you posted, or follow our newly launched Instagram page for updates.

Anyway, I wrote a book. Thanks for considering reading it. And if you have a friend who might like this type of protagonist, I hope you will forward this. CM