After publishing a novel about a guy who helps terminally ill individuals end their lives, and another novel about terminally ill individuals who become vigilante serial killers, I decided it was time to take a break from all the death and dying and murdering. I mean, there’s only so much a reader—and a writer—can take.
So you’ll be happy to know my next novel isn’t about any of that stuff.
Instead, it centers around child sex trafficking.
You can blame my wife.
She’s the one who just had to go on a noble humanitarian mission to Cambodia in 2016 to build an art center for young girls who’d been rescued from sex slavery. And she’s the one who came home and just had to show me all the inspirational and touching photos from her trip. All the smiles she and the women she traveled with brought to the faces of girls who’d endured months/years of unspeakable physical, emotional and psychological abuse.
After blubbering over the photos and telling my wife how proud of her I was, I said there was something I needed to know. “Who rescues these girls from the brothels?”
And when she told me, I knew I had my next novel. It’s not every day you hear about former CIA agents and Navy Seals pretending to be pedophiles to catch pimps and give little girls their future back.
I spent the next month learning facts while concocting plot details for my novel. As part of the research I did to get my lies right, I interviewed a man who spent over two years leading sex trafficking sting operations all over the world. What he shared with me via phone and email was unsettling, unforgettable, inspiring and invaluable. My novel is by no means the tale of his life, but I couldn’t have created what I’ve created without the detailed information and gripping accounts he provided.
I’m inches away from completing the book. It’s called In Wolves’ Clothing. Here’s the draft of the blurb that will appear on the back cover:
Zero Slade is not a pedophile. He merely plays one when saving children’s lives.
During his seven years on a team fighting child sex trafficking, Zero’s become quite good at schmoozing with pimps, getting handcuffed by cops and pretending not to care about the Lost Girls he liberates. But the dangerous sting operations are starting to take their toll on his marriage and sanity. His affinity for prescription pain medication isn’t exactly helping matters.
When the youngest girl the team has ever rescued gets abducted from a safe house in Cambodia, Zero decides to risk everything to find her and bring her back. Never mind he’s still recovering from a recent overdose—and an even more recent gunshot wound that should have killed him.
It’s the biggest mission of Zero’s life. Trouble is, it’s certain death.
Indecent Browsing, and Nuns Flying Coach
As you might imagine, this has not been an easy writing experience. Learning all about the horrors that occur in the international child sex trade – or just getting your head around the fact that such a trade even exists—is enough to turn you into a permanent insomniac. But I knew I had to write this novel, and I knew I could do it in a way that would respect the subject matter and inform readers without completely devastating and depressing them. So I pressed on.
Almost as challenging as the research was coping with the concern of getting arrested (or at least investigated) based solely on my browser history. How I managed to stay under the federal authorities’ radar during several months of highly questionable online searches is beyond me. You’d think googling “international sex-trafficking hotbeds” followed by “cost of roundtrip flight from LA to Phnom Penh” followed by “Cambodian kiddie brothels” would have at least resulted in a local police officer knocking on my door.
And then there was the issue of working on In Wolves’ Clothing on flights. While sitting in coach. With passengers practically sitting in my lap as I typed such lines as, “The trick to looking excited when children are presented to you for sex is to remember you are saving their lives.” And I’ve been flying a lot. From Austin to Portland and back every Monday/Tuesday for ten weeks to attend an amazing writing workshop led by Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club and numerous other dark contemporary bestsellers). On these flights, I’ve sat next to (and tried to shield my screen from) mothers with young daughters, marines with arms as big as my legs, and, perhaps most harrowing of all, a nun with wandering eyes.
I guess what I’m saying is it should have been me and not that poor little Chinese doctor from Kentucky who got dragged off a plane for all the world to see. (Seriously. It would have been great publicity for the book.)
No Laughing Matter. But Laughing Matters
Perhaps most challenging, though, was the writing itself. Well, not initially. The first draft was actually easy. Surprisingly so. But then I read it from start to finish and realized, um, it was a little too, uh…and please forgive me here… funny.
It’s not that I’d made light of child sex trafficking in the first draft (not al ALL, actually). Rather, I found that the “voice” I’d brought to the story was a little too similar to the voice used in my previous two novels, which are both straight-up dark comedies. While it’s totally fine to be hilarious and witty in novels about terminal illness and murder, when your book centers around pedophilia and sex slavery, it’s best to tone down the humor a smidge. So, I had to tell my first-person narrator, Zero—who deep down is a good guy—that he was having a little too much fun describing and showing the nightmarish work he does.
Zero sort of listened to me during the second draft, but it wasn’t until Chuck Palahniuk said something to Zero and I during a recent workshop session that Zero really started to pay attention. Chuck said, “This is a terrific concept and I like what you’re doing, but be careful not to let funny and clever cut the tension.” Then Chuck said something funny and clever to cut the tension: “Remember, this isn’t ‘The Best Little Whorehouse in Phnom Penh.’”
That’s not to say the novel is now devoid of humor. Extracting every ounce of funny from the story actually would have made it less authentic. At least according to the real-life Zero I interviewed prior to starting the book. He told me having a dark sense of humor is a necessity in his line of work. It’s how you survive. After he read the first twenty chapters I sent him in March, he called me and said, “I read everything out loud to my wife, and when we weren’t crying, we were laughing. Man, you nailed it.”
Having someone who has lived through most of what my fictional character has experienced react in such a positive manner, that meant more to me than any praise even Chuck could have provided. (Chuck, if you are reading this, I merely said that to create more tension. Of course your opinion matters more.)
I expect In Wolves' Clothing to launch early fall 2017, so mark your calendar. (Just write “Buy Levin’s new novel!” all over September and October, to be safe.) Between now and then, I’ll be sure to post an excerpt or two so you’ll have a better idea of what you’re getting yourself into.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. My wife just told me there’s a man at our door who says he’s with the FBI.
If you haven’t already done so, be sure to subscribe to my email list. That way my blog posts and book news will land right in your inbox or spam folder. To join the list, just scroll up almost to the top of this page and type your email in the little “sign up” box to the right.
ON HIS BEST DAYS, ZERO SLADE IS THE WORST MAN YOU CAN IMAGINE. HE HAS TO BE. IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE THE LOST GIRLS.