From biotech labs to thrilling international adventures, Ken Peters has a story as compelling as the pages of his novels. With a background in international economics and biotechnology, he has traversed the globe, from third-world hospitals battling typhoid outbreaks to high-stakes meetings with Nobel-caliber scientists. These experiences shaped his unique perspective, fueling the intricate, high-stakes storytelling that defines his novels.
His latest work, The Seed Sanctuary, delves into the urgent challenges of food insecurity and climate change, blending scientific precision with edge-of-your-seat suspense. Drawing from years of observing global issues firsthand, Peters crafts stories that not only entertain but also illuminate critical questions about our shared future.
In this exclusive Q&A, we explore his fascinating journey from biotech executive to fiction writer, the global experiences that shape his work, and the deeper messages he hopes readers discover in his stories. Let's dive in.
What inspired you to transition from a career in international economics and biotechnology to becoming a novelist? How did your previous work inform your approach to storytelling?
There’s really nothing specific from my work inspiring me into writing these novels but rather life’s experiences. I got my PhD when the Vietnam war was on as I had a high lottery number so after completing it, I taught for a year at the University of Arizona and found myself bored with patch pockets on my sleeves and I was desirous to get a job in a multinational corporation and ended up with a division of Abbott diagnostics. They morphed into more biotech as diagnostic testing advanced. After joining I met several associates who were part of the international division and learned what it would take to go International to live overseas in various countries (what a fabulous life it was). Once I became a senior manager within the ranks I was often involved in investment project decisions. I asked lots of questions about biotechnology to understand what some scientists were often asking for corporate money. Traveling in third world countries where disease was rampant in my first assignments I became a voracious reader of all thriller novels to pass the time. I loved adventure as long as it was outside of the tourist zone. I think if I were able to start anew, I would have become a journalist. I love people, stories, situations, adventure and I became quite inventive in seeing things in a “what if” scenario, given what I knew about biotech and the diseases I was seeing in all of these poor countries. In the third world of the 80s & 90s TV and radio were not there. Imagine you’re waiting for planes and how the nose gear hits a pothole, whether Zambia, Suriname or any third world airport. Imagine leaving for the airport and there is a Coup. Imagine in Peru during the terrorist times (Fujimori), I missed the plane as I was leaving the Quonset hut as the pilot never shut off the engine. People disembarked, the little Peruvian kids, pulled the stairs up to the door and pulled it away in a minute. Imagine visiting hospitals where dogs ran through the halls and beds had nets and you’re there to assist with an Abbott local rep and there is typhoid or Dengue outbreaks or yellow fever and the rep says, “Don’t touch anything, use your elbows to push open doors”! I became a ferocious reader just killing time in places you would never have visited. I loved Follet, DeMille, Crichton, Grisham, Clancy. Tigner, Ludlum, gosh I could go on and on and even Mitchner became the writer who showed me, you have to bring history and context to a story! Even in Africa being in meeting with Fauci or others and listening to the issues of Tb and HIV, etc. After reading for a solid decade almost anything to pass the time, I began to say to myself, “Ken you could write this stuff and even better”! I knew my imagination was the key that could take readers with my life’s experiences to far better stories, places, adventure, history and more with my international experiences for settings and stories that as you read, you felt like you were there! I realized there were niches and being an Economist and all the biotech I had absorbed: how to split a double stranded DNA, Gel electrophoresis and within this decade CRISPER, etc. At conferences I’d meet people, even some who were Nobel Prize candidates in genetics. I love to ask questions and I absorb! After loving all of the novels I had been reading I felt Biotech was a niche no one was in and everyone was concerned about the future and life itself would find the stories fascinating.
What sparked the idea for The Seed Sanctuary? Was it inspired by specific global events or trends?
