The Origin Story of Farewell the Dragon

             

                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Farewell the Dragon is one of the backstories of the SwiftPad Series. The first novel in the series is set some 30 years before the rise of SwiftPad.  Farewell the Dragon is not about the alt-history of  the most pervasive and powerful social media conglomerate in the world.  But this novel does introduce a recurring and  important character in the SwiftPad Trilogy. Nathan Schuette, the narrator of Farewell the Dragon is a drunken semi-lothario and sometime writer and his influence on the future of our alt-history will be pervasive.  This is the origin story of how the novel Farewell the Dragon came to be.

How I came to Xian China in the mid-80s, and my real life experiences there, I have told elsewhere -  

Introducing the Final Edition of Farewell.the Dragon

But to actually write Farewell the Dragon required some gentle prodding. it  took a friend to push me over the edge and really do it -  to really follow my teenage dreams and really be a writer. 

 

Buy the book here! 

Three months after arriving in China, I met Jim Barry at a party/banquet  in downtown Xian.  We both were hitting the pre-dinner drinks more than the other foreign teachers, and experts who had been invited by the City of Xian, and I told Jim I liked to write and was thinking about a novel about China. Instead of nodding, and politely changing the subject as most would do when I was jabbering about my unfulfilled ambitions, Jim convinced me that night that I had to do it, that I had to take it seriously, that I had to start writing that “novel”. I doubt I would have done it if I hadn’t had that conversation. But Jim had an affect on me, or maybe it was the Chinese baijiu, the white lightning made of sorghum and other secret ingredients that filled me with a purpose that had been missing up to that point.  Jim and I are still good friends, 35 years later, and he will always be one of my favorite people in the world, even when we (frequently) disagree.   

The banquet was put on for foreign teachers by the local government, probably because the national government told them to put it in the budget.   Banquets honoring foreign guests are ancient traditions in the Middle Kingdom. Compared to Beijing, Xian is a relative backwater, if a city of 12 million, (in 1985, only 1.5 million) can be considered such.  But Xian, the ancient city of Chang’An, the Tang dynasty capital, had older traditions than the “new” capital of Beijing and was more hospitable in some ways. 

Jim was from Philly, and because I grew up in South Jersey, we immediately hit it off. In the mid-80s China had to be the most interesting place in the world, because it was changing so fast. It had only been 6 or 7 years away since the end of the Cultural Revolution.   For Chinese people, just being in the same room with foreigners was an astonishing experience. It made us (mostly white foreigners from North America, Oceania and Europe) into celebrities, gawked at wherever we went, listened to raptly even when the listeners didn’t know English, always stared at in every public moment of our lives.  In our alcoholic glow both Jim and I saw that we saw things much the same way; that we were first hand witnesses to the mutual rediscovery of two wildly different cultures and that it was a Big Story.  While ordinary Chinese were still discouraged from getting too close to us, still, there was much that we saw, much that could not be hidden from us.  From that perspective we both understood we were in on the beginning of a new chapter of history. 

Jim was a real journalist, and there was much to report. When told by a student about the meat cleaver murder of a Muslim by a Han Chinese at a nearby market, Jim  went to work the way any western journalist would. Not taking no for an answer, he pushed the limits of information freedom, and probably prodded the Chinese authorities to come to decisions that still stand about just how much information they would allow out. Jim’s time as an English teacher came to an end.  

Jim’s stories about the subsequent demonstrations by the large Xian Muslim population against the failure of local police to follow up and make an arrest for the murder fueled the public anger. The demonstrations in front of the ancient Xian Mosque became exponentially bigger with each story Jim filed, first with Reuters, then VOA and the other news services.  Chinese still listened to VOA on the radio in much the way portrayed in 1950’s American newsreels, secretly away from the ears of the local communist neighborhood committee ladies who kept an eye on people. 

Finally, in order to end the daily radio reports from coming into the homes of the local Muslims, Jim and his wife were escorted out of China.  

He “willed” me his contacts with Reuters in Beijing, but the only story I filed was spiked. It reported the accidental deaths of nearly thirty people, whose bodies I witnessed being brought to the medical school where I taught.  The local police  denied it ever happened. A couple of months later, I was discovered to be the source of the report, and was given the choice of staying in China and promising to not report anymore or being deported. I chose to stay. I was not a real reporter, but thanks to Jim’s prodding I was still determined to write the China novel.

Jim himself went on to bigger things, reporting on some of the most compelling stories of our lifetime: The rise of ISIS in Afghanistan, and an encounter with Osama himself, and later interviewing John Gotti at the height of his power. He produced highly praised documentaries about the Philly mob (A&E’s Mobfathers and others) and has won numerous awards for reporting and producing. 

I finally returned to the US two years later, and became a computer systems technologist. My wife Mary and I suddenly had a newborn son, and I was in a new phase of life. But I didn’t forget China.  Over the next fifteen years, I continued to hone the story I started in Xian, finally in 2005 “self-publishing” (actually “vanity publishing” as my amateurish queries to literary agents and publishers went unanswered) Farewell the Dragon.     

I have republished it twice, once for an editorial upgrade, (with critical help from the brilliant literary editor Linda Franklin), and once to finally end my dependence on “vanity publishers”.  I founded  “Barckwords Publishing” and am putting out all my long fiction (three, soon four novels) with IngramSpark as a distributor.

