Michael Curtis - the newest voice in thrillers
Michael Curtis
Michael Curtis is a fiction writer masked as a business professional, specializing in action thriller novels. An ambidextrous, music-loving Sicilian who created a set of comic books when he was 10 years old, Michael has lived in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Dallas, New York, and St. Petersburg, Russia. He currently lives and works in Chicago under an assumed name, and is working on his new novel Maze of Shadows, while also juggling demands with his existing novel, Keres' Eyes.
Michael’s first novel, Keres’ Eyes, was published last year. It’s a scientific thriller that was inspired by Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton and The Cobra Event by Richard Preston. Michael stated, "Both of those books fascinated me and inspired me to write a thriller with an unforeseen threat. Biological weapons are scary because you can't see them, you can't do much to protect yourself against them (unless you know they're being unleashed and even then you'll probably still be helpless), and they're unpredictable. That became the genesis for Keres' Eyes.
"I wanted my characters to be placed in a horrible situation, but with the knowledge and ability to fight back. I also liked the idea of them being trapped." The result is a tense novel that will keep you up at night.
His new novel, Maze of Shadows, was inspired by Michael’s experiences living in Russia. During college, Michael lived in the former Soviet Union for a summer to become fluent in the Russian language. While civil war didn’t break out (thankfully), the threat could be felt while he was there—and with the growing tensions in Russia and Ukraine today, his novel has obtained a level of realism he hadn’t planned.
You can email him at michael.curtis@live.com, find him on Facebook and Goodreads.com, and follow him on Twitter (@MCurtisAuthor). Thank you for visiting his site!
In Michael's own words:
Maybe Keres’ Eyes should have been classified as a horror novel. Biological agents, bioweapons that someone has crafted and for which few of us have protection against, frightens me. They should not even be contemplated, yet that’s not the world we live in. Someone (or some group) with the proper knowledge, ability, resources, and motivation, could create microscopic monsters that would alter the course of the planet.
I truly hope that never happens. Maybe Keres’ Eyes will trigger action that increases our efforts to make sure that never happens … and prepares us in case we fail.
We are all in danger. The world is small enough, connected-enough, that a deadly virus can spread across the globe quicker than we can react. That’s happening now in western Africa with the spread of the Ebola virus—and that virus only spreads through the contact with infected fluids. Imagine if a biological weapon was unleashed. The Spanish influenza killed 50-100 million people, and that was a natural event. A weapon would destroy even more.
Many nations have developed ways to protect and warn against nuclear weapons from being snuck across their borders, focusing on these weapons with good reason. However, the right biological weapon, unleashed at the right place and time, could do as much damage if not more—yet no country is equipped to respond to that kind of threat fast enough to prevent a massive outbreak.
Maybe with books like mine, which highlights the threats that could be unleashed, we can better prepare ourselves.
I have done extensive research into bioweapons. The research affected not only my attitude towards biological weapons but the story itself.
Feel free to check out some of the research I found. Most of this is readily accessible, so don’t worry: I’m not revealing any information that could be used to actually create a bioweapon. But the idea is there, and like the saying goes, ideas are the most dangerous weapons.