 and welcome to World of Books, a talk show on books that we think you should read. I'm your host, Mihaila Stoops, and today we're talking about a CIA novel and how to write one. My guest is Elaine Gallant. She's the author of the CIA novel titled The Fifth Sea. Elaine has also written another book where lilacs bloom and several short stories that were published under Maui Writers Inc., under or as part of an anthology by the Stanford University, and also in the Conclave Literary Journal. But most importantly, Elaine has hosted a Writers Group and has managed and moderated the West Maui Book Club for almost 17 years. And I am so thankful for that because it has been an absolute intellectual delight. So Elaine, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me, Mihaila. Well, so let's dive into it and talk about your book, The Fifth Sea. And I am curious to know what made you write this book? What inspired you to do it? Was it a person, several persons, connection with a CIA maybe, a story? What was it? It was a newspaper article, Mihaila, in The New York Times on November and November of 2012. And it talked about Russia presenting these diamonds that they had enough inside one crater alone that would flood the market for the next 3,000 years. And I thought that very fascinating. And I tried to follow the trail of it. And there was nothing. I couldn't find any information prior. There wasn't much after. But I held on to that thought. And I just could not let that one go. Enough diamonds to fill the world market for the next 3,000 years. That was so... Those diamonds are actually... Obviously, this makes the news. These diamonds are currently imported in US through India, from Russia, despite the current restrictions. And there are some that think that these are conflict diamonds because the revenues from selling these diamonds on the US market provide the funds for the war in Ukraine. So are you following that story at all in the news or after you've written the book, basically? Well, I tried to follow it for a long time. But the information since 2012 disappeared as quickly as it came into being. Queen Elizabeth had said that she was going to put a coalition together of four different countries to go and verify the information that Russia had given them or had announced in that press release. And from then on, you heard nothing. Now, their speculation that these diamonds are being used to fund the war against Ukraine. I can't verify that. I mean, I don't know. I mean, Russia has many assets. Why not oil? Right? So, but... Yeah. Anything can sponsor? Are they sponsored the war? Are they sponsored the life of Russian citizens? It's too broad. It's too broad. Correct. And we do have... The United States has already put sanctions on Russia. So there are no diamonds coming in. There shouldn't be. As far as what I can research, maybe there's some, I don't know. But there are sanctions on a lot of things that are coming from Russia that are no longer. And also, there's the Kimberley... I think it's called the Kimberley process or something like that. And the Kimberley process keeps tabs on the whole diamond industry. Okay? So if anybody... If you want to interview somebody about that, find somebody in the Kimberley process, because they would be able to tell you specifically whether these diamonds are being used. But to call them blood diamonds, they're not blood diamonds. They're impact diamonds. They're celestial. Okay. Now, so you have a story on the diamonds. Yes. And, you know, it's a very interesting topic. It catches your attention. And now you have to build your plot line and the characters. So was there somebody that inspired you for Eric Dane, maybe, or for Fanny or for Glory? Absolutely. The two men, Eric Dane and Fanny Bergen, are my two brothers. They were men of action. They were hazmat specialists, SWAT team. They were men of action. They really were. And I wanted to use their character traits as two relatively new CIA officers. Now, of course, in order to have the CIA information, I had to find some CIA officers, right? To use as my background. Well, Maui's very small, but within five miles of my home, I found a married couple who were both CIA officers. And they helped me for a long time until some medical conditions came up. And then I was at a loss. I didn't know who to talk to after that. But a friend of mine who I play golf with says, oh, my son will help you. And I said, well, is he CIA? She goes, no. But he knows everything about it. He owns a high stakes hostage negotiating company in China or in Shanghai. And they're doing a movie about his life. He's written three books. He's a West Point graduate. He knows everything and everything. My son will help you. And by golly, did he? I could ask him questions you don't ask normal people, right? So I was really happy. I mean, as far as I know, you're not a CIA insider, so you must have had help form somebody. I had help with everything. I think, you know, it's kind of like all writers, it's part of the trade, part of the profession. You have to have reliable resources, reliable contacts, reliable information, reliable research, or you don't have a book. People who live today who write books about the 1600s certainly didn't live there, right? So they're relying on historical facts, records, letters, notations that were kept, all sorts of things. So it's part of the tools of the trade that if you're going to write about something you're not 100% a part of or even zero part of, you know, you better have all your ducks in a row. You better research. And your storyline takes us from Washington, DC, to New York, to Florida, to Paris Catacombs, to Siberian Diamond Mines, to the Caribbean. Now, I'm just curious how much of this research was in person