Anna Pitoniak: On Writing a Female-Centric Spy Novel

November 15, 2023

Anna Pitoniak is the author of Our American Friend, Necessary People, and The Futures. Before becoming a full-time author, she worked in book publishing, including as a senior editor at Random House. Anna grew up in Whistler, British Columbia. She graduated from Yale, and lives in New York City. Follow her on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, and learn more at her website.

Photo by Andrew Batholomew

In this post, Anna discusses writing the book that as an editor she wanted to acquire with her new spy novel, The Helsinki Affair, her advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Anna Pitoniak
Literary agent: PJ Mark and Stefanie Lieberman, Janklow & Nesbit
Book title: The Helsinki Affair
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release date: November 14, 2023
Genre/category: Spy fiction
Previous titles: The Futures, Necessary People, Our American Friend
Elevator pitch: It’s the case of Amanda’s lifetime, but solving it will require her to betray another spy—who just so happens to be her father. The Helsinki Affair is a globe-trotting spy thriller perfect for fans of John Le Carré and Daniel Silva: but this time, the women are in charge.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I’ve been an avid reader of international spy fiction for many years. John Le Carré, Graham Greene, Alan Furst—I couldn’t get enough! But I also couldn’t help noticing that most of these books were written by men, and about men.

I badly wanted to find a female-centric version of Le Carre, a spy thriller with moral murkiness and elevated storytelling. In fact, when I worked as an editor at Random House (which I did before I turned to writing full-time), I always told literary agents that this was the kind of book I wanted to acquire!

Time went by and I never quite found that book. As I left publishing and turned to writing full-time, the itch remained unscratched. Eventually I thought, What was I waiting for? If I couldn’t find this book, why didn’t I try writing it myself?

The Helsinki Affair is my fourth novel, but it’s my first foray into bona-fide spy fiction. I wrote this book during the pandemic lockdown, and it was the perfect source of escape. I had so much fun writing it. Shortly before the pandemic, I had traveled to Russia and Finland. My mind was brimming with observations and ideas from that trip. Those were the seeds that ultimately evolved into The Helsinki Affair.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I first felt the nascent desire to write a spy thriller in late 2019. At that time, I was working on revisions to my previous novel, Our American Friend. That novel contained elements of spy fiction without being bona-fide spy fiction, but during the writing process, I realized that the spy parts were my favorite parts to write. I thought, I want my next book to have more of that.

In April 2020, revisions on Our American Friend were just about finished. Lockdown was a terrible time, of course, but a small silver lining was that I had a lot of time on my hands. I also felt a real “screw it” attitude. The world was ending, so why not write the book I always wanted to write?

I opened a new Word document and began writing a scene. It’s a hot summer day in Rome. A Russian defector walks into the American embassy and demands to speak with the person in charge. He warns that a prominent American politician is going to be assassinated the next day. No one takes his warning seriously—except for our heroine, the intrepid CIA officer Amanda Cole.

From there, it was off to the races. It took me just under two years, until February 2022, to finish The Helsinki Affair and sell it to my publisher. We spent another six months on revisions, wrapped up edits in August 2022, and slated it for publication in November 2023.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

This is my first time writing squarely within a genre. My earlier novels tended to blur different categories. A coming-of-age story meets a financial thriller (The Futures); psychological suspense meets a workplace drama (Necessary People); historical fiction meets a political thriller meets a spy thriller (Our American Friend). But The Helsinki Affair is 100 percent spy thriller.

This has made it a lot easier to talk about the book! I find that, when I share the pitch with people, they immediately grasp it. “John Le Carré but the women are in charge”—it’s very easy to understand. I actually find it quite freeing to exist within a genre, which I wasn’t necessarily expecting. It makes the whole process feel a little lighter, a little more fun.

People who love spy fiction tend to read a lot of spy fiction. Mainstream publicity is still important, but in publishing The Helsinki Affair, we’ve spent a lot more time thinking about how to target those specific readers. Which review outlets really matter? Which podcasts do they listen to? Which Substacks do they subscribe to? And so on.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

My approach to writing The Helsinki Affair was quite different from my first three novels. In those earlier novels, I began the writing process with an idea of what the central mystery or conflict would be: which character was going to betray another character, and how, and why. In other words, I knew where the story would end up, but I never knew where it would begin. I always struggled with the opening. I always struggled with making the story feel dynamic and exciting from page one.

With The Helsinki Affair, I had an idea for an opening scene, but I didn’t know where the story would go from there. I had no idea what tendrils might emerge from that scene, or where they would take me. But at this point, several books in, I had enough trust in myself as a writer to just go with it. To surrender that tight grip of control, and let the story take me wherever it wanted to take me.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

First and foremost, I hope they have fun reading The Helsinki Affair. I want the book to feel like a pleasurable, exciting, satisfying escape from reality.

But also: The women at the center of the story, Amanda Cole and her colleague Kath Frost, have chosen unconventional lives. They aren’t married, they don’t have children, they are fiercely ambitious. They have enormous hearts. They are tender and vulnerable and emotional. They care deeply about this world we live in. They are spiky and stubborn and, of course, they are flawed. I admire them so much.

I wrote Amanda and Kath the way I did because I want to be more like them. I fell in love these characters while writing this novel. I hope readers fall in love with them, too.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Just one piece?! Oh, God, I could spend my whole life answering this question.

But if I had to distill it down, I would say this. The way you are as a person is the way you are as a writer. Vice versa, too. Your writing practice will be a reflection of the rest of your life. If you are inherently disciplined, that will spill over into your writing. Ditto if you’re an inherent procrastinator. If you are driven by achievement and status, or if you don’t give two shits about what other people think; if you fall down rabbit holes, or if you flit around like a butterfly; if you are cool and analytical, or if you cry all the time; all of this shows up in your writing practice. Get to know yourself as a person. Understand who you are. Understand what makes you tick. Understand what motivates you. This will probably make your writing richer and more interesting, but it will also allow you to shape your writing practice in the way that you need to shape it. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to this conundrum of being a human, nor of being a writer. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

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