Who is Ava Glass?

There are some wild stories out there…

The Traitor has been getting a lot of press lately, and I’m grateful for all the attention. It’s incredibly hard to get press for books, so I know just how lucky I am. That said, in the last few weeks I’ve seen myself described as MI5, MI6, a trainer of spies, and a spy myself, which makes me sound amazing! Except it’s not true. So I’m here to debunk some of my own press.

First: Ava Glass is a pseudonym. It is entirely made up. I am Ava Glass, but my name is not Ava Glass. I love the mystery of that but, to be honest, it’s easy enough to find out my real name with a bit of creative googling, and I’ll leave that to you.

Second: I never worked for MI5 or MI6. I worked for the Home Office, the British government department that covers police, security, and counter-terrorism. I was there for five years. I was not a spy. I was a communications specialist, with a focus on counter-terrorism communications. My job was to communicate with and about spying. Basically, I was there to try and explain to the public what the counter-terrorism units were doing. Except the counter-terrorism specialists did not want me to tell anyone what they were up to. Which put me, as you can imagine, in a tricky position.

During those years, I worked with people I believe to be spies. I say that because the very fact that someone is or is not a spy is a state secret. They could not legally tell me they were spies. So I could never be absolutely certain which people I worked with were or were not spies, but as with many things in that world, sometimes it was clear. Other times, it was a bit hazier. Intelligence, in my experience, is a hall of mirrors, where nothing is what it seems.

When I talk about this time I am always careful not to reveal any national secrets. But the fact that I worked there, and the work I did – that was not secret. Anything I know that I believe to be a secret I will never talk about or write about. There are no secrets in my novels. I am much more careful than perhaps it seems.

I take all of that extremely seriously. Which is why I don’t want anyone to think that I am personally telling people I worked for any agency except the Home Office. I know it’s confusing having so many spy agencies around, but here on this page, I want to make it very clear, I never worked for MI5 or MI6. I worked with people from the two spy agencies, but I never worked for those agencies.

I am fully aware that writing this will probably make everyone believe I was definitely a spy, but let this stand as the record: I was not.

Ava x