The obvious surrounding the world and it has been this way for a decade or more. Being an international person, I saw most Americans just simply didn’t get the plot, the politics, global financial situations were big preventives of people getting it. Just imagine 70% of Americans do not have passports. Being educated and around scientists, even if it wasn’t biotech, how can anyone miss the plot of what is happening to this earth. For me as an older person, well I won’t be around in 50 years but as a Professor I see how the youth are discussed among themselves. After retiring in 2010, eventually I was picked up to teach only foreign students, no Americans (currently FIU School of International Public Affairs). They’re from all around the world, from Kazakhstan to Italy, to Spain, Ukraine, Vietnam, all of Latin America and Asia. I’ve even taught three times as a guest lecturer at the University of Shanghai. Wow, the Asian tigers (meaning the next new world) and if you love people and love to hear stories, ask about people’s lives, where they come from and you have an imagination with economics and a biotech background (albeit a self-taught one), well, it’s an easy next step to write creatively.
The novel explores the consequences of food insecurity and climate change. Why did you choose these as central themes?
The obvious. Just look at how climate change has dried up rivers and reduced water, the poor have caused land erosion from deforestation, tribal farming life cannot survive, voila, migration! Look at what is going on in Europe with the north Africans. Jordans wells are drying up. Ecuador has been in such a drought that they have no electricity as the hydroelectric water dams don’t have enough water to produce electric power. When you combine my econ background and seeing from Ecuador to Africa to where productivity is down because there isn’t enough electricity to power the grid, the poor get poorer and things DO NOT GET BETTER for the world. Think of hospitals, sanitation, etc. I could go on and on with the logistics of disease because of lack of power or the deforestation of South America and SE Asian countries with new viruses and bringing viruses to other countries in the migration transitions. Young people do care about this and they are aware! Eight years at FIU and also in three terms in Shanghai, combined with all I’ve lived before and now, those in their 20s & 30s who are thinking of families are becoming very aware even if they do not watch TV, they see it through their news sources online!!
There can be a delicate balance between scientific accuracy and narrative momentum - how did you approach that challenge?
I approached it with reality yet in an enjoyable good story with characters that the reader can relate to, where people can see themselves and give the reader enough to show it's all very possible, not fantasy but a possible reality. My newest review from Book Virals in the UK awarded me 2024 a Best Ecology thriller (Golden Crimson Quill). Here’s an excerpt how they said it best “Peters invites the reader to imagine the consequences of failing crops and mass immigration to deliver an Espionage Ecology Thriller that’s not only refreshingly original and intelligent but resonates with haunting somberness. He appreciates readers today demand a higher level of scientific accuracy in the background of these stories and here The Seed Sanctuary doesn’t just provide a healthy dose of entertainment. It provides a stark reminder of our planet’s environmental challenges and a call to action to protect it”.
It’s all simply not that hard, especially thinking about the Covid crises. Nothing is too far from the possible realm”. The Seed Sanctuary was simply taking my experiences working underground in Israel (tunnels from hospitals to labs and back to hospitals) traveling with a Biotech former lab Mossad guy. I had lots of questions and created a hero who might just be able to save the world amidst a human life who needed more than adventure but a cause.
What would you like readers to take away from reading your book?
To read more and realize there are stories within stories. Values and most important that those who read this book will read more stories like this. Providing enjoyment, history and a perspective on how important it is to be informed.
You've authored other books; can you tell us a bit about those?
My word, how much space is there? Can I offer up here simply the story summaries with a short addon?
Off Shore - It’s 1985 and the United States is supporting Saddam Hussain in an attempt to defeat Ayatollah Khomeini. Using Viral weapons supplied to Saddam by the CIA, a water-borne virus is launched into an Iranian desalination filtration center at Iran’s Port of Chabahar on the Sea of Oman. I got this quickly as I saw how the Americans and Bush didn’t get the plot of invading Saddam when Saddam was once your enemies’ enemy. Why would you interrupt his battle with Iran when we needed Iran to be occupied with its own issues?
