VIRTUAL VICE by Jason M. Kays

The book’s genre is creative non-fiction: it is 85% factual. It was inspired by my representation as a lawyer of a most unpleasant client over an eighteen month period. The book examines the making of this career criminal — his professional history and evolvement. In short, Virtual Vice follows the rise and demise of a sociopath, portrayed in the book as Scott White, who transitioned from the organized crime of the Cali Cartel to the organized crime of Wall Street. The book’s protagonist is based upon a real life confidence man, Greg Scott Luce. Luce began his professional life as one of the largest cocaine distributors on the West Coast. When the DEA closed in, Luce evaded apprehension and laundered unseized drug money through his Information Technology startup, Metropoleis III Multimedia (MIII). Certain organized crime contingents remained silent partners in his new business.

MIII was a Seattle based broadband content provider, streaming audio and video from live rock concerts to subscribers over the Internet. Although business was thriving, its CEO soon fell back on old habits, structuring MIII as a Ponzi scheme and embezzling from investors.

Seven years after the founding of MIII, August 2001, I was retained as counsel to review intellectual property issues. Approximately twelve months into my work, original note holders began contacting me, expressing concern that they had received no annual statements from MIII — for that matter, no communication at all from the board of directors or corporate officers for several years. More troubling, to a man, every investor had demanded buyback upon maturation of their convertible note loan agreements in 1997. Luce refused to honor the promissory notes. The paper trail showed Luce used money from the non-accredited investor pool to line his own pockets, and money from new investors to pay contracted employees that held stock options; thereby, perpetuating the ruse. A textbook definition of the classic Ponzi scheme with a slight twist: using money from new investors to pay dividends to original investors.

I approached the CEO with my concerns. He was non-responsive, as was the board. As I dug deeper into the CEO’s history, unearthing a deep list of accounting firms, law firms and contractors owed money, I came to learn that this was one of Luce’s tricks: secreting money in his attorneys’ client trust accounts, knowing that the lawyer would be obliged to release the funds to Luce as client, regardless of whether the money was dirty. In addition to confronting shareholders with Luce’s malfeasance, I reported his actions to attorney general offices in two states. Formal investigations into Millennium III and its CEO commenced.

As external scrutiny, and civil and criminal suits mount, CEO Luce began to come unhinged, as did his progressively more crazed and bizarre business ventures. He fled Washington State and setup shop in Arizona. Targeting the Sedona market, he attempted to tap into the New Age zeitgeist. After several false starts, he used his broadband media delivery system to back an equally opportunistic religious huckster in peddling a New Age theology to the masses via the Internet.

When I set out to chronicle my adventures representing a con man and his crooked corporation, little did I know the publication date of Virtual Vice would coincide with contemporaneous, Wall Street Ponzi schemes of an epic magnitude.

Jason M. Kays is an intellectual property attorney with fifteen years experience in both information technology and entertainment law. Kays is an accomplished jazz trumpet player and his passion has always been music, technology, and convergence of the two in today’s digital age. This is his first novel.

You can visit Jason online at http://www.virtualvice.net/ or check out the trailer for Virtual Vice here.

A WILL TO LOVE by Romance Author Kim Smith

When I set out to write A Will to Love, the news came to our little hamlet that the bed and breakfast nearby was going out of business. READ HERE

The story surrounding its history was something of a sad story, Read Here and I felt really bad about the man who had lost his wife in a tragic accident, and wanted to capture that sorrow in the person of Benton Jessup. Of course, it turns out HEA, but that was the impetus to write the story.

I love writing and reading romance so this little story was just a natural outcropping of my favorite things, books and love. And who could deny such strong influences?

I have always loved anything and everything Irish, so the person of Kitty Beebe just popped up and demanded page time. I was grateful because she was so easy to write.

I think there is a lot of me in the story, and maybe you will find a lot of you too. I hope you enjoy it!

Kim Smith is the hostess for the popular radio show, Introducing WRITERS! Radio show on Blog Talk Radio. She is also the author of the zany, Shannon Wallace mystery series available now from Red Rose Publishing and also the new romance novel, A Will to Love. You can visit Kim’s website at www.mkimsmith.com.

MISS L’EAU by T. Katz

Working as a television Production Associate for hundreds of children’s animated TV shows does something to a person. Thousands of hours working on shows with cowboys in space, dinosaurs brought back to life in the modern world and a rubbery yellow man living in the walls of houses causes you to have moments in a day where you’re thinking like cartoon characters or privately hearing sound effects to accompany what you see (junky-clunky cars or shopping carts with wheels that wobble, etc.)

However, one show in particular about a young alien sent to earth to protect its’ creatures touched my heart and I haven’t seen another show like it since in went of the air a decade ago. Feeling that kids could still use colorful characters to keep the message of “Save the Earth” alive I decided to write the book Miss L’eau to help kids learn more about the planet’s seashores and the inhabitants who could use our assistance and care.

I grew up in Northern California not far from the ocean and all that salt air and fog instilled a deep love of the sea it has never been far from my thoughts, even after I moved to sunny, bone-dry Southern California’s high desert … saltwater still ran in my veins. Every chance I had, I would turn my car in the direction of the nearest beach and spend as much time as I could, but seeing the ocean slurp up and spit back so much litter made me weep. I didn’t remember seeing all that trash as a young person, so I decided to write Miss L’eau, in an effort to make kids aware of the help our shores needed and that anyone could help, no matter how small their hands. If one page of Miss L’eau makes a reader want to investigate more about helping the waters surrounding us, then a good deed was done.

