I.
Announcements:
Heresy Press to publish Misadventures on K Street by K. Riva Levinson
Heresy Press proudly announces the acquisition of Misadventures on K Street: My Decade with the Architects of Modern Political Scandal, the highly anticipated second book by globally recognized political strategist and international field operative K. Riva Levinson. Scheduled for hardcover release on February 16, 2027, the book serves as the raw, unfiltered prequel to Levinson’s critically acclaimed first memoir, Choosing the Hero.
Embedded for a decade with the high-powered Washington lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, Levinson recounts the firm’s trajectory from its rise in 1985 to its shuttering a decade later. At 24 years old, she found herself as the lone woman in the room at an enterprise that functioned as a privatized, rogue Department of State. While her partners pulled strings from their offices overlooking the Potomac, Levinson was on the front lines, navigating real-world danger across the proxy wars of the Reagan era.
Moving seamlessly between the boardrooms of Washington, D.C., and hostile environments overseas, the narrative discloses, with original archival detail, hazardous foreign missions spanning Angola, South Africa, Somalia, Pakistan, Indian-occupied Kashmir, Nicaragua, and Sri Lanka. The book lays bare the ethical compromises, covert operations, and political theater that fundamentally reshaped United States foreign policy, with lasting international ramifications that persist today.
Intertwined with these geopolitical stakes are deeply personal arcs detailing sexual harassment, abandonment, love, and motherhood. The text illustrates how raw ambition and idealism clashed directly with systematic corruption, personal danger, and ultimate betrayal.
Levinson’s career has been described by some as a “Forrest Gump-like” journey, placing her at center of historical events. Others remained convinced she was a spy. After her tenure on K Street, she went on to found her own strategic advisory and government relations firm, KRL International. Her first book, Choosing the Hero—which chronicles her two decades of work advising Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first democratically elected female president—is being republished for its 10th anniversary this year.
According to Heresy Press Director Bernard Schweizer, “I knew I had something special in my hands as soon as I started reading the manuscript for MISADVENTURES ON K STREET. Riva’s book is uncompromising in its truth-telling, risk-taking, and boundary pushing. The manuscript grabbed me by the proverbial lapels from start to finish…and the rest is history.”
On August 12, 2026, Bloomberg Government ran an extended article titled “Manafort Mentee Reveals K Street ‘Misadventures’ in new Memoir” about Levinson’s journey from making her experiences on K Street, to writing the book, and finally to having it acquired by Heresy Press.
Early Praise for Misadventures on K Street
“Misadventures on K Street is a compelling read and an invaluable look at the mechanics of political power in D.C. during the late Cold War era, told with the candor and integrity that have defined Riva’s career.” — Chris Coons, U.S. Senator
“In Misadventures on K Street, Levinson does for the dark art of lobbying what I sought to do for The Wolves of K Street—she exposes the high-stakes machinery of power with unflinching detail… Riva is the ultimate witness.” — Brody Mullins, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter
“A story of grit, the complexity of power, and a life spent proving that loyalty is the most powerful currency in diplomacy.” — Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Former U.S. Representative to the United Nations
“An engaging account of the strange intersection of Washington lobbying, Cold War geopolitics, and the outsized personalities who shaped both… An illuminating and often surprising memoir.” — Jeff Flake, Former U.S. Senator and U.S. Ambassador to Turkey
“A uniquely thrilling, cinematic journey that follows a woman daring enough to navigate the high-testosterone world of the 1980s… A crazier-than-fiction account of power, risk, and the woman who survived it all.” — Blye Faust, Academy Award-winning producer of Spotlight.
“As in her riveting first memoir, Choosing the Hero, Riva’s emotional truth fills every page of Misadventures on K Street. She once again inspires readers—particularly women—to trust their intuition, cultivate their potential, and never compromise their integrity. As a friend of forty years and BCIU president for thirty, I have watched Riva embody Emerson’s ideal of self-reliance: ‘Insist on yourself; never imitate.’ With determination and courage, she refuses to succumb to the hubris that defines so many of the difficult personalities she has navigated in this important book.”
— Peter Tichansky, President, Business Council for International Understanding (BCIU)
→ Publication date: February 16, 2027
→ Misadventures on K Street is available for pre-order now.
In time for the Midterm Elections, Heresy Press will release a potentially era-defining book titled Culture of Confusion: Inside the Riots Reshaping Our Politics by Jeremy Lee Quinn
This is the book we’ve all been waiting for, as we try to understand the rising tide of political violence in this country.
Over five years of on-the-ground reporting across the United States, Jeremy Lee Quinn examines how contemporary riot culture reshaped American politics from 2020–2026. Drawing on his own experiences, eyewitness livestreams, interviews, and case studies, he explores how mob psychology, decentralized militant tactics—including “black bloc” and the viral proliferation of “diversity of tactics”—transformed some protest movements into sustained cycles of violence via social media.
