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Writing Undercover: An Exclusive Guest Post from Ava Glass, Author of Alias Emma, Our July Mystery & Thriller Pick
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If you’ve ever had a bad day it still wouldn’t compare to Emma Makepeace’s bad night. This is the most fun cat & mouse thriller you’ll read today. Because you WILL read it in a day! Keep reading to hear from Ava Glass about writing under a pseudonym and what her five favorite spy books are.
I’m going to tell you a secret: I’m not really Ava Glass.
I invented Ava on the same day I invented Emma Makepeace, the main character in Alias Emma.
By then, I’d already written novels under another name, but this book was so different from my other work, my agent felt it needed a different name. And with a different name came a different story about who I am. My background made this easy. I spent my childhood in America, but I’ve lived my adult life in England. I started my career as a journalist, but later became a British civil servant.
It has felt at times like I’ve been two people. One of those people was the ex-journalist and author of crime thrillers. The other became Ava Glass.
I’ve been asked if writing under a pseudonym makes me feel like a spy, and I can honestly say it doesn’t. But there is something freeing about inventing a new name for yourself. Pen names have been used as long as people have written. Emily Brontë wrote books as Ellis Bell. In spy fiction, Ian Fleming used his real name but John le Carre’s true name was David Cornwell. And I haven’t gone too far with it. I haven’t created a false history or changed my appearance. I’ve simply chosen parts of my history to talk about, and I’m ignoring the rest.
But I can say, it is fun being Ava.
I like her name better than my own. I’ve always thought my birth name didn’t suit me, and at last, when I’m interviewed or on the road, I am called by a name that does seem to fit me. And that is surprisingly liberating — being someone else for a while and leaving parts of my history behind.
It’s not freedom from the past but at times it feels like it.
For spies, of course, it’s much harder. Here are five spy books that really tell you what it’s like inventing a new identity:
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Possibly the best book about spying I’ve ever read, this non-fiction book is more thrilling than any novel. It tells the story of the double-agent Kim Philby in brutal detail. Recently turned into a major television series, it’s a breathless story of betrayal.
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This is the first Bond novel and, I think, the only one Fleming wrote with deadly seriousness. It has a complex threat — a French union official is in the pocket of the Soviets, and Bond is sent to destroy him by any means. If you can ignore some shockingly sexist writing, it’s a rip-roaring tale, and Fleming makes the game of Baccarat absolutely nail-biting.
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This chilling book absorbed me. Marie Mitchell, a young black FBI officer, is freed from a desk job when she’s sent to disrupt a communist takeover in Burkina Faso. She’s to do this by seducing a charismatic revolutionary. She agrees to the job, but doesn’t anticipate the anguish it will cause, as she tries to balance her personal beliefs with the compromises of spying.
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This Cold War masterpiece weaves a web of lies and betrayal. As tensions grow between Russia and the West, ex-spy George Smiley is roped in by the government to find a traitor. As suspicions mount, Smiley doubts everyone, even his most trusted friends. A dark and twisting tale.
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Sonia Purnell
4.8
Paperback
$19.00
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Virginia Hall was almost unbearably brave. She lost her leg in a hunting accident when she was a teenager, and yet when World War II broke out, she travelled to France to volunteer as an ambulance driver, and stayed after the Nazis arrived, working with the French Resistance and the British secret service with such success that she became the Germans’ most wanted Allied agent. She fought like a tiger and faced death without blinking. What a life.