1–What is the title of your latest release?
2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Based on the true story of an American investor and his Czech partner going into the wild west of 90s Russia to make a killing on undervalued assets, getting tangled up with the Russian Mafia, ex-KGB agents and corrupt governments officials, hitting a billion-dollar jackpot but barely getting out alive.
3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
Since Siberia Job is based on a real story, I had a lot of remarkable real-life locations to work with – the wildest spots in post-Communist Moscow, a gangster’s yacht on the Caspian Sea, the Trans-Siberian Railway, forgotten tiny villages a thousand miles from civilization – remarkable stuff!
4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
I would and I have!
5–What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Real (that is, he’s based on a real guy), brilliant, cool-headed.
6–What’s something you learned while writing this book?
Just how crazy post-Soviet Russia was – very much like the American Wild West – a fascinating, lawless, action-packed, violent goldrush.
7–Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I wait till I’m done, don’t like to get bogged down while I’m writing.
8–What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
New Haven Pizza
9–Describe your writing space/office!
I write in my apartment in Miami, on a balcony looking out at the Atlantic. I’ve always liked to write outside – for a long time I had noisy, though lovable, roommates.
10–Who is an author you admire?
John McPhee, the unchallenged master of super-tight prose.
11–Is there a book that changed your life?
Act One by Moss Hart – his memoir about becoming a playwright was such a captivating book it made me want be a writer.
12–Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I was hanging out with John Kleinheinz, the guy who The Siberia Job’s protagonist John Mills is based on – we were at his house in the Bahamas, and we celebrated by sneaking into Palmyra, the now-abandoned mansion where the bad guy in the James Bond movie Thunderball lived. You know, the house with the swimming pool for sharks. The shark pool’s still there.
13–What’s your favorite genre to read?
Unbreakable tie between crime thrillers and historical fiction.
14–What’s your favorite movie?
Kiss Them for Me, a 1957 Cary Grant movie about three navy fliers on a four-day leave in San Francisco during WW2. It’s based on a (very good) novel called Shore Leave by Frederic Wakeman Sr., but the real genius comes from Julius Epstein’s screenplay. Epstein is best known for having written Casablanca with his died-young twin brother Phillip. As great as Casablanca is, Kiss Them for Me’s even better
15–What is your favorite season?
Fall. I’m a sucker for changing leaves, a little bite in the air and a chance to get out my maul and split wood for winter.
16–How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Generally, I like not to celebrate it, but this year it happens to be the release date of Siberia Job – June 6th. So I’ll probably do what I always do when I’ve got a new book out – go to a bookstore and try to impress pretty strangers.
17–What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Does 2019 still count as recent? It was a phenomenon at the time – the Chernobyl miniseries – but gosh was it fantastic. If you haven’t seen, it’s highly recommended. If you have seen it, see it again – it makes a good companion piece to The Siberia Job – with Chernobyl a look at the very end of the Soviet Union, and Siberia Job a look at the very beginning of post-Soviet Russia.
18–What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Japanese. Unless you count New Haven pizza. In which case, it’s New Haven pizza.
19–What do you do when you have free time?
Watch much too much sports. Baseball, Football, Hockey, Nascar. I used to watch Formula 1 until 2011 when they introduced the drag reduction system and turned F1 into Mario Kart. Not that I have a problem with Mario Kart. If there were competitive Mario Kart on TV, I would definitely watch.
20–What can readers expect from you next?
My next book is called The Montevideo Brief. It’s coming out on August 1st, under my other pen name JH Gelernter – the third in my “Thomas Grey” series of spy thrillers set in the Napoleonic Wars. This one’s about the secret treaty Spain & France signed in 1804 to protect the last great treasure armada to leave South America, and how it was highjacked by British spies. Swashbuckling is involved.
THE SIBERIA JOB by Josh Haven
A Texas businessman travels to the furthest reaches of post-Soviet Russia in search of the country’s new wealth — and finds new dangers as well. Based on true events.
After the demise of the Soviet Union, the newly-established Russian government privatized its industry by issuing vouchers to all of its citizens, allowing them the chance to be shareholders in the country’s burgeoning businesses. The slips are distributed among the population and auctions are arranged where they can be exchanged for actual shares. For the country’s rural populations living in abject poverty, the vouchers appear to be little more than pieces of paper, totally separated from the far-off concept of potential future fortunes.
But for Texas businessman John Mills and his Czech companion, Petr Kovac, the seemingly-valueless chits suggest a lucrative potential, worth much more than what the current owners are willing to sell them for. They travel to the furthest, coldest reaches of the country to acquire vouchers for the country’s national oil company, Gazneft, roving from town to town with suitcases full of cash. But they quickly learn that the plan has complications — for example, the fact that the auctions at which these vouchers are traded for actual shares have been planned at the most remote, inaccessible locations possible to deter outsiders from buying in. And when the Russian mafia and the oligarchs in charge of Gazneft catch wind of their successes, the stakes become suddenly more deadly.
A thrilling adventure inspired by true events, The Siberia Job charts a course through one of the most impactful periods in recent Russian history, whose reverberations continue to be felt in the present day.
Suspense [Mysterious Press, On Sale: June 6, 2023, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781613164075 / ]
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About Josh Haven
Before publishing his first novel, Josh Haven was an art critic for magazines and newspapers in the US & Europe and an astrogeophysicist who solved the Saturn-Hyperion density/porosity problem. His seafaring adventure novels are published under the name J.H. Gelernter, and Fake Money, Blue Smoke is his first crime novel.
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