Tell us about Doha 12
From the back-cover copy:

Jake Eldar’s and Miriam Schaffer’s names may kill them.

Jake manages a bookstore in Brooklyn. Miriam is a secretary at a Philadelphia law firm. Both grew up in Israel and emigrated to build new lives in America. Neither knows the other exists…until the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad uses their identities in an operation to assassinate a high-ranking Hezbollah commander in Doha, Qatar.

Now Hezbollah plans to kill them both.

Jake, Miriam and ten other innocents in five countries – the Doha 12 – awake to find their identities stolen and their lives caught between Mossad and Hezbollah in an international game of murder and reprisal. Jake stumbles upon Hezbollah’s plot but can’t convince the police it exists. When his wife is murdered in a botched hit meant for him, Jake and Miriam try desperately to outrun and outfight their pursuers while shielding Jake’s young daughter from the killers on their trail.

Hezbollah, however, has a fallback plan: hundreds of people will die if Jake and Miriam survive.

Why does that sound familiar? Was there something in the news recently?
The plot is inspired by a real event: Mossad’s assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010. This incident became a media sensation when the hit squad ended up on video, posted to YouTube. The hit team used the identities and passports belonging to Israeli dual-nationality citizens. When I asked the what-if question — “What if Hamas went after the people whose identities were stolen?” — I knew I had a story.

You definitely do. What genre is it?
It’s a thriller, but it blazes its own trail off the beaten path. Jake and Miriam are equal partners; the Mossad agents aren’t stalwart supermen, nor are the Hezbollah agents nutcase Arab terrorists; the “good guys” do bad things, and the “bad guys” do good things; there are no secret global cabals trying to take over the world; and, the fate of the Earth doesn’t hang in the balance.

Yes, there are gunfights and chases and close escapes. However, I tried as much as possible to keep the people and events grounded in reality.  I also used settings that are fresh and perhaps unfamiliar, such as Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station and Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.

What kind of readers will it appeal to?
DOHA 12 will appeal to readers who like their action-espionage thrillers connected to a real, recognizable world, following a couple of reasonably normal people as they try to navigate safely through a series of extraordinary situations.

Complete this sentence for us: if you like _________________, you’ll love DOHA 12.
…Daniel Silva or early Jack Higgins…
…innocent-man tales…
…strong, self-reliant female characters…

Doha 12 sounds like a real rollercoaster ride.
I hope readers will have come to like Jake and Miriam enough to be sad to see them go, that they’ll be surprised who lived and who died, and that they’ll have mixed feelings about the fates of the Hezbollah characters.

Tell us a bit about yourself.
I’ve been an Air Force intelligence officer, information technology manager, computer-game artist, set designer, Jeopardy! contestant, and now an emergency management specialist. I’ve had training in architectural rendering, terrorist incident response and maritime archaeology, but not all at the same time. I’m a PADI rescue diver, Red Cross volunteer and former polo player.

Do you have a website where we can keep up with your work?
http://www.wombatgroup.com.

How can we follow you on Twitter and/or Facebook?
Twitter: @lcharnes
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lance-Charnes-Author/262358197219799

What’s next?
I’m working on SOUTH, a thriller set in the Southern California of 2032.

Can you tell us what it’s about?
After a future 9/11-type terrorist attack, 400,000 American Muslims have been forced into remote detention camps. Luis Ojeda is a part-time coyote for the Pacifico Norte cartel, leading escapees from the camps across the border to safety in Mexico. He thinks Nora Khaled is just another paycheck until he discovers she carries a secret that will blow apart the past fifteen years of American history and possibly derail the Presidential election.