The Mess Welcomes Kenneth Kerr

Kenneth Kerr

Happy Saturday my Mess-y friends.  This week we welcome Kenneth Kerr, first time author and avid Duplicate Bridge player, from Hilton Head, Island, South Carolina.  Retired now, Kenneth is a fulltime writer with his first book, Life of a Double Agent, available for you enjoyment.  Kenneth and I met via Twitter as seems to be my theme as of late.  Its been an awesome venue to meet great writers and make some interesting friendships.  Kenneth also has a blog, Life of a Double Agent, and a web site under the same name. Make sure you pop over and check them both out.

Before turning it over, I just wanted to say thanks to Kenneth for joining us here at the Mess.  It's always a pleasure to get to know my friends better and I welcome the chance to visit with him.

Now, grab that morning java and settle in for a great visit with Kenneth.

“Life of a Double Agent” by Kenneth J. Kerr

Robbie, thank you very much for inviting me to provide a guest post for your blog. As you know, we met through twitter, and I am pleased to submit a guest post. I decided the post should be an introduction to my new book, “Life of a Double Agent”, and a brief introduction to the author, me. I will do those introductions in reverse order.

I am just about to celebrate my birthday, and it will be number seventy. I spent more than thirty years in a business career and retired at a relatively young age, almost fifteen years ago. Until last year, I had never written anything longer than a letter or a few business reports. But last summer I decided I needed a new challenge and decided to see if I could write enough pages to make a whole book. I had the idea for the story but had no idea if it would take fifty pages to tell the story or four hundred pages. Luckily, I found out it took about three hundred and eighty four pages.

I think the idea for the story may interest you. After I retired from my business career I decided to join the Peace Corps and work as a volunteer somewhere in the world. After the selection process I was offered an opportunity to volunteer in Russia. During my business career I had traveled internationally to Europe and Central America, and South America, and I had lived and worked in Asia for almost a decade. But I had never been to Russia, so I eagerly accepted the assignment. It proved to be one of the most interesting and enjoyable experiences of my life. After a ten-week training program in a suburb of Moscow with 78 other Peace Corps volunteers, I learned I would be assigned to a city in the middle of Siberia named Krasnoyarsk. It was a city of approximately one million people, and was one of the education centers of Siberia with several universities. I spent a year teaching business courses at one of the universities and doing some business consulting with a few of the small businesses in Krasnoyarsk.

Before I left Moscow, the Peace Corps advised me that outside Krasnoyarsk was a secret city named K-26 where Russia had nuclear reactors. They assured me there were no safety issues to worry about with my assignment to Krasnoyarsk. The people I worked with and friends I made spoke openly about the “secret city”, but no one offered to take me on a guided tour.

Life of a Double Agent

Then the unexpected happened. My assignment with the Peace Corps was a two-year assignment, but administratively the Russian government only granted one year visas, with the understanding that at the end of the first year we would be granted an additional visa for our second year. When that time came, ten of the volunteers were denied visas for the second year, and unfortunately, I was one of them. No explanation was given, so ten of us had to leave after our first year.

When I got home many of my friends humorously teased me that they “knew” I was working for the CIA, and that the Russian government had suspected the same thing and had expelled me after my first year.

All of the Russian experience became the foundation for the story of “Life of a Double Agent.” I simply enlarged the story to cover a forty year period in the life of the main character, Jim Hunt. He was recruited by the CIA while in college, and recruited by a Chinese intelligence agency when he was serving in the Army, waiting for deployment to Vietnam.

After Vietnam, he chose to pursue a business career and worked for over thirty years as a successful international businessman. All the time he worked as a businessman he was also working for the CIA as a mole inside China’s Ministry of State Security.

How he lead this life of deception for all that time and the missions of his secret life are the story of “Life of a Double Agent”. His final mission, after he thinks he has retired from business and the spy agencies, happens when he goes to Russia as a Peace Corps volunteer. Sorry I can’t tell you anymore. Read the book to get an insight to the “Life of a Double Agent”.

Now for a brief commercial announcement. The book is available as an e-book, paperback or hardcover and can be purchased on www.lifeofadoubleagent.com, amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com or by contacting me directly at kkerr19963@yahoo.com. You can also follow me on facebook at www.facebook.com/lifeofadoubleagent or on my blog at kkerr19963.wordpress.com.

Robbie, thank you for the opportunity.

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Did you enjoy what you read?  Leave me a comment and then join me at The Mess that Is Me on Facebook!

Other guest posts you will enjoy ~ The Mess Welcome Dani J. Caile 

                                                  The Mess Welcomes Matthew Krause 

                                                  The Mess Welcomes Sherry Rentschler 

Thanks for visiting The Mess! Keep chasing your dreams!