The Cure – It’s a novel about biological espionage. A sinister group of former European colonialists attempts to alter an HIV vaccine that will result in massive deaths throughout Africa. They hire a group who thinks it's commercial espionage but it’s not! Everyone is picked off on the team one by one and then he finds his brakes cut one day (he is the DNA specialist & protagonist). He goes on the run trying to tell the world the vaccine is contaminated when he realizes the DNA sequence was inaccurate while working at a laboratory while staying with his former university roommate spending time in Amsterdam. In this lab he realizes he had inadvertently tainted the vaccine and he tries to alert the world while staying underground. This story is a favorite of mine. I got the idea from listening in meetings with Dr. Fauci and Dr. Besser discussing a HIV vaccine.
Cuba’s Nuclear Pinata – This came from a few weeks working in Cuba while assisting equipment installations. I always wanted to visit Cuba and this equipment we had shipped out of Venezuela and I got a visa citing they needed my technical expertise because these were Abbott clinical chemistry analyzers and I was the general Manager for Abbott in Venezuela. We had three minders around us all of the time and I had to sneak about and then the What If story simply emerged. The story is set in 1992 and Clinton has ascended the Presidency, the Cold War is over, and the West is offering aid for democratization and the dismantling of former Soviet nuclear arsenals. Fidel Castro is left in the lurch with his former Soviet benefactors now bankrupt (USSR breakup), and Castro has one last ploy to bring the West to him. The Protagonist set up by a dark US agency where they use Biotech as a false flag to convince Castro they would improve their crops for exports (got the idea from the genetic Flavor Savor tomatoes) to make them financially solvent while a dark Op comes in to disarm the nuclear warheads that Castro has hidden.
The Hajj Intercept – This was a combination of people I knew from descendants of the Holocaust to Wall Street VC people, to more time in Israel with the lab associate of mine who knew about the Marberg Virus (the Book calls it the Delta virus) and a time I spent in Syria before it all went upside down there. My Mossad lab associate explained it all to me and how a similar Marberg virus is to Ebola but it could be could be disbursed in an aerosol form. It's set to two Israeli Mossad agents, inseparable friends from childhood to soldiers in the IDF. Their lives change one day as a Katusha Rocket lands on one of their homes killing his wife and daughters. Lifelong friends are now changed as one plots revenge for those who took his family, while the other becomes the hunter of his best friend to stop the Viral Pathogen being disbursed at the Hajj. BTW, at times I cried while typing during the Hajj. That was a first. Often when I write you do get lost and then you wake up and it's 1:00 AM.
How do you see The Seed Sanctuary as either building on or departing from your previous work?
It will go to the third book, The Red Sea Rendition, a befitting end to the characters and the saga.
Do you have any upcoming books in the works?
The Red Sea Rendition – this will be the third in a trilogy: The Hajj, The Seed Sanctuary & The Red Sea Rendition. No more series unless a publisher wants them. There is too much I’d like to write on other experiences I can bring to life. This story is set in the future, post October 7th. All of the Arab countries surrounding the Red Sea are desperate for water (do a reality check on the rivers...Nile, et al drying up and Jordans and Egypt’s current well water situation). The Israelis are the Pariah of the world (no news here) and a new political party takes power in Israel. Given the Israeli’s and their inventive technologies they propose a plan to build a huge desalination facility to supply fresh water to all of the countries surrounding the Red Sea, (6 of them). The Arab nations are forced to work with the Israelis but then near completion there is bacteria placed into the system by a terrorist group who is not very happy with the changes in the Middle East and most significant PEACE (I introduce a final 2 state solution). It has currently 18 chapters, I’ve written much of it but things change as a writer writes. As an example, when I was finishing the Hajj, the story towards the end was becoming too linear (the reader knew what & where it was going). I was at the gym on an elliptical racking my brains out trying to change the linearity that had developed, and suddenly, I do not know why it came to me. I was able to have the story take a right turn that the reader wouldn’t have thought of unless they had written the story from the beginning.
Did writing The Seed Sanctuary influence your current projects?
Yes. Climate change and the politics changing in this changing world (national popularists rising worldwide). The results of climate change and migration will bring more disaster, economies shattered, and new medical diseases to the world. I hope the Red Sea Rendition will send a further message through a great story of a very possible peace for the Middle East and a return to normalcy among the world.
For more information please visit: authorkenpeters.com