The Kamchtka Incident

I don’t actually know anyone in law enforcement — at least not the kind who chase fugitives across state lines or interrogate suspects under flickering fluorescent lights. But I do work in a building with its own police department, because the North Carolina General Assembly apparently needs officers to handle everything from legislative chaos to… stolen garage tags.

Which brings me to Police Officer C.H.

Today, C.H. helped me sort out a mysteriously vanished garage tag — the kind of crime that won’t make the evening news but absolutely derails your morning. After he rescued me from my parking‑lot purgatory around the corner — that’s when I thought: Well… he’s a cop. So why not give him a copy of my book? If anyone can appreciate a crime‑thriller, it’s the guy who just solved my very small, very bureaucratic mystery.

CH gave me a slight smile — the kind cops give when they’re politely processing the fact that you just said writer, “woolly mammoths” and Pleistocene, and Sabertooth tigers in a conversation about crime fiction — during a discussion about stolen garage tags and accepted the signed book graciously. Or maybe it was after I told him - it also follows two investigators? Either way, he took the book, and then he asked two very sharp questions:

How did you come up with the idea?

And why did you choose the year 2038?

Note: investigators really do come up with important questions very quickly.

So if CH gets a signed copy and a brief explanation, the rest of the world should at least get the story behind it too.

It all started when I read about Andrey Melnichenko, a Russian oligarch who wants to resurrect prehistoric woolly mammoths. Yes, really. And yes, that somehow led to a geopolitical crime thriller set in Kamchatka. My brain is a strange place.

And a place where I imagined a story that happens inside the remote volcanic wilderness of Kamchatka, where the ground steams, and volcanoes keep its secrets. A single violent mauling on Kronotsky Volcano sets off a chain reaction that pulls readers into a world of fractured loyalties and dangerous truths.

At the center is an MVD police captain- Ksneia- who’s competent, flawed, and increasingly aware that the institution she serves may not be on the side of truth. As she digs deeper, she encounters a web of deception stretching far beyond the icy peninsula — a network of political pressure, hidden agendas, and people willing to kill to protect what they know.

What makes the novel stand out is its focus on moral ambiguity. There are no perfect heroes. No clean answers. Just people navigating the space between duty and conscience. Science and ethics. Law and politics.

Remains of animals that lived thousands of years ago are being recovered from Russia’s far north. Russia’s frozen underground — known as permafrost — covers nearly two-thirds of the nation’s 17 million square kilometers. The permafrost protected the bodies of prehistoric animals — ones that walked before the end of Earth’s last Ice Age.

Where did I get my ideas? Michelangelo once quoted this when someone asked:

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

It's a good answer, but he also used to say that ideas were a part of the human imagination. In some ways I did have the story in my head, and when I wrote it - I set it free — which is much easier than chiseling marble and slightly less dangerous than resurrecting Ice Age animals...

Don't forget that some of the biological material and frozen cells they are finding in these permafrost animals in Russia contain DNA, the carrier of genetic information. And the DNA from these animals could be used to clone — or bring back to life — creatures from long ago.  Many people believe cloning methods are developed enough to successfully bring back an extinct species like the woolly mammoth with complete DNA.

Or a cave lion...

The Kamchatka Incident is available through global retailers as an ebook, paperback, or hardcover. And if you happen to be in Russia, I’m hoping IngramSpark’s distribution network will reach you too — fingers crossed that the book finds its way across borders just as easily as stories do.