Every novel I've written starts with a question. Not a plot. Not a character. A question that won't leave me alone.

United we stand, divided we fall.

It doesn't feel like we're drifting apart. It feels like we're being torn apart. And the question that won't leave me alone is: by whom?

When I started researching the technology, I almost put the whole project down. Because it was already real.

The outrage you feel scrolling isn't an accident. That's the passive version. What happens when someone weaponizes it deliberately?

My wife showed me a video. Supposedly from a closed session. ████████████████ was in it, looking at a photograph with a smile that made me say out loud: what the hell.

No recording devices are allowed in closed sessions. Nobody noticed the camera?

The damage was already done. That half second of what the hell is exactly what it was designed to produce.

Here's something I've never talked about publicly. Back around 2000, I hacked a rival radio station's IP and flooded it until it crashed offline. It worked. I remember thinking: damn, that is a lot of power.