Adam Sikes served for over twenty-five years in US national security. He is a former paramilitary operations officer with the CIA, and is a US Marine Corps combat veteran. He has lived and operated around the world with tours in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and Europe, and his experiences now inform his writing. His first novel, Landslide (2022), was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Awards, and his latest novel, The Underhanded (2024), was a finalist for the American Fiction Awards. He also co-authored Open Skies: My Life as Afghanistan’s First Female Pilot with Niloofar Rahmani. Adam holds an M.A. in History from Georgetown University and now resides in Southern California.

Continue reading to hear more from Adam about his journey to becoming an author.

“Since I was a little boy toddling around Boston, I’ve loved reading, writing, great fiction, history, current events, and piles and piles of books. However, becoming an author has been an unorthodox journey.

In addition to diving into J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King, Robert Ludlum, and Bernard Cornwell long before I truly understood what I was reading, I wanted to be a US Marine. I must credit my grandparents and parents for this, and for the first ten years of my professional life, I was a Marine infantryman serving around the world both in and out of war zones. But whenever I went overseas, the books and notepads came with me.

After ten years, I left the Marines, worked as a consultant for a time, and then was recruited by the CIA to be a paramilitary operations officer. I conducted activities in Central Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, and Europe, but I won’t go into the details of my time with the Agency except to say that this was when I started gravitating toward becoming a professional writer.

Writing is an art and a passion, and as Hemingway once said, every day we have to “get up and bite on the nail.” That’s what I’ve done every day since 2012–gotten up, drank coffee, and written with the intent to tell compelling and entertaining stories. And that’s what I’m going to keep doing: writing about spies, espionage, conspiracies, and history. At times it will be exciting and pulse-pounding, other times it will be meaningful and touch your heart, and sometimes I may delve into areas that are difficult (perhaps drawing from my own experiences).

Beyond my own writing, I’ve also worked with other writers as a developmental editor on books concerning the Kennedys and the Vietnam War, as well as forthcoming science fiction and fantasy novels. I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with Robert Ludlum’s former editor, Richard Marek, and the professionals who brought Die Hard, Death Wish, and American Sniper from print to screen. To say I feel lucky would be an understatement.

You can find a list of my favorite books and those I consider noteworthy under The Reading Corner (which I need to update!). Feel free to check back frequently for news about upcoming events, and if you haven’t already, please sign up for my newsletter, The Black Cache, and follow me on Instagram.”