Miss L’eau tells the tales of two kids in a coastal town who discover a secret about their elementary school teacher, Miss L’eau, which changes their lives forever. The kids had always known there was something unusual about her, but they could never quite put their finger on it. Even though they’ve have always lived near the ocean, they never thought about its importance, power and certainly never its vulnerability. Through Miss L’eau, and her unexpected relationship to the sea, they develop a love and understanding for the great body of water covering nearly 75% of the earth’s surface. With their teacher’s help, they become involved with a nearby aquarium and organize an annual clean-up event in their community and hope to inspire others to do the same.

T. Katz, a resident of Southern California has been involved in the children’s entertainment industry since the early 80’s working on hundreds of episodes of animated television and as a music instructor to hundreds of very animated children. She is also the honorary conductor of a four-part harmony household, consisting of her two children (three if you count the spouse on a bad day) and Alice the cat. The people that surround her help her to continue seeing the world with all its magic, beauty and potential. She lives by the motto “a good book, a cup of tea and somehow all is right with the world.” Her adventures in life are adding welcome lines of character to her face and scattered optimistic silver linings all over her head. You can visit her website at www.tkatz.com.

THE TARGET by J.R. Hauptman

I got the inspiration for writing my book from my life experiences as a professional pilot. I enlisted in the Army immediately after high school graduation and during basic training, I took the test for Officer Candidate School and scored quite well. With good recommendations from my commanding officers, I was selected for the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant later that year, barely one month after my twentieth birthday.

In the following years I won my wings as an Army Aviator and while flying multi-engine cargo and reconnaissance airplanes, I took part in the Army Air Mobility tests and ultimately, I flew combat missions for two years in the Viet Nam War. Leaving the Army after eight years of service, I went to work for a major airline based on the west coast and settled into California suburban life with my family. After a few more years, we moved to Colorado and made our home there as I flew from my airline’s Denver base. During these times, the airline industry was tightly regulated and although advancement was slow, we were fairly well assured of a steady job.

I served on the Boeing 727 as Second officer and as First Officer but I was with the airline for over eleven years before I checked out as jet Captain. While I never made the top pay levels with the passenger carriers, the pay was still quite good and we enjoyed the many outdoor activities of life in Colorado.

In the late nineteen-seventies, disturbing rumors of plans to deregulate the airlines began to circulate among airline employees. More disturbing were the rumors of how it might affect all of us. Deregulation was intended to increase service and competition and ultimately benefit the American public by lowering fares and using seating capacity on the airplanes more efficiently. The new law hit the industry like a fast moving storm and the airlines and their managements had never experienced anything like this in their careers. One famous carrier entered an aggressive expansion program, buying and leasing dozens of airplanes and hiring pilots faster than their uniforms could be tailored. Unfortunately, this airline had chosen to expand in the face of the recession of the early nineteen-eighties and soon went bankrupt.

Other carriers, some made vulnerable by under capitalization, were circled by corporate raiders, waiting for the opportunity to attack like hungry sharks. My own airline became a target when the stock price suffered during labor strife. The takeover was consummated through the use of “Greenmail” financed by “Junk Bonds”, low quality, unsecured corporate debt securities. Sound familiar? It should because this is where the shoddy securities practices of today began in earnest.

The ultimate vulnerability for airline employees, particularly for those in the unions was the fact that companies undergoing Chapter Eleven Bankruptcy Reorganization were at that time allowed to unilaterally abrogate their labor contracts. For more than a year after the takeover, our union, the Airline Pilots Association, (ALPA) held its collective breath awaiting the inevitable move. We were aware of how the surviving airline had restructured into a maze of separate holding companies but few knew the details of how so much of the debt of the parent company was thrust onto our own airline to the extent that it would be impossible to service that debt. In short, my airline was deliberately put into the position where bankruptcy and reorganization were the only course.

Just as certainly, as the bankruptcy occurred, the labor contracts were abrogated. Union employees were allowed to return to work if they would agree to take fifty percent pay cuts and agree to company dictated work rules and schedules. It was an offer the unions had to refuse or lose all credibility. In protest, the leadership of the unions called for a strike and the memberships voted to do so. The airline continued to fly using management pilots and the few union members who decided to cross picket line and fly as strike breakers. The battle began in earnest when outside strike breakers were hired
There followed a bitter two year struggle that ended with the defeat of the unions. Some of the striking union members went back to work under company imposed rules and others decided not to, citing their inability to work for a ruthless and unethical employer. Some pilots caught on with other airlines and others left the industry entirely, ending their lifelong careers.

For some, it was a matter of life and death as there were several suicides, one of whom was the former CEO of our airline. The CEO of the surviving carrier was called “The Most Hated Man in the Airlines” by more than one pundit. Unsurprisingly, he faced death threats on his person but it seemed that he relished the attention and swaggered about surrounded by security toughs, at least one of whom was known to be an international assassin.

At this time, most of us are repelled by the horrible incidence of mass killings and the fact is that rational people don’t set out to kill their boss or to massacre the innocent. I wrote my book as a study on how a normally rational person can find himself driven to carry that out, as well as to serve as a cathartic in maintaining my own rationality.

In view of current events, most notably the greedy awarding of billions in bonuses to Wall Street bankers and brokers, and the populist outcry in response to this abuse, raises much darker issues. Airline deregulation was the first act in what has become the unconscionable abuse in the banking, securities and utilities industries that resulted from the general deregulation.

The pundits may joke of the “mob of people with the pitchforks and torches,” but what we may be facing are the opening acts of bloody and chaotic revolution. We have to hope not, but hope is not enough; we must act.

J.R. Hauptman is the author of  the murder mystery novel, The Target: Love, Death and Airline Deregulation (Caddis Publishing).  You can visit J.R. on the web to find out more about his exciting new book at www.caddispublishing.com.