After the demise of Taylor and Seale, Cal has partnered with Maine Authors Publishing to produce a special first edition of The Vault while working to produce and release all three Kyle McBride books with new covers in Spring 2024. 

​*Cal Thomas was a participant in a “Business of Writing” Panel Discussion on August 3 in Portland, ME. The event was moderated by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, executive director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, a membership organization supporting Maine’s writers, publishers, and literary professionals. Discussed in detail were operations of traditional publishers, independent press, self-publishing companies and hybrid publishers, and the pros and cons for authors of each model.

 
* At 6:00 p.m. on September 12, Cal will hold a book reading and signing at the Topsham, Maine Public Library. He will discuss and read from A Stradivari Affair and Decoy, and report progress on his current novel, The Vault.

​When author Cal Thomas was in town for a book signing at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Mike DiVittorio of the Oakmont Plum ADVANCE LEADERchatted with him about his writing and other business endeavors:
In the years before writing thrillers A STRADIVARI AFFAIRand DECOY, Thomas specialized in TV financing and production. He collaborated with international producers BBC, Thames Television, TV Ontario, NHK, plus PBS, APTV and others in the U.S. Prior to starting his own company, Thomas was an executive at Pittsburgh’s WQED.    
DiVittorio reports on Thomas’ years as a military intelligence operative in Europe, and later on as a symphony orchestra manager. Thomas channeled those varied experiences and his TV years into the creation of the lead character in the Kyle McBride Adventure series. Several of the fictional character’s experiences parallel those of the author. 
 “Kyle does some of the same things that I know about,” Thomas says.  “But these are not autobiographical stories. They are fiction, even though there’s a lot of information in there that I know to be true.”
DiVittorio notes that the first of the Kyle McBride series is A STRADIVARI AFFAIR, in which the protagonist gets caught up in thievery, subversion and murder that takes him from New York to Florida and Europe. It was inspired by the true story of the theft of a Stradivarius from backstage at Carnegie hall.
Thomas’ latest work, DECOY, begins in London in 2005, and was inspired by real-life terrorist attacks that year. DiVittorio quotes the author describing character Alan Durant, a disillusioned young jihadist: “He is tasked with being the decoy, who must distract and lure defending forces away from the targeted nukes.” Thomas says, “McBride makes things personal when the terrorists bomb a building with one of his loved ones inside.” More information about the author and his work can be found at CalThomasThrillers.com. 

Independent bookstore, The Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick, Maine, is now carrying both of the Kyle McBride Adventure books! 

Cal’s new novel, Decoy, is a thriller by a writer on the move:
Decoy was not written at one desk in one location, but became part of my life wherever I happened to be. I began the early drafts while vacationing on Mt. Desert Island in Maine.

​There, between walks along the rocky coast, I worked out my main character’s relationship with an American kid who had become radicalized and had volunteered to be a suicide bomber.
I fleshed out key parts of the book during a month-long home exchange in Paris, close to the where a crucial bombing took place in Decoy. I created the Caribinieri helicopter chase and action scenes at San Donato, Italy, while staying at the home of friends––in San Donato; and I outlined the scenes set in Turkey and Greece during a three-week stay with friends near Vasilitsi, Greece, another key location in the novel. 

A major portion of my writing was at my desk on the east coast of Florida, and I actually mailed the final manuscript to my agent, Donna Eastman, from Topsham, Maine.