and how much was just, you know, reading other books because you're that you get very descriptive with these locations, which was great because it made the books so genuine to me. And tell me where you've been and where you have not. I think to all of them that Moscow and Siberia. But again, I needed someone who spoke Russian because I needed to be able to use some Russian words. I wanted them to be exact. And lo and behold, within a mile of my home, I found a woman who was a Russian expert. So I went to her and she was a recluse of sorts. And she counseled me on Russia. She showed me photographs. I used Google Maps. I did a lot of research on on Moscow and on on the Siberian Peninsula where the more the Republic I craters all is. And that is the smallest of eight craters, by the way, just want to point that out. If the smallest of eight craters has enough diamonds to flood the market for the next 3000 years, imagine what the other seven are going to. So, I mean, if they all contain diamonds, we have to assume they do because they were all impacted by meteors. And the sea in this actually doesn't mean conflict. It means celestial. Okay, because it came from came from the head. So do you want to talk a little more about the title? The fifth sea? Explaining. Well, diamonds are foresees, right? You got you got your cut, your color, your, you know, whatever, carrot. The fifth sea would be celestial. Yes, that would be the fifth sea. Now, I want to talk is a little bit because they are considered a long delay type of diamond, which has, they're harder, they're better, they're, they're superior to any cubic diamond. Reportedly, up to 58% better, they're better than manufactured diamonds. So this is a horde of beyond belief of diamonds, you know, this is, this is really large. I mean, I can't even describe it. I mean, just think about it. Yeah, it's, it's astonishing, I think, when you consider the, you know, scale of it. Now, let's go back to your characters and to Eric and Fanny. I gotta say, I have much appreciation for their friendship and particularly for the way Fanny expresses his friendship, his loyalty and his like, you know, sense of danger and jumping in to protect Eric and so on. And is this all for Eric and Fanny, or are you thinking of a sequel? Is there more coming to their story? Maybe you're thinking of a story that Fanny is the main character. Or Annette. Annette is one of the female figures in the story. I did think of a sequel because Edward Snowden, his last post was Honolulu before he did what he did and left the country, right? So that was going to be natural, yeah, segue into a second novel. I haven't done that because some other stories I've been, I was working on two stories at the same time. One was the fifth sea and the other one is where lilacs bloom. And one had to come to fruition first. I had to, I had to stop this dual, this, this dual that was going on between the two for my attention. I had to focus on one to get it done. So I did that. And then I turned to where lilacs bloom and started working on that one. And then you would think I would get back to the fifth sea and do the sequel. But now there's a third story I'm working on. That has me absolutely wrapped up. And I'm in the middle of that one now. And that one is called Tentor Hooks. And what is that one about? Tell us. Well, Tentor Hooks is about a woman who is absolutely stretched to the limit. And that's what a Tentor Hook is. It's a, when you stretch wool, you put them on Tentor Hooks on a frame and you're stretched. So she's stretched to the limit. She's dying of uterine cancer and she wants to travel across the United States to say goodbye to her family without telling them why. She just wants to see them as they are. And that, that's what she wants to put into her memory bank before she passes. But they teacher, she learns more about life than about death when she makes this journey. So it's, it's really, it really has me. I mean, I get goosebumps sometimes when I'm, when I'm writing on it because it just is so tender in a way. Yeah. So different genre. Am I, that's what I'm understanding. So, but back to CIA novels. Do you think you're going to write another one? I might. The common thread between all my novels though is the travel. I'm a big traveler. I have been a lot of places in the world. You know, what do you do with this information, right? Well, you use it for locations for your characters. So that's what I've done. And that is the common factor for all my books. I think in where lilacs bloom, it starts in Chicago. They end up in Rome. They end up in Siberia and Africa. Places where there's a lot of danger. And in tenterhooks, she's going cross country. So she hits a lot of the places that I have been cross country from Hawaii to Florida. So if we could show Elaine's website, I want to point out to something specifically if our viewers are going to check the website. I'm going to read more about Elaine. One sentence that caught my eye was my first crib was a suitcase. And I thought how wonderful it is that, you know, one starts traveling at such an early age and then, you know, they travel their whole life. So obviously travel is part of your life. And that's what you're supposed to do besides writing. Yes, I agree. It was a suitcase. My mother was released from the hospital in New Jersey and they were traveling home and got caught in a blizzard and had to stop at her mother's home. So my mother's sense of night became my bed for the night. And so yes, my first crib was a suitcase. And I've lived out of one ever since. I have travel is such a wonderful, wonderful thing and it educates you, it stimulates you, teaches you about the world, it teaches you how to live, it teaches you to appreciate what you have, you