COMING FOR MONEY by F.W. vom Scheidt

Coming for Money by F.W. vom Scheidt

In summary, Coming For Money is a novel about the world of global finance and a human quest for success, understanding and love.

How I came to write it is much like a montage of photographs, all taken of the same subject, but all taken from several perspectives.

I have always written.

Following the adage of write from what you know best, I wrote from my first hand-hand experience accumulated as a director of an international investment firm. I wrote as truthfully as possible of the world of international finance — not with the over dramatization so common in film and television, but with an intimate telling through a first-person narrative … of what it can be like to labour in the world of money spinning … of how the money’s immense leverage for triumph or disaster doesn’t so much corrupt people as corrupt the way they treat each other … of how the relentless demands of the money so often deprive you of sufficient time and energy to live through the events of your emotional and interior life.

In addition to this witnessing of the world of international finance, Coming For Money is also a provocative literary novel.

That flows, I think, from the fact that, throughout my life, I have always sought to maintain my integrity in a struggle with questions that have no answers.

So the novel flows from some of the questions I continually ask about life. The plot advances along questions arising from how we relate to our careers: How much money is too much? And how fast is too fast in life? And the central character advances along deeper questions in his own life: How do we cope with love and loss?

Moreover, because our societies equate financial success with a successful life, we are often blind to the inner stories of countless people in all endeavors who, in their desperate search for inner happiness, endlessly repeat a formula for financial success even while remaining deeply unhappy due to unresolved emotional and psychological issues at their core. I wanted to bring one of these inner stories to life.

The result is a deeply felt narrative about the isolation of today’s society, the prices great and small paid for success and the damages resulting from the ruthless exercise of financial power.

I also wrote the Coming For Money to be a good story well told.

The story is event-driven. It follows Paris Smith. As he steps onto the top rungs of the corporate ladder, he is caught between his need for fulfillment and his need for understanding; between his drive for power and his inability to cope with his growing emptiness where there was once love. When his wife disappears from the core of his life, his loneliness and sense of disconnection threaten to overwhelm him. When he tries to compensate by losing himself in his work, he stumbles off the treadmill of his own success, and is entangled in the web of a fraudulent bond deal that threatens to derail his career and his life.

Forced to put his personal life on hold while he travels nonstop between Toronto, Singapore and Bangkok to salvage his career, he is deprived of the time and space to mourn the absence of his wife and regain his equilibrium.

In the heat and turmoil and fast money of Southeast Asia, half a world from home, and half a life from his last remembered smile, he finds duplicity, friendship and power — and a special woman who might heal his heart.

As much as I want to write a literary novel, I wanted to write a story that was fast-paced and highly readable.

And finally, I wrote Coming For Money because I had no other choice.

I sat down at the keyboard. Although I have always been a literary writer, I had no idea how I would capture my experiences in international finance in literary fiction. Without thinking, the first sentence came to me. I typed it. Then I looked at that sentence for a long time.

Instinct told me that the sentence had risen from something that was deeply absorbing me, and that it was something I had to tell. I knew I had to find some way to tell it truthfully. From that point, I knew there was no way out . . . except to construct the novel.

While Coming For Money is a story that advances from chapter to chapter along the corporate intrigue that beats at its heart, and continually mirrors the financial headlines of our daily newspapers, it is much more. It is an illustration of what happens to us as human beings when we lose emotional connectiveness, when we lose emotional logic.

And this was how Paris Smith came to me – because he is tragically, if admirably, flawed. He is not flawed in the classic Shakespearean sense of a noble man who is brought to ruin by his own avarice or rage. His weakness is not that he lusts after wealth or power or flesh. Rather, and far more important for us in these times, he is flawed in that he never learned the great lesson of his generation: don’t become emotionally involved. Paris Smith’s weakness is that he needs, and has always needed, emotional involvement in order to sustain his life. It is for him – as, ultimately, it is for us all – as necessary as breathing.

As Paris Smith refuses to relinquish his search for emotional connectiveness, he becomes a character we learn to appreciate and admire. In the sometimes stubborn, sometimes creative, battles he wages against other men in his corporation who are pitted against him, Paris Smith becomes ever more conscious of how he could stem his personal pain and loneliness by simply retreating emotionally and victimizing those around him. Or he might learn anew how to offer up his own emotional involvement. I’ll leave it for readers to see how this plays out in the end, and to decide what they may want to take away from his quest for human meaning in our contemporary world. But I hope readers will appreciate Paris Smith as much as I do.

