HELLO!
This section of the site is for readers who are curious about my life. I’ll try to answer some of the questions I’ve been asked during the last few years.
I was born in the United States, but I have lived and worked all over the world. I’m not a Native American. As stated in a variety of interviews, I created my author name after an encounter with twelve red tail hawks defending their nesting site. I’m a Buddhist who has meditated for most of my adult life.
I’m not a recluse living in a mountain hideaway. I’m a fairly restless person with friends all over the world. Right now, I spend time in New York City, Paris and rural Ireland.
For a time, I worked in a country suffering from a genocidal civil war. As the situation deteriorated, I routinely was threatened with execution and had daily encounters with death. I survived, but the experience transformed me.
A year after Spark was published, I ended up in the hospital with sepsis, a life-threatening infection of my abdominal cavity. I almost died.
Various bloggers have decided that I’m a famous person who is writing under another name. None of these theories are correct, and they are usually invented by people who have never read my books.
When The Golden City was published, I encouraged readers to “be me” for an evening. People all over the world organized “I am John Twelve Hawks” events and many of the videos are still up on YouTube.
The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group has acquired North American rights to my new novel, Certainty.
Readers with specific questions can ask me via my verified Facebook page.
Best,
John Twelve Hawks
MY IDENTITY…AND YOURS.
When a person speculates about my identity, it reveals something about their own background and preferences. If the canvas is blank; the only thing people can see on its surface is themselves.
Q: What fiction inspired your writing?
JTH: During one period of my life, I lived with friends in a large run-down house next to a large university. I was sleeping on the floor in what had once been the maid’s room. Every morning I would go to the university library, “steal” a novel from the shelves, and read the entire book. The next day, I would replace the novel and take another one. Gradually, I worked my way through the British and American canon of literature, although I encountered the books as an autodidactic and not as a student in a lecture hall.
Q: Your novel is incredibly detailed and seemingly very well researched. How much and what kind of background reading did you do in preparation for writing The Traveler.
JTH: Generally the “real life” aspects of the book – such as Maya’s vision of London – are based on personal experiences. I was obsessed with surveillance and our loss of privacy many years before I began to write the novel. But the real turning point occurred on a summer afternoon when I was sitting in the back of a stalled power boat on a New England lake. Suddenly, I knew with total certainty that there were other levels of reality beneath the familiar reality that surrounds us.
WRITING THE TRAVELER.
Writing the The Traveler was a harrowing experience. Only a few people knew that I was writing the book. Whenever I read a newspaper, it seem obvious that people all over the world were being monitored, tracked and manipulated by those in power. A year after The Traveler was published, I gave away my home and most of my possessions. For awhile, I tried to follow the “rule of one” — owning only one chair, one bed, one cooking pot, etc.
If anyone reading this is going through a similar period of despair, I extend my hand to you. This one moment does not define who you are.
Q: WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO CONCEAL YOUR IDENTITY?
The Fourth Realm Trilogy predicted the destruction of privacy in the digital world. I thought that it was hypocritical for a writer to condemn our surveillance culture and then appear on television, revealing personal details. Your strongest beliefs have to be expressed by your actions.
Q: DOES YOUR MOTHER KNOW THAT YOU ARE A WRITER?
JTH: I never told my mother about the novels. Her love wasn’t conditional on my achievements in life. Those people I know who aren’t close friends see me as a failure by the American standards of success. Being a “failure” in such a way has been a continual lesson. It’s helped me realize that we make quick judgments of others based on little real information. We assume so much – but don’t know the secrets held within the heart.
Q: Have you ever “overheard” a conversation on your book, or a pen name (either online, in print, or in the bookstore) and kind of laugh or smile because they have no idea? What is your general reaction to that kind of situation?
JTH: One evening, I was riding on the New York subway and saw that a young woman was reading the paperback version of The Traveler.
That evening I had just met my agent and picked up the Danish and Chinese translations of the novel. I could have “proved” that I was John Hawks.
So I leaned forward and said: “So, ahhh, what do you think of that novel?”
The young woman looked up at me and I saw what she was thinking: “This badly dressed man is trying to pick me up on the subway. What a creep!”
She said: “I really like it.” And immediately started reading again.
When I got off the train, I sat down on a bench. I smiled and then started laughing at my own vanity and foolishness.