How John Schachnovsky Turned a Career of International Crime-Fighting into Beyond the Badge

A Hollywood Career That Actually Happened

His dad had spent a career in government service—first as a police officer, then at a national security agency—so when the U.S. Border Patrol started hiring after a federal job freeze, John applied “literally having no idea where or what it was.”

That “fallback” turned into a 26-year career:

• U.S. Border Patrol in Douglas, Arizona
• FBI Special Agent in San Francisco (narcotics, then white-collar crime)
• Eventually, Assistant Legal Attaché and then Legal Attaché in Bangkok

In the U.S., John focused on one squad at a time. In Bangkok, he touched hundreds of different violations.

One of the tentpole stories in the book begins with a simple fake passport, escalates to a house search and a shooting, and ends with Thai police opening a freezer full of dismembered body parts. John’s job: figure out who pulled the trigger—and who was in the bags.

These weren’t movie pitches. They were the stories he told over beers after rec-league hockey games.

That’s when the chorus began: “You’ve got to write a book.” Eventually, he met their demands and published Beyond the Badge: Crime, Justice, and the FBI in Thailand 

“I Realized Very Quickly: I Cannot Do This on My Own”

John never saw himself as a writer.

“I was never a big writer in school,” he says. “I had the stories, I could talk. But putting it on paper was something else.”

During COVID, with Thailand effectively shut down, he finally sat down to try. The reality hit fast:

• Writing straight chronologically (Border Patrol to the FBI Academy to San Francisco to Bangkok) produced…a grand total of 30 pages.
• He had no clear structure to blend memoir, case stories, and an explanation of what the FBI actually does overseas.
• As a former agent, he had to navigate FBI pre-publication review: no open cases, no classified material, no sensitive sources or methods.

He started googling for help.

Finding Structure through Scribe

From Bangkok, John did what he’d done his whole career: research and interviews.

He found several publishing services online, then got on Zoom with each. What stood out about Scribe was:

• Clarity: A step-by-step process he could actually understand
• Transparency: A contract written in plain English
• Tone: “We talked to you like you had no idea what you were doing—and that was okay.”

Together, we helped him:

• Capture his stories through structured conversations
• Decide what could and couldn’t be shared within FBI guardrails
• Build a simple, repeatable chapter model

1. Explain what the FBI does in a specific area overseas (counterterrorism, fugitives, white-collar crime, etc.).
2. Then walk the reader through a real case John worked in that category.

What emerged was a “true crime memoir”—not a single unsolved case stretched across 300 pages, and not a straight autobiography, but a hybrid that reflects his real life in the field.

Reliving a Career—and Holding the Finished Book

Writing forced John to do something he’d never really done: look back.

Agents usually move from case to case without much reflection. The book made him revisit high-stakes moments and appreciate the impact of work he’d mostly just filed away.

“I was able to go back and think, ‘That was a cool case. We did some good on that one,’” he says. “You don’t say that to yourself at the time.”

The moment that still stands out the most, though, is simple:

“Getting the book in my hands was the coolest thing ever,” he says. “I’m really, really happy with how it turned out.”

So happy that he’s already thinking about a second book—something he admits would never be on the table if the process had been miserable.

John’s Advice to People Who “Might Have a Book in Them”

His advice:

• Just start. “Get something on paper,” he says. “For me, it was ten bullet points of cases I wanted to cover. Once you have bones, it’s less daunting.”
• Avoid the blank page. Talk your story out, work from transcripts, use an outline—turn it into a game of filling in the blanks, not inventing everything from scratch.
• Get help. “If there’s even a twinkle in your eye that you want to write a book, do it,” he says. “And don’t be afraid to get assistance. I did, and it made all the difference.”
• Expect the process itself to change you. The reflection, the reliving, the sense of closure—those are part of the reward, not just the printed book.