Quinn traces parallel radicalization on the left and right, from Minneapolis, Portland, Kenosha, Santa Monica, San Francisco, and Los Angeles to the events of January 6, documenting incidents of arson, targeted assaults, and political vigilantism. He dives deep into the Sonoma pig’s-head episode, the Los Angeles WiSpa riots and the recurring Proud Boys/Antifa clashes in the Pacific Northwest.
Such militant escalation influenced elections, weakened public trust in dominant narratives, and left institutions struggling to confront political violence consistently. Quinn calls for a clearer, less partisan accounting of political militancy and its consequences for civic life.
Jeremy Lee Quinn has spent more than two decades in television news, working in the New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Hawaii markets, both on air and behind the camera. In 2020, as an independent journalist, Quinn began investigating riot tactics and cultural polarization across the U.S. Culture of Confusion is the culmination of six years of immersive research. During those six years, Quinn wrote for Los Angeles Magazine, Newsweek Opinion, and Spiked UK. A 2024 Edward R. Murrow Award winner for his coverage of the Lahaina fire, he was also nominated for a regional Emmy for his reporting on the aftermath of the Maui wildfires. Quinn was on the ground to document the Palisades fire in 2025. In 2026, a news piece he shot for NBC Los Angeles in the aftermath of the wildfire in Altadena earned multiple Golden Mike Awards from the Radio and Television News Association of Southern California.
Early praise for Culture of Confusion
“Culture of Confusion rips through media bias and the ideological rigidity of the right and left.” — Michael Caputo, Hawaii Fire Captain
“Jeremy Lee Quinn occupies the increasingly lonely ground where evidence matters more than allegiance. In a moment when much of journalism has retreated into the comfort of the like-minded, Quinn did the harder thing: went out, looked closely at political violence, and reported what was actually there. This book is the record of that work — and of the professional cost of doing it.” — Nadine Strossen, past president of the American Civil Liberties Union, Senior Fellow at FIRE, and co-author of The War on Words
“Grounded in gritty, street-level journalism, Jeremy Lee Quinn fearlessly scrutinizes extremist violence across the entire political spectrum. By resisting rigid purity politics and defending the uncomfortable necessity of free speech, this book embodies the true definition of modern intellectual heresy.” — Dr. Nafees Alam, Senior director of policy and research at the Institute for Liberal Values
“This kind of journalism—patient, dangerous, unaligned, and deeply human—has largely been pushed aside in favor of ideology and narrative safety. Quinn writes like a surgeon with a scalpel, intent on understanding the story from the inside out.”— Adam Weber, Media Technology Developer
→ Publication date: October 27, 2026
→ Pre-order Culture of Confusion here.
II.
News
“Raunchy, obnoxious, and often childish. In other words, I loved it.”
— Lionel Shriver, Orange Prize-winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin and A Better Life
→ Pre-order Porn Again here.
Several favorable book reviews of Heresy Press titles have just come out
• John Julius Reel maintains a remarkably fresh and provocative book reviewing Substack named “Book Rants.” Watch the video of his enthusiastic review of Nothing Sacred: Outspoken Voices in Contemporary Fiction here.
→ Nothing Sacred: Outspoken Voices in Contemporary Fiction can be purchased here.
Deadpan by Richard Walter receives a rave review in The Los Angeles Review of Books.
Excerpt:
The book’s main engine is comic disorientation. Walter writes the opening as a manic backstage farce, all fanfares, shouted instructions, mistaken identity, and rising humiliation. That energy works. So does the visual contrast between Dwight’s ordinary dealership life and this bright, theatrical, cocaine-adjacent showbiz nightmare. The satire is clearly aimed at bigotry, especially the casual antisemitism Dwight carries with him into this new reality, and the novel’s weirdest trick is forcing him to inhabit the identity he is least prepared to understand. That gives the premise bite.
→ Read the complete review here.
→ Buy your copy of Deadpan, Richard Walter’s comical masterpiece.
Max Watman’s novel Tomorrow the War is given high praise in a brilliant book review.
Excerpt:
Jed, Raleigh, and Temple are developed with depth and texture, and many supporting characters are given point of view turns that, taken together, propel the story forward with increasing fury. The author does a great job of contrasting certain character archetypes: the entitled Southern planter class, Southern Blacks before the Civil War, outlaws, educated Northerners with abolitionist tendencies, Indigenous people of the American West, and Indian fighters. Settings are rendered with immersive period detail. Prose is crisp and teeming with social commentary contemporary to the period, bringing to mind Boston Teran’s terrific 19th– century historical novel, Crippled Jack. A great addition to novels that explore social tensions leading to the Civil War.
→ Read the complete review here.
→ Tomorrow the War is on sale here.