In writing Coming For Money, I have tried to tell this story in a way that will let others in our increasingly isolated society know that they are not alone. I have also tried to say something about the value of not surrendering to the seduction of victimizing others as a defence against being victimized. In writing a narrative about not giving up, I attempted to capture something true and evocative about how all journeys toward the light begin in darkness. And I have offered readers some assurance that, of such journeys, they can become restored to wholeness.

F. W. vom Scheidt is a director of an international investment firm. He works and travels in the world’s capital markets, and makes his home in Toronto, Canada. He is also the author of a new book, Coming for Money (Blue Butterfly Book Publishing), a remarkable and provocative novel about the world of international finance and the human quests for success, understanding and love. You can find out more about his book at http://www.bluebutterflybooks.ca/titles/money.html.

MARIPOSA by Candis C. Coffee: “I wanted to write a book that would transform the reader’s inner state…”

I wanted to write a book that would transform the reader’s inner state. To literally remove the reader from this reality and deliver them to a parallel world, inhabited by humans and animals and plants, but different, too. Magical, romantic, and mysterious.

My wish is for the reader to lose sight of their mundane surroundings, their problems and needs. To enter the world of Mariposa, to walk beside Annarose in the 1920s and 1930s, and meet her family, friends, and lovers. To feel the white heat of a Texas summer, to gaze in wonder at a lunar festival in Chinatown, and to thrill in the company of Frida Kahlo and the brilliant, complicated Crisanto.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote guided me in my efforts to place words on paper. The romantic mystery of Rebecca and the surreal childhood experienced by Capote’s main character lent themselves to my own story because these two books spoke to me. I felt something truthful in them and wanted to convey this truth in Mariposa. My work has also been influenced by John Fowles’ The Magus. The exotic locale of this book, the erotic mystery, and the almost unfathomable ideas presented in the story made an impression on me that lingered with me for years.

My summers and holidays were spent at my grandparent’s home in San Angelo, Texas, on a bluff overlooking the Concho River. The home was isolated, with no telephone, miles from town or any neighbors. Rooms were heated by fireplaces, even in the 1960s. A bullet hole next to the name, Roy, carved by a knife, decorated the mantle of one fireplace. Legend had it that the home had once been a way station for the Butterfield Stage Route and Pony Express, almost 200 years ago. This home became the setting for my main character, Annarose’s, childhood. It was a haunted place, not by ghosts, but by more elemental entities — the spirit of the wind, the river, and the land. As a child I knew that one day I would write about my experiences on that wild, beautiful landscape.

Years later, after I grew up, I spent more than a decade living in Los Angeles. I traveled to Mexico in 1987, looking for magic, just almost desperate for it. I found it, I thought, in a man. I still believed that all the good things in life existed outside myself, that something could be given to me, instilled into me, and that from then on, my life would be beautiful. This is the theme of Mariposa. Transformation only occurs on the inside. The gift is within.

While I understand that a good book or a magical romance can transform a person’s inner state, they cannot provide lasting change. However, they can give you a taste of the difference, and once you have had that taste, you can learn to create this way of being on your own. Devotion to permanent transformation is necessary. Years may be needed to accomplish this desire. Or not. The principles subtly interspersed throughout Mariposa can offer direction.

Candis C. Coffee is the author of MARIPOSA.  You can visit her website at www.candiscoffee.com.

BELLY OF THE WHALE by Linda Merlino: “I have long had a fascination with heroes…”

The seed or inspiration for Belly of the Whale, came from a character in the book, his name is Willy Wu.

I have long had a fascination with heroes; the idea of heroism in the pure sense of the word, the selfless act of giving your life to save another without thought of anything else beyond that act.

Willy Wu is the person, often a young man we meet in the grocery store; who is mentally and physically challenged, perhaps autistic. Whatever the medical jargon for Willy he works among us, serves us in our community.

Could Willy be a hero? How do we know how much he processes, how much of his surroundings he takes in, what he hears, sees and experiences; where does it go? Is there a reserve of knowing in a person like Willy Wu where trust is unquestioned and pure heroism resides? I wondered this in my encounters with the Willy’s of the world over the years and with these questions in mind I created a story of lost hope which takes place in twenty-four hours that brings four people together including Willy Wu to face their fate and their fears.

Linda Merlino is the author of the literary fiction novel, BELLY OF THE WHALE. You can visit her website at www.lindamerlino.com.

ATTENTION: This book spotlight is being brought to you by Pump Up Your Book Promotion. As a special promotion for Linda Merlino’s novel, BELLY OF THE WHALE, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour or $25 Amazon gift certificate to one lucky person who leaves a comment or asks a question. Leave your comment or question below to have a chance to win one of these prizes! For more stops on Linda’s blog trail, visit www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com.

