An Interview with Karl Wegener

Karl Wegener is an American author who served as a Russian linguist in the United States Army Security Agency and with the Intelligence & Security Command during the Cold War. He also served as a combat interrogator in the United States Air Force Intelligence Service Reserve.

Upon leaving active duty, he served as an intelligence and targeting analyst and worked on issues that included Soviet and Warsaw Pact force readiness, Soviet tactical and strategic missile system deployment and doctrine, and nuclear weapons logistics.

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, he began a nearly thirty-year career in marketing and advertising,. He was a vice president of marketing and product planning for a large Japanese consumer electronics company. He also worked as a freelance content strategist, copywriter, and editor for more than fifteen years until he gave it up for the good life. He retired and moved to be near the ocean.

Nowadays when he is not writing, he enjoys cooking for friends and family. Sunday night dinner is his favorite event of the week.

What inspired you to start writing this book?

Operation Nightfall: The Web of Spies is the second book in my series of Cold War-era spy novels. I had initially scoped out a series of six to eight novels, all inspired by lesser-known stories of the Cold War. But in 2023, while writing Operation Nightfall, I was diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic bladder cancer. I underwent chemotherapy, and multiple surgeries, but I was determined to complete this book. It’s a bit of a miracle that I was able to complete it, but I did.

Tell us the story of your book’s current title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

Operation Nightfall: The Web of Spies is inspired by the events of the Polish anti-communist insurgency, a covert British operation which attempted to roll back communism in Poland and the Baltic states back to the borders of the USSR, and the Cambridge Spy Scandal.

Former SOE operative Luba Haas and MI6 agent Natalie Jenkins secretly enter Poland to meet with a sleeper agent and with anti-communist insurgents. Their mission is to foment dissent and provide the insurgency with arms, ammunition, money, and fighters to overthrow the Soviet-back communist government. What they don’t know is their mission has been compromised by a mole deep inside British intelligence. They are hunted by Soviet and Polish intelligence services and they are forced to attempt a harrowing escape, not knowing whom they can trust as they try to outrun their pursuers.

I draw very heavily on my own experiences working in the intelligence services. I try to highlight the intricacies of espionage as well as explore the moral dilemmas under cover agents and officers face. When you work in that world, you have to hold onto your humanity while maintaining the duality of living a life under cover. You never completely know whom to trust and have to rely on your training, but perhaps above all, your instincts.

As a result, my work is very character driven. And when I am “in the zone” writing, my characters speak to me and my goal is to not get in their way. I become more of a scribe, writing down their words, stories, their struggles, and their triumphs. Once I allow the characters come to me, their stories tend to flow. But, I would also add that I do not find writing to be enjoyable. It’s definitely work. And I don’t know who said this, but I definitely agree with the sentiment, “I hate writing, I love having written.”

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

I don’t know about specific songs, but two spy movie soundtracks come to mind. The first is the soundtrack from The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the second is from the 2002 film, The Quiet American. Both scores are brooding, haunting, and dark, and I think similar music would be suitable for Operation Nightfall: The Web of Spies.

What books are you reading (for research or comfort) as you continue the writing process?

I read a lot of spy fiction as well as non-fiction histories of the Cold War era. But I also enjoy to read books outside the genre. I’m particularly fond of W.B. Yeats, and I read his poetry all the time. And I love Shakespeare, both his plays and his sonnets. I have his complete works on my e-reader and return to them all the time for enjoyment.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

I’ve always wanted to write. I wrote short stories and plays when I was in middle school and high school.

When I served in the military and afterwards within the intelligence community, my of my time was spent writing, but it was in the form of analyses and reports. It was direct, to-the-point, matter-of-fact, and highly formulaic. Later in life, when I embarked on a career in marketing and advertising, I ghost-wrote and created content for CEOs and corporations. But, I always had a desire to write a novel. My wife tried to encourage me to write in the evenings after work. But, I found that I wrote so many words for others during my work day, I had no words left for myself.

All of that changed when I retired at the end of 2021. I committed myself to writing a novel and I decided to focus on the Cold War era. I made that decision because of an experience I had with my physical therapist during the summer of 2021. I was undergoing treatment for a shoulder injury and my therapist discovered I was a veteran. She asked me when I served and I told her I served at the end of the Vietnam war and during the Cold War. As she continued to work on me she thought about what I had said, suddenly stopped treating me and asked, “The Cold War? Which war was that?”

So, it was that moment that I decided to focus my writing on the Cold War, and that I would highlight lesser known events. For example, one of the events that inspired Operation Nightfall: The Web of Spies is the Polish anti-communist insurrection. Most people do not realize that while World War II in Europe ended in May 1945, fighting continued in Poland until 1953. The Poles continued to fight against the Soviet-back communist government and the hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops that continued to occupy their country throughout the Cold War.

Where is your favorite place to write?

I am fortunate to have a home office. It’s very functional, with a sturdy desk and a comfortable chair. I view writing as work, and my office is my place of business. So, I do my very best to show up for work and put in the work by writing five days a week, just like any other job.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

My main goal is to awaken readers’ curiosity. After reading my book, I hope they will want to learn more about the historical events upon which my book is based.

I write historically inspired spy novels. Men are typically drawn to the genre, but I have really tried hard to make my work accessible and interesting to a wide range of readers, young and old. I think women are drawn to my novels because in both of my books, I have a female-forward cast. One of my goals is to shed light on the incredible role women have played in espionage. I have tried to upturn the common trope of women in espionage as distractions or worse, honeypots. In both of my novels, women play an outsize role in executing espionage operations, just as they did during World War II and throughout the Cold War. So, I really hope to reach out to women readers and I hope they will find my books interesting.

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