Born Free is
a Rock & Roll Spy Novel

Written by Blair Van Nort

He’s the world’s biggest rock star. He’s also the CIA's most dangerous asset. But even a double life has a breaking point.

The Plot

What if the world's most famous rock star was also its most effective shadow asset? Born Free is a high-octane literary thriller that remixes the classic spy story with the chaos of rock stardom. It's a propulsive, voice-driven adventure - where every set is a cover and every performance could be your last.

Jackson Blue is the magnetic frontman of The Rassle, an indie-rock band on the cusp of global stardom. But the tour bus is more than a mobile after-party. It's the ultimate cover. Years ago, Jackson traded a prison sentence for his freedom, becoming a deep-cover operative for a shadow government agency. Now, as the band embarks on a massive world tour, his handlers have issued a high-stakes directive: use the band's global reach and elite connections to track a syndicate of corrupt financiers flooding the American heartland with synthetic opiates.

Zig-zagging between sound checks in Barcelona and sold-out sets in Berlin, Jackson navigates a life lived at two volumes. But when he falls for a magnetic French actress - who may be more entangled in the conspiracy than she appears, his two worlds collide with violent velocity. To protect her (and himself), Jackson must decide what he's willing to burn to the ground: a years-long mission, a hard-won musical legacy, or the freedom he thought he'd earned.

Written with the visceral musicality of Daisy Jones & the Six and the high-stakes intellectualism of Creation Lake, Born Free is a journey through the lawless margins of fame and international intrigue. It's a story about the delicate artistry of a musician whose public persona is his most dangerous cover and the complicated path of an artist who wants to create something so important it will live forever.

Inspired by

Jack Kerouac & James Bond, Mick Jagger & Jean Luc-Godard, Patti Smith & Tom Wolfe, Easy Rider & Oasis, Vonnegut & the Clash.

Born Free takes readers on a freewheeling, backstage adventure thru Europe.

Born Free shakes up the old spy genre and rattles it through the modern zeitgeist to create an explosive new sonic adventure.

The Author

My name is Blair Van Nort. I'm a Creative Director based in New York who has spent the last decade building brand worlds and campaigns for J.Crew, Away, and Harry's. This work taught me how to build compelling narratives and immersive identities - skills that translated surprisingly well to fiction.

Before that, I was deep in the New York indie-rock scene. After studying fiction and semiotics at The New School under Neil Gordon and McKenzie Wark, I spent my twenties as the frontman of a semi-successful rock band. We played legendary venues, recorded at famous studios, and I learned what it's like to live as two different people: the one who performs under the stage lights and the one who exists when they go out.

While my band found its way onto billboards & fashion magazines and our music was synced in TV shows & commercials, it was the "what if" of that life that stayed with me after the music began to fade. BORN FREE is my debut novel. It tells a glamorous and fantastical story that began as a daydream during one of those memorably hazy tours.

What if I wasn't just a rock & roller? What if I was also a spy on a secret mission to save the world?