EMOTIONLESS SOULS by David S. Grant: “Jerk-offs, ex cons, new cons, pranksters, and one hit wonders…”

Emotionless Souls, my new short story collection published by Brown Paper Publishing, contains twenty stories of troubled characters finding themselves in dark places and fighting to redeem themselves in unconventional ways.

Short stories White Christmas, Gag, Tease, Inc. and Boardroom Romance are a few of many using a corporate environment as a back drop for disturbing predicaments. In White Christmas, Hansel finds himself accusing a co-worker of stealing his cocaine, Gag details an office prankster who gets dealt the final joke, and in Boardroom Romance, the age old question of what happens when you accidentally pop ecstasy prior to a board meeting.

I have spent a lot of time inside offices and find it an interesting place a lot happens in the background we may not be aware of. Naturally, a lot of my ideas are triggered by co-workers and then embellished, or may be the end product of some mundane conversation over office supplies.

Not all of the stories are set in your conventional office environment.

In the story Money Shot redemption is in the form of shock, the main character committing suicide in order to preserve his space in the adult movie industry. For “Open Mic” where a comic gets laughs in a non-conventional way by adding hallucinogen mushrooms to the food the crowd is eating. Each of these story ideas came from pondering other careers, typically between my first and second coffee I dream about other jobs and the wrong turns to be made.

Lucy’s Place, begins in New York City at a roof-top party where Stephan is shooting heroin and overdoses. The next morning he wakes up in Idaho, which just so happens to also be the afterlife. The next few hours is a game of trying to figure out whether Idaho is Heaven or Hell. Haven’t we all been there?

Other stories are more autobiographical, The Dublin Trip and Berets and Bendy Straws are based on trips I have taken with friends. Mostly non-fiction, the story in Dublin reads at break neck speed, capturing a magical trip of sight-seeing mixed with debauchery mixed with a prank for the ages.

Disaffected tourists idle through the streets and bars of Paris and Dublin. Human Resource officers interview the stripper they frequent for a position in the firm. Pickpockets get pick pocketed. Nobodies stage emergencies to save the day. Jerk-offs, ex cons, new cons, pranksters, and one hit wonders are the Emotionless Souls that populate my new collection.

David S. Grant is the author of Corporate Porn. His new short story collection, Emotionless Souls and novella The Last Breakfast are now available from Brown Paper Publishing. His new rock and drug fueled double novel, Bleach|Blackout, is now available from Offense Mechanism, an imprint of Silverthought Press.

David S. Grant is the author of EMOTIONLESS SOULS.  You can visit his website at www.davidgrant.com.

THE RIVER, BY MOONLIGHT by Camille Marchetta

Sometime in the late 1990s, while they were on vacation, friends of mine wandered into a gallery in the town where they were staying. It was purely by chance. But they loved the paintings they saw on show there and were intrigued by the artist, a young woman, beautiful and obviously talented, who had killed herself after a nervous breakdown.

When they returned to Los Angeles, where we were all living at the time, they told me what they had seen and the little that was known about the artist. An interesting story, I thought, and expected that to be that.

But it wasn’t, as it turned out. The story kept coming back to me, popping up in my head even while I was finishing my second novel and working on various television projects. I couldn’t stop thinking about that young woman. Why had she done something so awful? How terrible could her life have been? How did her family and friends deal with it? Who were they? Who was she? The questions just kept coming and coming.

That’s the way it is for me. Ideas for my work come from just about anywhere. From incidents in my own life, of course (though I never write about myself in any straightforward sort of way). An anecdote over dinner, an overheard conversation in a restaurant, an item in a newspaper, even a line in a book can start me wondering. It’s not the thing itself, really, but what it means to me that seems to matter. And usually I’m not even aware at the time how much of an impact what I’ve heard or read has had. It’s only later, sometimes years later, that I realize how deep an impression it’s made.

The process is always the same. Woody Allen made a joke about it in Annie Hall, something about taking a notion, developing it into an idea, turning it into a concept. It’s a great laugh line in the film, but that’s how it goes. When a seed gets planted, if you can’t root it out, it starts to grow, taking on substance, shape. It becomes a story, with a beginning at least, and a climax.

From the fragments I knew of the young artist’s life, I constructed a character, my character, Lily Canning. I considered changing the time period, as I changed so much else (the locations, the cast of characters, everything, really). But the more I thought about it, the more 1917 seemed the perfect year for my story – a country in turmoil, on the verge of war, an ongoing revolution in the art world, a society moving into the modern age. It seemed the right backdrop for the issues I wished to explore — despair, death, grief, how people deal with them, how some indomitable souls not only heal, but thrive.

