Saint Andrew's Day and my Annus Mirabilis!

November 30 was my name day. I was baptized and chrismated Orthodox under the name Andrew. In fact, in Romania (where we summer every year), I am known as Andrei (Andrew) because Romanian does not have a 'th' sound. People kept calling me Keet or Kees, so I just decided to become Andrei full time there.

On November 30, I received greetings from a number of Romanians who know that, for Orthodox, a name day is more important even than a birthday. And my wife introduced me to a Romanian Saint Andrew's Day tradition I had not previously experienced.

Romanians take wheat seeds, place them on cotton, and water them. And the idea is that, to the extent that the wheat germinates and grows, so will be the extent of your success in the coming year. You keep watering them through December and you have these wheat plants on your table on New Year's Eve, when you also place money and other tokens on your party table to portend prosperity for the future.

And so, I sprinkled my wheat seeds on cotton. I decided to use holy water for the watering. I mean, I'll take all the help I can get.

And my wheat plants are growing fantastically!

Here is the current progress:

Initial Watering

Four Days

One Week

So, I know what you're thinking. 

"Keith--Andrew--whatever you want to be called, how can I help you have the successful year you pray for?" 

Dear reader, thank you so much for asking! It's simple, really.

I will have the tremendously successful year that my Saint Andrew's Day Wheat Sproutings portend just so long as visitors to this blog and my other webpages will purchase one of my books or other products while they're here!

And there's so much to choose from. Let's start with the t-shirt idea that should have already earned me a million dollars:

Why have only a handful of people bought this brilliant and hilarious design? It's available on shirts, coffee cups, etc., just click to explore.

Or maybe you want to buy espionage-adventure novels from a novelist who actually practiced espionage and went on adventures? Guess what?! I have all that for you!

I was a spy at the NSA for four years after 9/11, during which time I had a number of adventures, chief of which was time spent in Iraq in 2004. The government awarded me the Civilian Service War on Terrorism Medal for my efforts. 

The novels I wrote all had to be submitted to the NSA for pre-publication approval. And they made me delete several passages before the books could go to print. But I'm equally surprised at some of the things they either didn't think were classified or just missed in their review.

Here they are, in the order you should purchase and read them. Click on the image to learn more about these espionage thrillers. Thanks for your support! 

A Former NSA Agent Reviews "No Easy Day"

I was an Arabic linguist at the National Security Agency from June, 2002 until July, 2006. During that time frame, I was in Iraq in 2004, for which service I received the Global War on Terrorism Civilian Service Medal. 

 The day I started at the NSA, I received officially my Top Secret Clearance. And, like all people who receive a Top Secret Clearance, I first signed a "Life Time Pre-Publication Review" Agreement. This was described to me that day in very clear terms. If I ever left the NSA and then wanted to publish anything. ANYTHING. I first needed to submit it to a special office at the NSA that would have the right to review it and tell me if anything in the manuscript needed to be edited, lest I even inadvertently reveal anything classified. 

The day I signed that agreement, I never imagined it would even matter to me. But four years later, after marvelous adventures in the Classified World, I decided to return to teaching. The day I left the NSA, I had a meeting in the Security Office in which they specifically reminded me of my lifetime pre-publication agreement. They even put back in my hands a copy of the agreement I had signed four years earlier. And they made it clearer than ever that my lifetime pre-publication review agreement was absolute. 

A short while after that, I was offered the chance to write the book Intermediate Arabic for Dummies for Wiley Publishing. After several months of sending chapter proofs back and forth with them, the manuscript was ready. Now, I had mentioned in the book just casually that I once worked for the National Security Agency. And I called the NSA to confirm whether I really needed to submit this thing for pre-publication review. I mean, it really was just a workbook for learning basic to intermediate Arabic. They told me quite simply. You signed a lifetime pre-publication review agreement. Send the book in, hard copy, for us to review.

