Sign up for episode highlights, outtakes, cheat sheets, reminders and much more!
Doug Norton's transition from a 25-year Navy career to writing the Code Word thriller series offers a master class in leveraging real-life experience to enhance fiction. As a former warship captain and international negotiator, Doug infuses his novels with authenticity that resonates with readers.
Doug Norton drew on both experience and research to pen the Code Word novels. As a warship captain during the cold war, Doug held launch codes for nuclear weapons and was prepared to use them, but he also participated in high-stakes international negotiations to reduce their numbers and the chance of nuclear war. In Geneva, Brussels, London, and Washington he experienced diplomacy and politics in tense meetings, glittering receptions, and deadline-driven all-nighters. A graduate of the Naval Academy and of the University of Washington, Doug was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and Director of International Studies at the Naval Academy.