I didn't always work as a full-time writer. I traveled the world as a semi-US diplomat for more than two decades, allowing me him to collect experiences and stories to write about when I no longer wore scratchy suits and blue-colored ties and sat down at a keyboard. I connected with the African narrative, and of all the stories I heard around the world, the ones about European colonialism and what it wrought in Africa captivated me the most. So I gathered stories about the arrival of Europeans, their outlook, policies, and attitudes before and after European women arrived on the continent, and the impact everything European had on the African people.

After the Soviet Union fell apart, I worked at our embassy in Bucharest, Romania. One of my responsibilities was to obtain Holocaust-related documents from the Ministry of the Interior and the State Security for the Holocaust Museum in Washington. I once came across a letter to the State Security from wartime president/dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu about a farmer named David. A paper clip was used to secure David's picture to the letter. He was a poor farmer dressed in rags. Why would Romania's dictator write to inquire about a single farmer's transportation status? What I write is heavily influenced by those files from the Romanian Ministry of the Interior's archives.