I did endless amounts of research on suicide, on the history of the era, on New York City and the Hudson River Valley, where I chose to set my story. And when I felt comfortable enough in the period, when I knew it as well, perhaps better, than I know my own, I began to write.

Working in television, on shows like Dallas and Dynasty, I was required to write an outline for each script I did. Left to my own devices (meaning whenever I’m not paid for it), I never work from one. So, writing a novel for me is like setting out on a voyage to an unknown country. This time, as I went along, I discovered Lily’s beautiful home in Minuit, a fictional town on the Hudson. As I needed them, her parents, cousins, friends put in an appearance. I took time out to get to know them before traveling on. By the time I reached the end of my travels, I had touched on all the issues that had piqued my interest to start with, and I understood a little better why Lily had done what she did. And I had my new book, THE RIVER, BY MOONLIGHT, finished at last.

It took me a long while to reach that point. For readers, it will be a much shorter journey, but one I hope you’ll find as interesting as I did.

If you’d care to read an excerpt, please visit my website. You’ll find my biography there, as well as information about my other novels, and links to related sites. And you can leave a message for me there, too. I’d like that.

Camille Marchetta is the author of The River, By Moonlight.  If you would like to find out more about the author, visit www.camillemarchetta.com. 

Leave a comment and on Feb. 29, one lucky blogger will receive a free copy of Camille’s book!  Winners will be announced at www.virtualbooktoursforauthors.blogspot.com.

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MARWAN: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A 911 TERRORIST by Aram Schefrin

After 9/11, I realized that I knew nothing of the people who had attacked us, or the reasons why they had done it. I read up on al Qaeda, then on Islamic fundamentalism, then on Islam itself and the history of the region. Then I felt I understood what was behind the attack – but I still didn’t understand the people who had done it.

I live in Florida, and many of the events of the plot happened here. I read the coverage in the Florida papers, which was much more detailed than what I could find in the national press. (For example, the wind chime at the door of Ziad Jarrah’s house was mentioned in a local article.) It was that kind of detail which convinced me that there was a story here which could be thickly painted as any good novel should be.

I went to the places the hijackers had stayed in Florida. I couldn’t understand how anyone who had experienced America as they had could have hated us so much. By then I knew generally what motivated islamists – and it was a broad spectrum of motivations, not just religion. Putting that knowledge together with what I knew of the involved individuals, I was able to tell a story which included all those motivations by assigning each to a character who, in fact, mostly acted because of it. Only Marwan, the lead character, is more a product of my imagination that what I have read in the newspapers – and that’s because I gave him more complexity.

I thought – and I think – the book is important because it’s critical that people understand that the so-called “clash of civilizations” is not inevitable; that there are things that could have been done, and still could be done, to avoid the likelihood of more 9/11s. We must understand the enemy to protect ourselves, and that particularly includes understanding what drove them personally – their frustrations, their humiliations, their unmet needs, etc. Why were they so willing to kill themselves? Or were they really willing? Why did they turn to extreme religion? Et cetera. I think I have explained some of that.

Once I put together enough of the little details from press reports to get the flavor of the people and the events, I decided that non-fiction couldn’t possibly get deep enough into their heads. So much had to be deduced and imagined. That made the story perfect for fiction.

I was working on another book at the time (it will be coming out shortly), but I put it aside to write Marwan. My agent, John Ware, helped me with the editing – he’s brilliant at it. Then we submitted the book.

As I point out in my Author’s Note, New York publishing houses, in 2003 when the book was circulated, were still deep in grief. They considered it insulting and outrageous to present a book about 9/11 which was written (more or less) from the terrorists’ point of view – even though the book made no attempt to excuse their conduct, which I consider to be sociopathic. I could not sell the book.

In the meantime, no one has attempted what I did with Marwan. I still think it’s important that people understand what the 9/11 attack was really about. So I published it through AuthorHouse. I believe it’s a book that needs to be read. Fortunately, those people who have read it or reviewed have also said that it is a well-done piece of fiction – so there’s pleasure to be gleaned from the writing itself, although pleasure is not the point of reading this book.

Incidentally, before I put the book out in print, I podcasted it serially at podiobooks.com and elsewhere on the web. The reaction to the podcast has been heartwarming. I hope I get the same warmth from the response to the print book.

Aram Schefrin is the author of the literary fiction novel, Marwan: The Autobiography of a 911 Terrorist.  You can visit his website at www.aramschefrin.com.

Aram’s virtual book tour is brought to you by Pump Up Your Book Promotion.  If you would like to visit his official tour page, click here.

Leave a comment and at the end of his tour, you could be the lucky winner of a FREE  copy of his book!  All winners will be announced at www.virtualbooktoursforauthors.blogspot.com on Feb. 29!

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