Tap the gear icon above to manage new release emails.
Follow Burnaby Hawkes to get new release emails from Audible and Amazon.
There is so much I can say about THE HAZE. It's a story about a CIA agent who thinks his wife is a Chinese spy. Of course, the storyline does not go strictly according to that logline. The story gets bigger the more you dive through it. Then a revolution hits, and it's actually in the past, so you'll read whole chapters dedicated to that momentous event in the past. Then a CIA conspiracy unfolds, or what seems like a conspiracy...? Then a CIA agent is cut loose and gets retaken by the Agency, and that's our novel.
To set my novel in Southeast Asia, I had to rely on diary notes belonging to 2013, when I'd gone to Singapore on an academic university trip. I am usually a fast writer, but The Haze took me six years to write. From 2013 to 2019. From the inception of The Haze’s idea on that chance trip to Singapore in 2013, to the project’s completion in 2019, six full years of writing, revision, research, and high flights of fantasy—had passed.
I had to study Chinese literature, dive into the rich history of the Malay Archipelago, vet my own memories of the Arab Spring; and not only keep various day jobs, finish two university degrees, migrate from one country to another then to a third; but also stay sane.
And finish this book.
Which I didn't manage to do until I'd settled in a quiet and peaceful town in Southern Ontario. Something about the cool breeze in midsummer, the way squirrels consistently targeted my car, a volunteer experience at a homeless shelter--something about all this somehow helped me finish this crazy espionage novel about a CIA agent struggling to know his wife better during a shady operation in Southeast Asia.
And finally it was here. The Haze. It tumbled out into our world exactly as I’d envisioned it six years ago: a child of adventure, mystique, copious research, and simplicity.
I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did writing it.
Read more
Read less