know. So I've been able to travel. I have much appreciation for travel myself. So I resonate with you. Now, going back to matters of the heart that are also quite prominent in your novel. And thinking when thinking of glory when I guess she is about to die, Eric kind of ponders over their relationship. And he says something that made me pause. And that was that he understood that beauty fades. And he also understood that beauty conceals. And I've also, I've thought of beauty as distracting somebody, but not as concealing something. So can you expand on that? Well, I can. Eric was falling for her. She was a woman that was outside of the CIA. He felt like he could trust her. He wanted to keep her on the side, you know, and out of his profession. And she concealed everything from him. She plays a more central part. I don't want to give away the story because she's not the end all. But, you know, she conceals a great deal. And people do that in the shady world of spy versus spy and that sort of thing. So espionage, you know, they can't reveal their themselves. And so she did conceal herself. She concealed everything. And Eric, being the honest, raised guy that he was, was a little naive in that way. You know, here he is entering as a rookie CIA officer and he's pulling off these major, well, he's constantly being surprised, number one. And he's forced to handle each situation as it happens. But he fails with a woman. He fails. And, you know, she just was a little bit smarter. Maybe he just put it in there on purpose. Well, I have hopes for him. That's why maybe in the sequel, he's better in his relationship with women. Well, he's a good guy. You know, he was raised well. His parents were CIA officers. They were high up in the industry. So he has a lot of character. He really does. I really like Eric Dayne. I have to tell you a little funny story because in order to bring these men to life, for me, I went to the clothing store and I bought two men's suits. There's the top, the shirts, the jackets and the tie. And when I was writing as Eric, I would wear Eric's clothes. And when I was writing as Fanny, I would wear Fanny's clothes. So that I had this changeover of thought processes because they each had different, like Fanny was very casual and Eric was a little more, everything was in, they were both, everything was in place. But Fanny was a little more rugged and casual. And Eric was a little more, he would wear wing tips where Fanny would wear doctors, you know, or something like that. So they were two very different people. But like my two brothers, one, they admired each other and one followed in the footsteps of the other. So that was an interesting way to portray those characters in the book, I thought. So I think this is a great suggestion for our viewers that want to know how to write a CIA novel, like try to impersonate your characters, be like them. Well, you know, people will do what they have to do to get into their character's head. Sometimes it's music, sometimes it's reading poetry, sometimes it's something else. For me, it was wearing their clothes. It really was. And I still have both those shirts. You know, I run around the house in them, they're my pals now. So I really liked that I did that. I was able to feel them and believe in them a little more. That's a great way to deal with it. Now, I know we only have a few minutes left. So I want to ask you, what are you reading right now? And would you recommend that book? If not, tell us a book that you've read recently and that you strongly recommended to our viewers. Oh, my goodness, that is a really good question because I'm an avid reader. I'm on Target for about 100 books this year. Wow. I read the Poma Years. Did you read that one? I have not. I have not. I can't think of who the author is right now, but it's not a fiction. It's nonfiction. It's about a young girl who's kind of wayward. She doesn't know what she wants to do in her life. She's working, not working, working, not working. So she volunteers to go down into South America and to work at this wild animal refuge. And this is her life-changing event. It's called the Poma Years, and I really liked that one. I thought it was very well written. She's out there now being very productive as a result of her experience in the jungle taking care of a wild Puma. So I do recommend that one. Your timing couldn't be better because the next talk show is on a book about conservation, about saving rhinoceros in Africa. So that's what I'm planning to discuss next for the next show, but I'm thinking I should read the Poma Years on the side as well, to compliment or enhance that discussion. So thank you. Because it's a band of young people who have no training. They're all just wayward people, and they go and they live in the jungle, and there's these monkeys that cause all kinds of problem. There's these birds that cause all kinds of problems. There's tigers, there's this, there's that. Every kind of wild animal, there's a pig, I think, even in involved in it that likes to steal the women's underwear and bras. It's very funny, but you really feel the leeches on her legs because that's what happens. They're in the jungle. It's wet. It's moist every second of the day. So I thought she wrote it really, really well. I have to say I really enjoyed that book. But my favorite above all in the 17 years as a moderator for the West Nile Book Club is Pope John. I have to just put that out there. Pope John, that again, I've enjoyed that book club so much. It saved me basically in many ways because it challenged me intellectually and offered me an avenue for wonderful discussions. So well, Elaine, thank you again for joining me today and for talking about your book and until we meet again, and a hui hou. A hui hou.