A few anxious weeks followed in which Wiley was moving forward rapidly with release and I was suddenly worried the NSA would find something they wanted changed. I did not look forward to telling my publisher that even a comma needed to be changed at this point. I received my notice. Nothing wrong with the book. Free to publish. Whew! 

Now, I had started to write several novels concurrently, all interconnected. The first I finished was a story about a former NSA agent, named Andrew Valquist. (Number One Rule: Write what you know). It fit chronologically in the middle of the enfolding saga. It's entitled Next Stop: Spanish. It's basically an espionage/adventure novel in which the reader can additionally learn some basic Spanish. (If you don't know Spanish, you obviously want to learn a little, right?) And as publication approached, I dutifully sent the book in to the NSA. 

I was a bit worried because I made a reference in the book to a possible technological capability the NSA might have. And the funny thing, I didn't even know if it was true! A linguist at the NSA is not necessarily an expert in all the Top Secret capabilities that bring her or him the materials they translate. So I was engaging in mere speculation. And, almost to my surprise, they responded that there were no problems. I was free to publish. Whew! 

Next up came a prequel to Next Stop: Spanish in which we learned how Andrew Valquist became Andrew Valquist. It's an espionage/adventure set in Romania. A Place of Brightness had no references to classified information, except to hint at the end that Andrew would join the NSA.  But I sent it to the NSA. They responded. No problem. Whew! 

Next up came my non-fiction book, Original Thin: The Paleo Diet in the Bible and Other Ancient Literature. In one chapter I do describe my experiences in Iraq. And the rest of the book is a description of the Paleo Diet and my assertions that the Bible and other ancient literature preserve hints of the original meat-based human diet. I sent the book in, per my life-time pre-publication review agreement. 

To my shock, I got a phone call from someone in that office telling me that there were two things in the book that would have to be changed prior to publication. Even though the phone call was non-classified, they managed to convey to me what the problem was. I understood and even though I don't quite accept why these particular details were classified, I complied and removed them from the manuscript. Whew! 

But this underscores an important point. I did not think there was anything classified in that book. The NSA disagreed. The book I published does not contain what the NSA did not want published. And that's because I complied with my lifetime pre-publication review agreement. 

And so, finally, my review of "No Easy Day." I'm reviewing it the same way the Department of Defense reviewed it, per his lifetime pre-publication agreement. He didn't send it in, as he agreed. His lawyer is claiming that the pre-publication agreement was "more of a suggestion than an obligation." Wow. Um, no one in the room with me the day I joined or the day I left could have come away with that impression. 

Fox News claims that the author is named Matt Bissonnette. The book itself is being published under the pseudonym "Mark Owen." It would not be unreasonable to ask whether everyone, from the publisher to all the readers, is being duped. But even if the author is everything he claims, and was really there that day, he has knowingly violated an agreement he signed when he assumed the responsibilities that allowed him to be there that day. Several people were there. Only one is publishing a book. 

I have another novel coming out this fall. It's pure science fiction. There's no way anything in it is classified.

I'll send it to the NSA for review before publication.

A Latin Origin for the Romanian Word DA (YES)

A few years ago I published an academic article in which I demonstrated a possible Latin origin for the assumed Slavic borrowing into Romanian of DA (YES).

To read the original article, click here.

To see the argument in a nutshell in a more accessible video form, enjoy the following:

Hurricane Special at Lingua Sacra Publishing!

Now, I woke up this morning and my first thought was, "Do I have enough Mozzarella Cheese to make it through Hurricane Irene?"

To my enormous relief, here's one of the first things I see entering our local supermarket:

And so, in the spirit of hurricane-inspired hysterical promotions, we hereby announce a Hurricane Special at Lingua Sacra Publishing.

Here's what you need to do. If you own a Kindle and live on the Eastern Seaboard, you must immediately confirm that it is fully charged. You may experience loss of electrical power due to storm conditions. If that happens, it would be a shame to sit in the dark without your Kindle.

