Book Title: BLACK BIRD
Character Name: Nik Byron
How would you describe your family or your childhood?
I'm the oldest of three, my other two siblings being a twin brother and sister. Only separated by one year, we were close, both chronologically and emotionally. As the oldest, it fell to me to organize activities and adventures for us as we grew older. We lived in a remote area of Michigan and the Great Lakes were our front yard. In the summertime, we swam, sailed, fished, and camped on the beach. In the fall, it was team sports, hunting and cutting wood to heat our home. In the winter, it was hockey, ice fishing, tobogganing and snowshoeing. Our parents were busy with their own lives -- our father was a captain on a Great Lakes freighter and our mother a schoolteacher -- and took a hands off approach to child rearing. With the exception of an occasional broken arm, busted front tooth or black eye, It worked pretty well all in all. It certainly made the three of us independent at a very early age.
What was your greatest talent?
Extracting my sibs from sticky, sometimes threatening, situations after blindly leading them into the danger in the first place. One time we rowed our little skiff about three miles offshore when a fierce storm, with 20-foot waves, unexpectedly arose. There were moments when I doubted that we would ever touch dry land again.
Significant other?
Samantha Whyte, currently press secretary to US Senator Eva Summers, Democrat from Colorado, and formerly chief investigator and spokesperson for the Northern Virginia Sheriff's Department and a reporter for the Washington Post.
Biggest challenge in relationships?
Commitment. I'm told I view commitments as aspirational goals, instead of obligations. I don't have a good defense.
Where do you live?
Kalorama Triangle neighborhood, Washington, DC.
Do you have any enemies?
Plenty, both internally and externally. At work, I have a tyrannical boss who sees me as a threat and has been trying to sabotage my career from the moment I stepped in the newsroom. Externally, there's a DC detective who refused to rule me out as a murder suspect; a television reporter who has promised to destroy me and various politicians, powerbrokers and business execs whose lives have been upended by my reporting.
How do you feel about the place where you are now? Is there something you are particularly attached to, or particularly repelled by, in this place?
The weather in DC can be unbearable, especially for someone who grew up in the cool climes of northern Michigan. It's either sweltering or muggy and, more often than not, both. And, oh yeah, I almost forgot, when the cicadas emerge from their seven-year cycle the bugs are so thick that they carpet the sidewalks.
Do you have children, pets, both, or neither?
One child, Isobel, a toddler. I also have a dog, Gyp, an undisciplined, big-running, anxiety-prone Hungarian vizsla who has chewed through multiple seat belts when left alone, even briefly, in a vehicle.
What do you do for a living?
I'm an investigative reporter and part-time editor and podcaster for Newshound, a national online media company that has offices throughout the US, including Washington, DC
Greatest disappointment?
Having the chief editor's job in Washington, DC, stripped from me literally hours before I was to assume the position at Newshound due to a corporate merger. It was humiliating and I have had a chip on my shoulder ever since, though it's less pronounced as time goes by.
Greatest source of joy?
Outside of my family, a small, secluded lakeside cabin I own.
What do you do to entertain yourself or have fun?
I love baseball and am a huge Washington Nationals fan and play second base for the Washington Cannons, a competitive intramural league in DC for adults 30 years and older. Sam and I are also respectable bridge partners, though I'm not sure that's how other players would describe us. Nonetheless, we enjoy ourselves when we're not bickering about each other's bidding and card play.
What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
I can have blinders on when pursuing a story without giving so much as a thought to the consequences. I tell myself that's what journalists are suppose to do but it can be hell on relationships, personal and professional.
What keeps you awake at night?
You mean besides my daughter, our dog and the traffic on Columbia Road? If so, that would be getting beat on a story by a competitor.
What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
Finish writing a book -- a fictionalized account of the 1942 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Kansas City Monarchs of the old Negro Baseball League -- that I've been working on for several years.
Is there something that you need or want that you don’t have? For yourself or for someone important to you?
Yes. To be a faster writer.
Why don’t you have it? What is in the way?
Those are questions I've been asking myself for years. I'm open to suggestions.
A Nik Byron Investigation
The pandemic has receded and life in the United States has returned to normal—or that’s what the government insists. So what is causing residents in a remote religious compound in Idaho to drop dead in a grisly fashion? And why are prominent virologists meeting with untimely ends?
Something—or someone—is killing the religious followers and scientists,and Newshound reporter Nik Byron is determined to find out what’s behind the deaths. Could Xion Labs’ top-secret vaccine program be connected? Nik suspects so, but he’s being stonewalled at every turn. As he inches closer to the truth, Nik’s professional enemies move to quash his investigation, threaten his career, and destroy his personal life. With his world crumbling, Nik finds one last lead: Puck Hall, a resolute, free-spirited young woman and Xion Labs researcher, who is soloing the Appalachian Trail. It’s only when Puck, barely clinging to life after eluding trained killers, crawls out of the wilderness that Nik and a rookie reporter cobble together the nightmarish facts that bring the story into focus.
Populated with old-school journalists, double-crossing politicians, black-ops assassins, and government secrets, Black Bird follows Nik Byron on a thrilling investigative journey along the Appalachian Trail, deep into the northern Rocky Mountains, over the Pacific Ocean, and eventually right to the doorstep of the White House.
Thriller [Ramblin' House Press, On Sale: June 4, 2024, Hardcover / e-Book, / ]
Mark Pawlosky is an award-winning reporter, editor, and media executive. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, editorial director for American City Business Journals (ACBJ), andeditor in chiefofCNBC.com/msn, he oversaw financial news channels in the US, London, Munich, Paris, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. He successfully helped launch several media operations nationwide, including MSNBC, American City Business Journals, and Biz Magazine. A graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, Pawlosky and his family spent the past twenty years living on an island in Washington state before relocating to the Midwest.
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