FCETIER INVITED ME to participate in a “Meet Your Character” blog hop. Etier is the author of two thrillers, The Tourist Killer and The Presidents Club. You can read his blogs and learn more about his books here.

Now Meet My Character, the one occupying the pages of my last two novels, both suspense thrillers, Secrets of the Dead and Conspiracy of Lies

What is the name of your character? Is he/she fictional or a historic person?

Ambrose Lincoln, and he is fictional.

When and where is the story set?

Both novels are set during World War II. Secrets of the Dead is located in Washington D. C. and Baden Baden Germany, focusing on the horrifying Night of Broken Glass, which began Hitler’s methodical termination of the Jewish race. Conspiracy of Lies takes place in Los Alamos, New Mexico, while physicists, scholars, and scientists frantically try to develop and build the Atomic Bomb. They are in a maddening race with Germany and Russia. Whoever has the big bomb will end the war or establish the most terrifying domain of all time. It is Lincoln’s mission to locate the Russian mole and prevent the secrets of the bomb from being smuggled out of the United States.

What should we know about your character?

Ambrose Lincoln is a tormented man who is no longer in control of his own life. He may even be demented. Lincoln’s mind is a vacant landscape. The government erases it or sometimes rearranges it with top-secret mind control experiments that rely on electrodes and shock treatments.

The government changed him. They may have ruined him. But still they send him into battle-scarred Europe to do things that no one talks about, not in public anyway. Lincoln is secret. His life is secret. His mission is secret.

And when it’s over, the government sends him to an out-of-way little hospital that doesn’t exist in an out-of-the-way little town that doesn’t exist and removes what’s left of his mind again. Who Lincoln was no longer exists either. He’s a dangerous man and doesn’t know why.

What is the main conflict? What messes up Lincoln’s life?

Ambrose Lincoln operates in the dark. He has no identity. He has no idea who he was, where he lived, or anything about his life before he volunteered to undergo the secret government operation.

Lincoln would do what his country asked because the government’s thoughts are now his thoughts, and the government’s thoughts are classified top secret, and Lincoln has no idea that he has access to them. He is the man who knows too much, and when the time comes to silence him, he will be silenced for good. That is the final secret that the government keeps from him.

What is the personal goal of the character?

Lincoln has a job to do, and he seldom knows what it is. He discovers each step of the mission as he moves through the pages of the novel. His only goal is to complete the job he has been assigned to do and survive. He is undaunted and has no fear. The electrodes removed all sense of fear. He is no longer afraid of dying. He often wonders if he is already dead. But he will fight at all cost to protect those who form the inner circle of his mission.

Is there a working title for a new novel featuring your character?

I am presently in the editing stages of Night Side of Dark, the third book in the Ambrose Lincoln trilogy. The story line for Night Side moves across the war-torn landscape of Poland and into Dalldorf Germany. Lincoln is searching for an ancient religious painting, produced by an artist who witnessed the resurrection of Christ. The painting may or may not exist. Some art scholars believe it is a myth. But high German officials, including Hitler, are frantically searching for the painting as well. The legend says that it is possible to walk through the door on the far side of a wooden bridge, barely visible in the piece of art, and escape from this world. Germany is falling. Hitler’s days are numbered. He is looking for a way out before the allies march into Berlin.

When can we expect the book to be published?

My goal is to have the eBook version of Night Side of Dark published later this fall and the trade paperback version available by Christmas.

To keep the blog hop moving, I am tagging Emma Calin, David L. Atkinson, and Darlene Jones.

Please click the book cover image to read more about Caleb Pirtle III and his books.