About the Author:
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.
About the Book:
How much money is too much? And how fast is too fast in life?
International investment firm director and author F. W. vom Scheidt, writes from his first hand-hand experience of the world of global money spinning with candor and authenticity in his remarkable literary novel Coming for Money.
As investment star Paris Smith steps onto the top rungs of the corporate ladder, he is caught between his need for fulfillment and his need for understanding; trapped 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 necessary to 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.
A talented author, vom Scheidt has confidently crafted a fast-paced, highly readable and intelligent novel. His details are fascinating. His characters are real, and not easily forgotten. A deeply felt story 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, Coming For Money is a taut literary page-turner about a man who refuses to capitulate to the darkness in his journey into the light.
I was lucky enough to get the author to answer some interview questions. Here's what he had to say:
Could you please tell us a little about your book?
In summary, Coming For Money is a novel about the world of global finance and a human quest for success, understanding and love.
Who or what is the inspiration behind this book?
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.
Did something specific happen to prompt you to write this book?
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.
Who is your biggest supporter?
My wife.
Your biggest critic?
Me.
Who has influenced you throughout your career as a writer?
I was fortunate to come from an environment that valued reading and education. As a result I absorbed a broad spectrum. Having the experience of so much writing from so many writers was a far greater influence that any single author.
What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a new novel; and on bringing a new institutional investment fund to market.
Do you have any advice for writers or readers?
For writers … write.
For readers … read whatever interests and entertains you regardless of what it may be, but never stop reading.
What are some of your long term goals?
Value the gift of each new day by working at what I love, learning something new, being grateful for those in my life; and, before the day runs out, somehow becoming a better human being than I was yesterday.
What do you feel is your biggest strength?
Being able to see what I want to paint on the canvas of my life while it is still blank.
Biggest weakness?
Succumbing to the seduction of working too much.
What do you feel sets this book apart from others in the same genre?
At last count, I was not aware of many literary novelists coming from the international investment industry. I imagine I bring a unique perspective to a unique setting for storytelling.
You know the scenario – you’re stuck on an island. What book would you bring with you and why?
The collected works of Shakespeare, to populate my world with characters and stories.
What is the most important lesson you have learned from life so far?
If we are not here for each other, then we are only here to die.
Is there anything else you would like to share with us?
I was thinking the other day about how I came to writing.
When I was in the eighth grade our history studies focused on how colonists came from England to settle in Canada. It was mentioned that some immigrants came as indentured servants, working on farms for several years to pay off their passage; and it was pointed out that some of these indentured servants were the same age as we were in the eighth grade. Our assignment was to imagine that we were indentured children newly arrived in the Canadian colonies, and to write a letter to our families left behind in England.
It was assumed we would write about clearing the land, planting crops, building farm houses and everything else from our history lessons.
When I began the assignment, the first words I wrote were: “Dear Mother and Father, it is with great regret that I write to tell you that my sister, your daughter, died of typhus on the ship to Canada.”
I went on to express remorse over not sharing food with her and to describe the loneliness of the dark winter nights without her.
Later in the day, when the teacher was reading the assignments, something happened without expectation or warning.
The teacher took me and my assignment to the principal’s office.
The principal demanded to know what was wrong with me.
It was generally accepted in the eighth grade that the ultimate calamity was to be dragged to the principal’s office. And worse than that was to be asked by the principal to explain yourself when you had no explanation.
As I sat between the principal and my teacher, and resigned myself to the misery of their demands and derision, it occurred to me that I was the only one in my class who had caused so much trouble with something I written ... and maybe I had something that the others didn’t have.
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