Kent, Oregon was a decaying town of about 26 in the barren southeastern corner of Sherman County near an old abandoned ranch where a middle-eastern mystic, Shadbrung, and his followers, the Ngawangeesh, recently settled. The Ngawangeesh quietly began building their own city, Ngawang, but most of Oregon was unaware of their presence. That began to change after the November 1980 election.

Shortly thereafter, the mayor of Kent, Homer Goings, two other Kent residents and the editor of The Dalles Chronicle paid a visit to the office of Portland lawyer, Barry O'Shea.
Goings told O'Shea, "At first we thought having 'em as neighbors might help bring our town back, particularly when some of 'em bought some of our vacant places. But then more of 'em moved in 'till there was more of 'em than us. Tuesday was our election day, and they ran their folks for all the seats on the town council. They beat us and are now in charge of our town. The new mayor's a guy named Nahir. He's a lawyer and a nasty one. The next day, he called on me. He told me they was taking over, and we better move on. Otherwise, he said they'd make things miserable for us with new regulations and taxes."

Secret Agent is the riveting story of the further mischief created by the the Ngawangeesh and of the efforts of the state and particularly Barry O'Shea to rein them in. It goes on sale on July 31, 2009, but you can pre-order it now and save yourself 20%. Just go to my web-site and click on pre-order.

Post BEA

The Book Expo America has come and gone, and SterlingHouse should be very proud of its booth and its performance. The booth decore showed exceptional taste, two dark couches, yellow captain's chairs and glass top tables, where people gathered and discussed various pertinent topics. The author signings and video interviews presented a scheduling challenge, but it was graciously met with all participants fully covered. I even signed all 200 advance copies of Secret Agenda in the autograping area of BEA and in the booth. I was also very proud to be included with six other "hot new authors" on the cover of Publishers Weekly. Kudos to all the people at SterlingHouse who made the experience one I'll never forget.