January 2, 2026. It’s been awhile since I last posted, and I have news! To get right to the point, immediately after the last election I spent a stunned week feeling like a smacked cabbage, then put aside the novel and the oceangoing memoir and got to work on another, far more urgent book. It’s finished, professionally edited, and ready to query to literary agents.

Here’s the elevator pitch: True Doubt, A Deep State Journey is a narrative nonfiction about my time as the biologist/senior manager in charge of congressional and media relations for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska, when we were under extreme pressure to lie to the public, break federal rules, and deny the existence of climate change. I ended up leaking to the New York Times for three years, which resulted in multiple front-page stories and the George W. Bush White House secretly trying to force me to be the only employee in a federal wildlife agency of 9,000 to get a top-secret clearance. Their intent was to fail me in the application process so that they could replace me. I refused to play along and finally left my career, but took six years of documentation with me.

In a nutshell, I went from feeling helpless to stop the slide into government subservience to oil companies, to leaking something to the NY Times that stopped a hearing on the U.S. Senate floor that was about to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling by using a fake map that swept in Native-owned lands without their knowledge or permission. And yes, leaking that and seeing that result was terrifying.

Though most people may think the bending and warping of our federal government to corporate will is a fairly new thing, it isn’t. Patterns we’re seeing today were set in motion 25 years ago. A close read of the Interior Department’s chapter in the heinous Project 2025 shows how much they learned from those days. So my aim is to make that connection for readers, too, from an insider’s perspective. Namely, that the difference between then and now is that much of the severest damage back then was contained to a couple of science agencies like mine, and largely invisible to the public; today it’s metastasized, completely uncontained, and out in the open like a five-alarm fire.

I’ve spent the past year deeply immersed in documenting every fact, working with an editor, preparing query materials, and polishing every sentence. This month I start sending out queries to literary agents, so wish me luck! If I’m lucky enough to sign with one, then the publishing journey will begin, and it can take at least a year. I’ll do a better job of updating you.

So far and without exception, everyone I’ve talked to about this book has enthusiastically said they want to read it and SOON. Therefore, a favor: if you too would be interested in reading this book, drop me a comment below, I’d love to hear from you.  Thanks, and may you have a better 2026!