-The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 2015
...
Hilda Murrell, aged 78, was sexually assaulted and murdered in Shropshire, England, in March 1984. Her body was left abandoned in a field, and a lone sixteen-year-old boy was convicted of the crime. However, Hilda, an outspoken activist against nuclear power, was scheduled to give a very public speech highlighting the dangers of Margaret Thatcher’s nuclear power policies and was murdered before she had the chance. Additionally, Hilda’s nephew, Robert Green, was an admiral in the British Navy and head of a nuclear submarine during the 1982 Falklands War that reportedly sank a non-threatening Argentinian ship. The international scandal, involving his nuclear sub, not only cast doubts on Margaret Thatcher’s leadership, but gave weight to Hilda’s stance against nuclear proliferation. Many conspiracy theories exist regarding her death, and her nephew has written a book about the case.
-The Guardian, 2012
...
The 1998 World Cup Final featured France beating Brazil in 3-0 shutout. The night before the game, star player Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima, suffered a seizure so severe, teammates described him as foaming at the mouth and nearly swallowing his tongue. He was removed from the team line up. However, an hour before the game, he was added back to the team roster. The team lost badly, and many conspiracy theories exist as to why Ronaldo returned to play—from Ronaldo not remembering his seizure, to pressure from a corporate sponsor, to the player hiding a secret medical condition. None have been proven, and Ronaldo has been inducted into the Brazilian Football Museum Hall of Fame.
The Bleacher Report, 2013
Acknowledgments
I’ve learned to depend on every person in my village as I’ve brought Anastasia Phoenix to life. First and foremost, thank you to Lawrence Martin-Bittman, otherwise known as Agent 006.5, for the espionage inspiration that led to the creation of Department D and its specialty—disinformation. When I wrote the first draft of Book 1, Proof of Lies, disinformation was not a word I’d ever heard before. Now, fake news is everywhere. Thank you, Larry, for being ahead of the times.
Thanks to my agent, Taylor Martindale Kean, for your editorial feedback, which has made this series so much stronger, and for your support as you’ve championed every step of this publishing process. To my editor, Alycia Tornetta, you’ve helped me grow Anastasia so she’s both strong and caring, snarky and sympathetic. Without you, her story wouldn’t be the same.
I am grateful to all the people my husband and I met during our travels, who gave us advice and local information that has added depth to my international settings. Specifically, thank you to our lovely B&B host in Lewes, England, Angela Wigglesworth, for welcoming us into her home on Bonfire Night; the doorman at the NeoBankside Apartments in London, England, Clio Asolfi, for letting me sneak up to the penthouse floor for a peek at Julian’s view; and to the dread-locked twenty-something guy we met at a bar near the Tate Modern, for recommending we go out to Zone 2 and visit the “best Irish pub outside of Dublin” and the old cemetery across the street. My British scenes wouldn’t have been the same without you.
Special thanks go out to Ric and Leticia Ochman for hosting the most amazing wedding at the Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I don’t know how this book would have ended without you. And thanks again, Leticia, for all the help promoting Proof of Lies.
I am indebted to everyone who helped market this series through their personal and professional networks, specifically: Jenee Chizick, Riley Londres, Tom Gailey, Eric Smith, Jennifer Rodriguez, Ben Reynolds, and Marissa Nicole Rodriguez. I love visiting schools, and I am grateful to all of the teachers, librarians, and administrators who have allowed me to speak to their students. It’s always a blast. Special thanks to Harvard Professor Dani Rodrik for speaking to me about the conspiracies and crimes in the Turkish government, so I could plausibly insert my characters into those events.
A shout-out to my talented friend and photographer Chris Klock for taking all of my author photos, and special thanks to those who have offered their homes for quiet writing retreats, including Cristina and Matt Wallach, Paula and Larry Wallach, and Marguerite and Mike Sheehan. Without those weekends away from my little people, my books would not be written.
To my friends and family who traveled from all over to celebrate the launch of Proof of Lies, thank you for making the party so awesome! It’s a night I’ll always remember. Without my Ridley Girls, BU friends, and neighbors, I’d have a lot less laughter in my life.
I have fantastic in-laws who not only lend me their homes to write, but also do some serious copyediting. Thank you to Paula and Larry for catching all those typos.
I am who I am because of my Rodriguez Family. Our relatives struggling in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria showed us what family really means. I am now positive that if I am ever trapped in a collapsed building, one of you will find a congressman to email a nonprofit who will call a colleague who will somehow get me out. So to Lou, Natalie, Nicole, and Prao, thank you for being such caring and generous people. And to my parents, thank you for encouraging me every step of the way since the first day I told you I got an agent. Every time you show up at my events, I feel less nervous. Thanks!
To my husband, Jordan, you believe in me more than I believe in myself. You make my writing dream possible, by not only supporting me, but by being an excellent, calm, creative, there’s-always-a-way husband and father. We’ve taken this journey together, literally around the world, and I love you for that.
To Juliet and Lincoln, showing you Proof of Lies on the shelf of a bookstore meant more to me than you realize right now. I can’t wait for you to one day read these novels, just not for another ten or twelve years.
Don't Miss the
stunning conclusion to the
Anastasia Phoenix trilogy
THE END OF THE LIE
Hollywood comes calling after Anastasia and her friends take their harrowing tale of espionage and near-death experiences public. While their newfound celebrity status raises their profiles so high Department D can’t possibly touch them, it also takes an emotional toll. Plagued by constant online threats and struggling to bring down the parents who abandoned her, Anastasia wonders if she’ll ever be normal again.
When an old friend takes to the Internet with viral videos unloading all the Phoenix family’s darkest secrets, Anastasia fears her parents might do anything to silence the truth, maybe even murder. Aided by Marcus, the handsome bad boy who has supported her since the beginning, Anastasia grows even more determined to find her parents—but can she really turn them in? As more spies from their past emerge, leading them on a treacherous trail from Poland to Prague, Anastasia begins to realize how far people will go to protect themselves…including her.
Available in 2019
About the Author
Diana Rodriguez Wallach is not the child of superspies, as far as she knows. But she is an avid traveler, and every scene in her books comes from a place she has lived or visited— from her senior year apartment in Boston, MA, to the hotel where she stayed in Cortona, Italy. In addition to the Anastasia Phoenix series, Diana is also the author of the award-winning Amor and Summer Secrets series; the Mirror, Mirror short-story collection; and essays in both Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories and Latina Authors and Their Muses. She is an advisory board member for the Philly Spells Writing Center and is a creative writing instructor for Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth. She holds a B.S. in journalism from Boston University and currently lives in Philadelphia with her husband and two kids. But of course, this all could be a masterfully crafted piece of disinformation…
www.dianarodriguezwallach.com
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