Eugene Yelchin's SPY RUNNER

I love having the talented and prolific author/illustrator Eugene Yelchin on my blog. Here he is again to share his latest book, SPY RUNNER! Take it away, Eugene...

SPY RUNNER
by Eugene Yelchin
      Spy Runner is a spy noir thriller for middle grade and young adult readers. Chases, crashes, shootouts, and cliffhangers at the end of each chapter will keep even the reluctant readers turning the pages.       However, action in Spy Runner is only the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface is the examination of what it means to surrender truth in the name of safety. This notion is at the heart of all of my books beginning with Breaking Stalin’s Nose.       I was born and raised in the former Soviet Union where truth was in short supply, where truth was continually revised and obscured. The time I have spent in search of what was kept in secret by the communist government occupies a significant part of my biography. The protagonist’s drive in Spy Runner mirrors the trajectory of my own search — from the discovery of a lie to the discovery of truth.       The world of the book is designed to prevent the protagonist’s discovery of truth. Spy Runner takes place in the United States in 1953 at the height of the anti-communist crusade. At that time, certain politicians exploited the communist threat against democracy by dividing American people. Nationalistic prejudices and media-disseminated misinformation were some of their tools.       My hope is that my readers might draw parallels between the Cold War rhetoric depicted in Spy Runner and our current political and social climate. To understand what the future might bring as well as to understand the meaning of the present political and cultural moment it is imperative to understand our past.       As with all of my previous novels, Spy Runner is heavily illustrated. American mid-century crime comics were a natural point of departure for my illustrations. I am a fairly skilled forger. By looking at my pictures one could assume that they were authentic period pieces.       It appeared to me later that comics-style illustrations were misrepresenting gravity of the project. The narrative takes its cues from pulp fiction, but pulp fiction it is not. In the end, it was film noir — an anomaly in the history of the American cinema so profoundly nihilistic and dark those films were — that made its stylistic mark on the novel.       Since spy photography is at the heart of Spy Runner I decided to create images reminiscent of those clandestine photos. Suspicion and mistrust clouds my protagonist’s judgment. He barrels toward the emotionally shattering discovery that hardly anyone, including his mother, is what they seem. Today, we experience shattering discoveries on a regular basis. Nothing is what it seems. A visual image became the primary tool of deception. Photo-collages, fake photographs that do not exist in reality, seemed to me a perfect medium to underscore not only the main tension in the book, but also the daily experiences of my readers. The final illustrations composed of hundreds of separate pieces either found or photographed by me and composited digitally using some basic Photoshop effects.       Spy Runner was researched, written, and illustrated over a period of three years in my art studio in California, and this is what my private heaven looks like today: