John Twelve Hawks

John Twelve Hawks is the pen name of an author who has published four novels and one short non-fiction book. His true identity remains undisclosed. His debut novel, The Traveler, launched the Fourth Realm Trilogy, which includes The Dark River and The Golden City. This trilogy achieved significant international success, translated into 25 languages and selling over 1.5 million copies. Five years after the trilogy's conclusion, Hawks released a fourth novel, Spark, followed by the non-fiction eBook Against Authority.

Born in the United States and raised in the 1950s, Hawks identifies as a Buddhist with a lifelong meditation practice. He has stated he is not of Native American descent. His past includes experiences in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall and living in a commune. He has expressed a deliberate choice to avoid public exposure of his identity, citing personal and political motivations for using a pseudonym, inspired partly by George Orwell's transformation. He has also mentioned writing The Traveler after a personal crisis and has expressed a preference for a simple lifestyle, reportedly driving an old car and not owning a television.

The author's initial success came with the dystopian Fourth Realm Trilogy, comprising The Traveler, The Dark River, and The Golden City. This series was translated into numerous languages and achieved substantial sales. Following the trilogy, Hawks published Spark, a novel narrated by Jacob Underwood, an assassin grappling with Cotard delusion who evolves emotionally when tasked with finding a runaway employee. Reviews highlighted Hawks's prose as matching the bleak, controlled atmosphere of his settings, with Spark noted for its grounded, contemporary feel and compelling protagonist. Film rights for Spark were acquired by DreamWorks.

The non-fiction work Against Authority, dedicated to Thomas Pynchon, explores the rise of surveillance states and their impact on personal freedom. Hawks recounts childhood neurological experiments and discusses how post-9/11 responses, such as the Patriot Act and widespread CCTV, have eroded privacy. He critiques mass surveillance, tracing its development through programs like DARPA's Total Information Awareness and its expansion by agencies like the NSA. The book argues that surveillance technology serves as a tool for social and commercial control, advocating for a strategy of 'parallel lives' to maintain privacy in the digital age.

John Twelve Hawks adopted his pseudonym for both personal and political reasons. He felt a significant shift in his identity while writing The Traveler, likening his name change to George Orwell's liberation from his past. A key motivation was the perceived hypocrisy of discussing privacy concerns on public platforms while revealing his own life. The name 'Twelve Hawks' itself originates from a purported encounter in a forest where twelve hawks circled him closely. He has expressed a desire to remain anonymous, viewing his 'failure' by conventional standards as a lesson in understanding human judgment and hidden truths.

“My mother and the rest of my family don’t know that I have written the novels. Those people I know who aren’t close friends see me as a failure by the American standards of success. Being a “failure” in such a way has been a continual lesson. It’s helped me realize that we make quick judgments of others based on little real information. We assume so much – but don’t know the secrets held within the heart.”

“For the first drafts of the book, I kept my birth name off the title page. The old me wasn’t writing this book. Something was different. Something had changed. I had always admired George Orwell, and had read his collected essays and letters countless times. When Eric Blair became Orwell, he was set free, liberated from his Eton education and colonial policeman past. And there was another factor about the title page that troubled me. I was telling my readers that this new system of information technology was going to destroy our privacy, and that they should resist this change. It seemed hypocritical to go on a book tour or appear on a talk show blabbing about my life when our private lives were under attack.”

“The real story is this …I was walking through a forest and encountered a hawk nesting area. Twelve hawks circled around my head for about ten minutes …so close that the tip of their wings brushed the side of my head. That was why I picked the name. REAL hawks. Not symbolic ones.”