I've spent the better part of two decades getting yelled at by people - from governors and senators to nobodies on the internet - who are absolutely certain they're right.
Turns out that's excellent training for writing thrillers.
By day, I'm a political journalist — I publish The Hayride, Louisiana's conservative politics and culture site, I'm a senior editor at The American Spectator, where I've written a column since 2012, and I co-host The Spectacle Podcast.
I've written two books of political nonfiction - The Revivalist Manifesto: How Patriots Can Win The Next American Era and Racism, Revenge and Ruin: It's All Obama. None of that, by itself, explains why I also write novels about a cable-news anchor turned independent journalist who keeps getting mixed up in things that are supposed to be above his pay grade.
Here's the honest answer: after enough years of watching real institutions behave in ways that would get laughed out of a novel pitch meeting, fiction became the more efficient way to tell the truth.
Mike Holman gets to do the things a lot of us in journalism wish we still could — ask the question nobody wants asked, follow the story somewhere inconvenient, and occasionally get on a plane to somewhere the State Department would rather he didn't visit.
I also write straight adventure fiction — the Tales of Ardenia series — because sometimes you just want a sword instead of a subpoena.
If you've read this far, you're exactly the kind of reader I write for. Welcome to Mike Holman's world. It's dumber and more dangerous than the real one, which is really saying something these days.
Where else to find me:
The Hayride — thehayride.com
The American Spectator — Scott McKay
The Spectacle Podcast — Rumble
The Revivalist Manifesto — Amazon link
Racism, Revenge and Ruin — Amazon link
Tales of Ardenia series — Amazon link