How A Spy Loses His Innocence

You know how it is. All beginning spies lose their innocence. Remember the video I put up of Matt Harding, who quit his job to travel the world, and then he started dancing in front of different monuments of different countries? Remember the innocence? Gone, gone, gone. But oh well, I guess you could say that it's MORE fun when someone's sponsoring you ;-). Here's Matt being patted by Good Morning America, if you missed it (CLICK ON ARROW):



Innocence is hard to capture in words. The heroine can come out too naive. The hero can appear too beta. But the initial video of Matt dancing, KNOWING that he was traveling with limited funds and was just doing the dancing bit for a whim, to keep in touch with his family and friends through his year of absence...that was innocence. That was refreshing. Matt's newest world travels video, filmed with two traveling buddies, will debut June 16. I'll watch it because he did visit some very interesting places, including Greece and Norway, but, and maybe it's just me, I'll be watching it with different eyes.

Readers have asked me why I don't write like my first book, Into Danger, any more. Marlena sashaying into a bar. Stash being strip-searched against the bar wall. Marlena and Stash wrestling in the hotel room. I can't. You would just be writing me and telling me that I'm rehashing the same old, same old ;-).

In many ways, Stash was as innocent about spying as I was about publishing. He was always asking why it wouldn't be easier to just take the direct path. And I always have to show him that direct is innocent and can only be done once. Besides, would it have been that fun with the pearls if Marlena had just shown him how she put it on? ;-) Discovery is so much the spy way. But one day, I'll revisit Marlena and Stash again and you'll see that they're still rubbing each other the wrong and right way.

I read a really neat quote yesterday:

"Words are things; and a
small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a
thought, produces
That which makes thousands,
perhaps millions think."
---Lord Byron (1788-1824)
from "Don Juan"

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