Robert S. Stokes

I started writing when i was in grade school, and majored in journalism when I entered the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. After a stint in US Army Intelligence in Europe, I took an overseas out and freelanced for magazines and newspapers in West Germany. I returned to the U.S. in l966 and was hired by the Associated Press in Boston and later Providence, R.I. Later that year, I bought a one way ticket to Saigon to cover the war there. I was later hired by Newsweek magazine.

From Saigon I went to Chicago where I covered the Chicago 7 trial of radicals involved in the riots at the Democratic National Convention. Two years later I was hired by Life Magazine as an associate editor. While there I covered the Attica Prison riot.

I continued to work for various newspapers including the Asbury Park Press (NJ) where I won several writing and reportng awards. I wrote and sold my first novel -- "Walking Wounded" in l980 to Dell. I was then co-author with Martin Kaiser, of the memoir, "Odyssey of an Eavesdropper" in 2006, published by Carroll & Graf Publishing Co. During the l980s I wrote a play called "A Place Called Heartbreak" which was produced at the Clurman Theater off-Broadway. In 2010 I publshed my first collection of poetry entitled, "Light From a Different Angle".

My novel, "A Good Death" was four years in the writing. I am currently writing a novel about the cold war in the l960s in Europe and how U.S. intelligence was seen as an oxymoron by our allies.

I have just finished a new novel that illuminates a legend from the Vietnam war.

It involves two special operations soldiers who are captured and begin fighting for the enemy. The plot takes off when one of the soldiers sends a secret note to a reporter that he knew during the war. The soldier says he is ready to expose the closest held secret of the Vietnam War -- what happened to the 200 POWs who were never released. The reporter returns to Vietnam to try and rescue the soldier still held in North Vietnam while dealing with his own ghosts of that war.

Stay tuned.