After four years as counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Keith Raffel lost a race for Congress and then started a groundbreaking Internet software company. Writers Forum is excited to bring Raffel to Redding as a special guest speaker to explain just how those experiences provided the right background to become a bestselling thriller writer.
Raffel will speak on “Finding Mystery in History: Former Senate Intelligence Counsel Turns Thriller Writer” on Saturday, March 9 at 10:30 a.m. in Room 802 at Shasta College. The program is free to members and $10 for nonmembers. Refreshments will be served.
Raffel’s varied career path includes stints as a carpenter, history teacher, Senate staffer, political candidate, horseplayer, high tech marketer, entrepreneur, and DNA sequencer.
“I really can’t seem to keep a job,” Raffel said.
“I’m often asked what the right background for a novelist is,” he continued. “There is no magic recipe, but you need to live in the world of your book. When writing, a novelist should be like one of the Pevensie children in The Chronicles of Narnia who opens the door at the back of the wardrobe and walks right through to a fictional land.”
Raffel’s first book Dot Dead, a mystery set in Silicon Valley, was called “without question the most impressive mystery debut of the year” by Bookreporter.com. Its sequel, Smasher, hit a national bestseller list and was optioned for film. Raffel’s latest, A Fine and Dangerous Season, is set during October 1940 and October 1962.
“The inspiration came when I stumbled on the fact that future president John F. Kennedy spent the fall quarter of 1940 at Stanford Business School,” Raffel explained. “Once I found that out, I asked myself the two-word question that all thriller authors ask: ‘What if?’ What if JFK becomes fast friends with a fellow student at Stanford from a completely different background? What if they have a dramatic falling out? And then what if JFK needs this guy’s help 22 years later during the Cuban Missile Crisis to avert World War III?”
Raffel’s research led him from the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston to eBay, where he bought a 1941 Stanford yearbook.
“The magic of writing A Fine and Dangerous Season transported me right back to 1940,” Raffel said. “When driving down El Camino Real in Palo Alto, I pass the corner where JFK’s favorite restaurant used to stand and can almost see his hazy outline at the bar surrounded by a passel of admiring women.
All of Raffel’s books are available in e-book format from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo. Upon its release, A Fine and Dangerous Season climbed to the list of top 25 bestselling e-books on barnesandnoble.com.
“I’m a Silicon Valley guy and I couldn’t resist giving this new model of e-book originals a try,” Raffel said. “So far, so good.”
For this special event, Writers Forum will meet in Room 802 at Shasta College. Parking is free, and the south campus lot is recommended for easy access to the 800 building. To view a map of the Shasta College campus, visit http://www.shastacollege.edu/map/map.htm
-from press release
