As Fool’s Republic opens, Simon Wyley floats in a tiny all-white cell. A short-order cook with a genius-level IQ, Wyley has had a steady job for twenty years, paid his taxes, kept to himself. A dedicated husband and father, he’s a model citizen. So why is he being held?

Wyley is accused of committing crimes against the state—the charges are always implied, never specified—and is being held without formal charge, benefit of counsel, or due process of law. He confuses and confounds his interrogators using the only weapons at his disposal, irony and whimsy, to challenge their arrogance and false assumptions. As Wyley’s journey proceeds, we develop a deeper understanding of the complicated man behind the wisecracks and the dark underbelly of the society that has imprisoned him.

Like Chris Leibig (author of Montanamo), Gordon Dale drew inspiration for his novel from current events and concerns about civil liberties in America in the post 9/11 era. While Leibig turned his impressions into a scathing satire, Gordon took a more introspective approach. The result is a unique and complex thriller that caught the attention of TED’s owner and managing editor Ross Browne, who read the manuscript in one sitting and found it utterly captivating.

“I can’t think of a single other time when I felt so strongly that a manuscript was ready for the marketplace just like it came to us,” says Ross, who knew Gordon well thanks to their work together on an earlier novel. “Not only is  Fool’s Republic a fiercely original and totally engrossing work in its own right, it also represents a huge breakthrough for Gordon, who’s been making great strides as a writer all along but has now had taken things to a completely different level.”

Ross wasn’t the only one who had strong feelings about the manuscript’s potential.  The novel, (then titled Rome Was Never Like This) went on to become a finalist for the British Crimewriters Association’s  Debut Dagger Award before landing a publishing contract with North Atlantic Books. Now, with several glowing pre-publication reviews in hand the official May 10, 2011 release date is upon us. We wish Gordon much success with this remarkable debut novel and recommend Fool’s Republic to anyone looking for something special and genuinely unique in the often predictable genre of political thriller.

You can find Gordon on Facebook or on his web site at www.gordonwdale.com. He shares his thoughts about the book and his writing process with us here.

TED: Tell us a little bit about the genesis of the book idea and/or how you came to decide to write it.

GD: It started with a sense of outrage, really. I began working on the manuscript in 2007 after I had moved to the United States from Canada, and when the details about secret CIA prisons started to become known. Probably they'd been reported on earlier, but that was when they first caught my attention in a vivid way. I started thinking about what it meant to live in a society where individuality is celebrated as an ideal but conformity is the rule, and the concept of liberty is bound up with a perverse amalgam of God, democracy, and free markets. I began to imagine this character, Simon Wyley, who has spent his life passively resisting authority and now finds himself in a situation where passive resistance is no longer tenable.

TED: What is the one thing that you want readers to take away from your book?

GD: That resistance to oppression, in any form, is noble and necessary.

TED: How do you write? Do you have a daily routine?

I don't have a daily routine; I write rather haphazardly. I have a notebook in which I capture thoughts, snatches of dialogue, descriptions of scenes, the way a visual artist might sketch out preliminary lines on a canvas to be fleshed out later. When I get down to work however, I tend to focus for long stretches at a time, neglecting other aspects of my life. And I rewrite compulsively. Writing is hard work that requires considerable concentration and effort. It's not a job I recommend.

TED: How did you find the publisher for this book?

GD: I approached Richard Grossinger, Publisher of North Atlantic Books, with Fool’s Republic because I was looking for someone who would support what I was trying to do with the book. Fortunately, he got it immediately. I’ve made the inevitable adjustments based on the editorial process but the book remains true to my original vision, and I’m thankful for that.

TED: Any advice for other writers who are making their way toward publication?

GD: Persistence is everything.

TED: When did you think about becoming a writer? Was there someone who got you interested in writing?

GD: My mother was mad about books, which were considered holy things in our home. They filled every nook and cranny and were stacked precariously on every flat surface. My father was always building more bookshelves, which were soon at capacity, the texts overflowing like lava onto the floor. Everywhere you looked there were books. So I guess you could say I was born to it.

TED: What have you learned about human nature that isn't common knowledge?

GD: I know less about human nature than I do about what's common knowledge, but one thing I've learned is that unpredictability is a deep and fundamental aspect of the human psyche. People simply do the damndest things. We spend a lot of our lives trying to figure people out, and a number of professionals, some novelists included, earn their livelihoods by claiming to do so, but it's a sucker’s game. People are little infernos of conflicting emotions; you never really know what they're capable of, given the right combination of circumstances. That's why we love stories about people's secret lives, about the mild-mannered accountant who's a CIA assassin on the side, or the heavyweight boxer who spends his weekends knitting baby cardigans. We know instinctively that people are complex and unpredictable, but still we have this need to predict what they will do next. Hence literary critics write things such as: that particular behavior didn't ring true for me. Such and such a character would never do that. Nonsense. People behave in unexpected ways all the time. That's why we're so interested in them. The Iliad opens with Achilles, the greatest warrior of his time, sulking. Not hacking and hewing and stabbing, as one might reasonably expect, but sulking. That's what makes a great story great.

TED: What’s next for you as a writer? Any other projects planned or underway?

GD: I'm working on a novel about memory. There's a line of Joseph Brodsky’s I like: People are what we remember of them. In the book I’m writing now, the main character is trying to discover the truth about his mother, who abandoned him and his family during their return trip from Africa to Canada when he was 12. It's an exploration of how we create our own history and the histories of those around us through a delusive synthesis of myth and memory, and of how, when we die, those histories pass into the hands of others, to be written and rewritten anew.