A new novel by local author William Dean offers a timely and dramatic tale about two young men from Astoria.
“Militia Men,” Dean’s third suspense novel, tells the story of Robb and Sean, who join a fictional local militia group called the True Patriots. Sean is dazzled by the extremist group and its leader, a former U.S. Marine who goes by Viper.
At first, Robb hopes to protect Sean from the group, but quickly he realizes it may be too late. The group works on a plan to kidnap a fictional U.S. senator, Alexandra Austin, a mass shooting survivor who is leading a gun control bill.
The novel is written in the first-person perspectives of Robb, Viper and Austin.
“I wanted to push the envelope and have three incredibly different voices: a 25-year-old man, a female U.S. senator who was the survivor of a mass shooting and the leader of this militia group,” Dean said. “I strove to have their backstories be rich.”
Dean was inspired to write the novel after witnessing real militia groups become more prevalent in the U.S.
In October 2020, while he was working on the novel, a kidnapping plot similar to the one in his novel appeared. A group of 13 men plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in response to coronavirus pandemic restrictions.
“The rise of violent extremism in the last five or six years really caught my eye. I particularly paid attention to these militia groups,” Dean said. “Then the Gretchen Whitmer kidnap plot happened and I thought, ‘oh wow, that’s so similar to my novel.’ It became extremely relevant.”
Dean began writing novels in 2020 after a lengthy career as an investigative journalist and editor.
When he isn’t working on fiction, he can often be found investigating Astoria’s craft brewing scene, writing a column in Coast Weekend and running a new blog.
Being a novelist, Dean said, “is a huge change from being a journalist for newspapers … suddenly the pressure I feel is self-imposed,” Dean said. “Writing novels is so much more of a creative process than writing the news.”
Dean’s two other novels, “Dangerous Freedom” and “The Ghosts We Know,” are both inspired by real people. “Dangerous Freedom” is based on interviews he completed with a jailhouse lawyer. “The Ghosts We Know” is inspired by Dean’s father and his caregiver, both of whom served in World War II.
“My books are very character-driven,” Dean said. “You get to know the characters and really get in their heads.”
Though the characters in “Militia Men” are fictional, they are, like Dean’s previous novels, based on real people.
“The militia leader in the book is based on many leaders throughout the country. The young men are just pure imagination,” Dean said.
In reading about the plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor, one question circled through Dean’s mind: “What if they had succeeded? They talked about putting her on trial. What would that have looked like?”
To research for the novel, Dean visited militia chat group sites and watched videos of militia group meetings.
“I’m not afraid of research. I’m not afraid of interviewing people. I’m not afraid of a constructive critique,” Dean said. “The book reads as if it’s ripped off the headlines and of course I used to write those headlines, so it feels like a pretty good fit.”
Some of the dialogue in the novel came directly from conversations he had with people online.
“I was chatting with people, asking them questions like ‘why is this group needed? Why are you doing what you’re doing?’” Dean said. “It was very eye-opening.”
Another research focus for Dean was gun control addresses. He read about 20 speeches that had been presented in Congress and used them as inspiration for one he created for the novel.
Dean finished the book within a year. He started the book by creating a rough outline of the story, then starting his research.
“Because the book was so extremely timely, it provided extra wind in my sails. There was never a period where there were lulls. There wasn’t any downtime. It felt like the words were flowing from my fingertips seamlessly, it felt like magic,” Dean said. “I’d start in the morning and look back at midnight and have 70 pages. They weren’t great pages, but they were pages.”
Dean has now started working on his fourth novel. He describes it as “a radical departure” from “Militia Men.”