The Czech translation of The War on Words by Greg Lukianoff and Nadine Strossen is about to be launched
Cover reveal:
We salute our colleagues at Institute H21 for their principled defense of free speech and their fight against censorship!
→ To order a copy of The War On Words (in English), follow this link.
Heresy Press director Bernard Schweizer will be guest on a webinar hosted by the MIT Free Speech alliance
→ Sign up for the MIT Free Speech Alliance webinar here.
III.
How AI scams target both authors AND publishers
By Bernard Schweizer
If you are an author, especially a published one, you’ve probably been receiving quite a few emails lately that are so well-informed, elegantly crafted, and seemingly sincere—praising your work to the skies—that you can’t help but feel the blush of self-satisfaction descend upon you while reading them. Claiming to be written by book marketing professionals, these emails give you an intelligent and downright edifying reading of your own work, and they promise you great outcomes in terms of finding a publisher, getting your work in front of large audiences, and rising your overall authorial profile.
The only problem with all this is that such messages are AI generated, originating anywhere from Nigeria or the Philippines to Russia or wherever. The “authors” of these extremely flattering and comprehensive digests of your work have one thing in common—they will never let you see them or talk to them in a video chat. If you’re ever tempted by one of those siren songs, just ask to have a video chat with them, and that will likely be the end of it. The email sender will have every possible reason why it’s “company policy” or any other evasive answer why you can’t see their faces.
The real reason for such evasiveness is, of course, that these wannabe publicists are faceless algorithms. Beyond writing flattering and comprehensive analyses of your work, these AI actors possesses no marketable skills or real industry knowledge. They certainly won’t get you a book contract with a reputed publisher or put books into the hands of actual readers.
The Author’s Guild is aware of these scams and has quite a bit to say about this trap that many authors fall into. What the Author’s Guild hasn’t mentioned, though, is the frequency with which small publishers are also targeted by such schemes. Heresy Press is on the receiving end of many such AI-driven campaigns. Every week I receive multiple emails that promise to bring my authors’ titles to a large audience and to drive peak sales. These unsolicited messages usually contain a sentence such as this:
“I recently came across Axe: Stories That Cut Deep, and I want to be straightforward with you…”
Ironically, the emphasis on being “honest,” “straightforward,” or “transparent” is one of the tell-tale signs that I’m dealing with a machine-generated form of solicitation.
Another recent email, from a different sender, has this opening sentence:
“I recently came across Axe: Stories That Cut Deep, and I was immediately drawn to its remarkable collection of contemporary short fiction from such an accomplished group of writers.”
The opening phrase “…I recently came across…” is perhaps the most direct symptom that you are dealing with an AI bot.
Another giveaway is that AI tends to regurgitate your own language. Here’s an example:
“The specific thing that stayed with me was the variety of approaches within the same theme. Joyce Carol Oates revealing the dark roots of genius, Sherman Alexie charting a Native scholar’s mystical return, Bradford Morrow turning inheritance into horror, Lionel Shriver and David Sedaris skewering modern taboos, and Chuck Palahniuk exposing the dark side of child sex trafficking.”
Never mind that these are the exact sentences that I used in the official book description (aka back cover copy), yet they were not put in quotation marks but presented as if they were the presumed book publicist’s own creation.
Because the messages can seem so incredibly well tailored and sincere, many people do fall for the schemes (and I have myself come close to it). I once commissioned one of these services to produce a book trailer, but the outcome—after weeks of “being in production”—was something so laughable, it could have been an entry in a comedy competition. Of course, everyone only falls for this sort of thing exactly once. Afterward, one is forever inured against this game. I now tend to ignore these scammy messages.
But a recent email still caught my attention: I received a flattering, well-crafted analysis of Nothing Sacred—Heresy Press’s first published book—by none other than the great Thomas Pynchon! The lengthy email started with the customary phrase “I recently spent time with Nothing Sacred: Outspoken Voices in Contemporary Fiction, and I was…” etc. Then came the usual reasoned encomium and information-rich flattery in the common AI parlance. In contrast to other similar phishing emails, though, there was no apparent hook or money ask. So, I decided to fight fire with fire, using AI to compose a reply to the AI-avatar of Thomas Pynchon. The response didn’t take long—another gushing email from Thomas Pynchon! Oddly, though, there still was no request for money or a pay-to-play scheme attached to it. I replied again, using AI. Then silence…
As of now, I’m still waiting for that financial pitch from Thomas Pynchon. Who knows, maybe the AI actor deduced that it had paired it up with another AI bot and decided the game wasn’t worth the candle. The other possibility is that I had been dealing with the real Thomas Pynchon—admittedly a vanishingly small chance, but not exactly nil. That’s how AI is subtly toying with our minds, making us suspicious of anything that seems too good to be true, even if maybe it isn’t.
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