Even if you don't have a Kindle, you could easily not lose power but yet be stuck at home for a day or two. New York City may not be open for business on Monday. And to alleviate the boredom, download--either to your Kindle or Computer--the following e-books.

Detective Fiction by Dr. David Justice, linguist, mathematician, and philosopher. Smart, funny, and delving into the very meaning of life.

And what better way to combat the darkness than A Place of Brightness by Dr. Keith Massey? An action adventure spanning the globe.

Or maybe this is finally the weekend for you to learn a little Spanish and enjoy an espionage adventure at the same time:

Stay safe and dry, people.

c/Communist? C/communism? What's Right?

My adventure-espionage novel A Place of Brightness describes a secret Communist group that organized an underground insurgency to attack the newly democratic Romania. The twin sons of a woman who once fought in an underground anti-communist insurgency are pulled into the action and help a Romanian agent in her attempt to foil the communist plans.

But in the course of writing this novel, I had to familiarize myself with the confusing rules governing capitalization of the words communist and communism.

To help future writers and researchers, I will summarize the rules here and show you examples of each case using quotes from my book. There are a number of somewhat varying and competing systems out there, so don't be surprised if you see minor disagreements within the style sheets of specific organizations.

1) (A) The noun communism is not capitalized (except, of course, (B) at the beginning of a sentence). This makes sense because, even in the height of Soviet power, communism was an idea, not a single unified political entity.

Example (A): “The day you were born Grandma told us about her premonition. She said that one of your sons would end communism once and for all.”

Example (B): Suddenly she opened her eyes wide. “Petre,” she gasped. “Communism will fall.”

2) The adjective communist is capitalized when it describes (A) individuals as a substantive or (B) attributive adjective, as well as when applied to (C) governments or formal groups.

Example (A): “We’re only fifteen,” Stefan stammered. “What good can we be against all those Communists?”

Example (B): “What do you make of this?” Victor asked. “Is she just crazy? She looks like she could be my grandmother. A secret Communist spy? Really?”

Example (C): “In the last months, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany have peacefully overthrown the Communist governments there. Romania is the first to do so in a bloody revolution.”

 3) The adjective communist is not capitalized when it describes (A) communist ideology as applied to abstract concepts apart from individuals, governments, or formal groups It is also not capitalized when used as a (B) predicate adjective.

Example (A): She looked up at the men seriously, brushing dyed-red hair from her eyes. “The long term plan is the restoration of communist rule in Eastern Europe.”

Example (A): “Smart thinking, not giving your personal cell number, in case this is a communist plot,” Andrew said.

Example (B): “I don't know what else I can say to convince you that SRI isn't Securitate and that I'm personally not a communist.”

4) Finally, the adjective communist is not capitalized when used in conjunction with prefixes, such as pro- and anti-.

Example: “This is precisely what I didn’t want to see, two American anti-communist vigilantes interfering with an important investigation.”

I hope this helps clear up the considerable confusion with these words.

A Place of Brightness - The Novel, Now Available on Kindle

On this blog, you can read the Continuing Adventures of Dr. Valquist, as he joins the NSA and is immediately thrown into international intrigue.

In the novel A Place of Brightness, you can learn the background story of how Dr. Valquist grew up and became the man of adventure he is today. It is available on Kindle and Nook.

From the dark time of Communist Romania down to present-day points across the globe, a family passes on the burden of their struggle against tyranny. Amidst a gathering storm of dangers and intrigue, they face the pains of their deep losses and celebrate the survival of love.

Stefan and Andrew Valquist had a strange childhood. Their mother, who claimed to have fought as an anti-Communist insurgent back in Romania, taught them everything she knew before her death. Now grown up and working as an Orthodox priest and a soldier, the brothers' world is shaken when they receive a message from an uncle they believed had been killed decades earlier. A trip back to their mother's homeland thrusts them into danger when they narrowly avoid death at the hands of mysterious assassins. Soon they are racing against time to stop an imminent attack on their ancestral home.