Farewell the Dragon (FTD)is a first person account of a fictional murder investigation in Beijing.  But because the narrator and main character of FTD shows up and plays a big part in “The SwiftPad Trilogy” an alt-history our current time, it might be required reading for those who want to know the complete backstory of the SwiftPad Series. So stay tuned.

Review of Neil Sheehan’s Bright and Shining Lie

Neil Sheehan’s exhaustive 900-page story of a flawed but extremely perceptive and charismatic American Army officer is to the Vietnam War what Moby Dick was to 19th-century whaling. 

While the Pentagon Papers can give you a wider historical perspective, starting with letters from Ho Chi Minh pleading for aid to fight the Japanese during WW2, to the internal documents of Johnson administration's covering up of everything, a Bright and Shining Lie also tells the whole story, but through the eyes and actions of one very amazing yet flawed man.  The book starts with an excellent introduction to the origins of the war, but its foundational narrative is its long and detailed description of the  Battle of Ap Bac in 1964. This battle became a metaphor for the entire war,  where a few companies of Vietcong held off a much larger South Vietnamese force and their numerous American advisors, tank operators, and pilots. We see how the Vietcong developed new tactics almost on the fly. They shot down helicopters, destroyed tanks with meager obsolete weapons and still managed to retreat with minimal casualties. Sheehan follows Vann, who fought in the battle and breaks down his analysis of it. Sheehan shows us that while Vann may have been the most "gun-ho" American officer of the war was also one of the first to see its futility. Sheehan's book explains how the American post-war masculine mentality was ultimately what led to the catastrophe of the Vietnam War. 

 Sheehan was one of a small group of brilliant and iconoclastic reporters and officers such as David Halberstam and Daniel Ellsberg who knew and almost worshipped Vann.  Vann knew from almost from the moment that the Battle of Ap Bac ended that the war was unwinnable. Yet for many reasons he continued to apply his prodigious energy and almost monomaniacal will to continue fighting, taking huge personal risks, while waging a bureaucratic war of his own against the American military’s futile reliance on massive carpet bombing and overwhelming firepower. And tragically, after it was way too late to change the outcome, his ideas, even after his own death, helped extend the war.    

John Paul Vann came from a poor, dysfunctional Virginia family and as with so many young men looking for a way out of poverty, saw the military as a vehicle for personal advancement. He joined the army at 18 during WW2, got into pilot school, and became an officer. He didn’t see action until the Korean War, where his bravery and clear thinking under fire was noticed and put him on the promotion track. His physical courage was legendary, and Sheehan gives many examples of his almost suicidal ballsiness, which in the end would kill him. 

After the  Korean War, Vann went to college and attended the Army War College. He attached himself to many of the leading proponents of the American Cold War Strategy, notably Edward Landsdale. When America’s involvement in Vietnam began, he was one of the US “Advisors” who tried to organize South Vietnam’s resistance to the Vietminh, (later Vietcong) - the South Vietnamese militia who were allied with Ho Chi Minh’s Hanoi based government. Vann quickly saw how corruption and unwillingness to fight, - not out of cowardliness, but fear of their own politicians - made the long term prospects for South Vietnam’s survival bleak. But when his reports began to clash with the official American position of  “light at the end of the tunnel”, Vann used his charismatic honesty to gain allies in the US Press Corp to get the story out that things were not nearly as optimistic as the American Generals, (typified by William Westmoreland) were saying publically.  He wanted to "Vietnamize" the war, to put all the focus on enabling the South Vietnamese to believe in their own ability to win, but no matter how hard he tried, he was never able to motivate the South Vietnamese officers he was advising. 

He admired the Vietcong and struggled to understand how they could be so motivated but his own troops were not. In spite of many brave and competent exceptions to the contrary, he was never able to convince his Vietnamese allies to give up their corruption and fight with the Spartan-like discipline and bravery that would be required to win their own civil war.  He tried desperately to get the truth out about what was happening and used the American press to get his ideas noticed by two different Presidents.  This blunt honesty, combined with his insatiable sex addiction for young Vietnamese women would keep him from ever rising in rank. His own military continued to use him, even after practically drumming him out of the Army. He ended up as civilian with military General-like tactical authority that was never truly acknowledged by the US power structure. By bold and brutal tactics he was able to turn around a number of losing tactical campaigns during the war. But in the end, he allowed his own hubris and desire for glory and recognition to override his judgment. 

Sheehan starts the story at the end of it, at Vann's high profile funeral attended by figures as diverse as his friend Daniel Ellsberg,  powerful columnist Joseph Alsop, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, as well as many of the generals and famous political figures who had been his bureaucratic enemies. Vann was ambitious and in many ways a crude man, who also knew how to flatter and cajole. He was always plotting to increase his influence.

While the book focuses on Vann’s story, it is much more than a military biography. It is an immensely complicated story, and Sheehan does justice to it, by laying out the many contradictions in Vann's life and in the war itself. It exhaustively personifies America’s post-war blindness to its own limitations. It is a story where the profound institutional ignorance of the history and culture of the country we invaded came back to haunt us.   Vann was in some ways the symbolic younger brother of “The Greatest Generation” and in his attempt to emulate his older sibling’s righteous exploits, he helped plunge the US in the psychological and political quagmire from which we still have not extracted ourselves.

About Digging the Golden Fungus: The SwiftPad Insurgency

  

The SwiftPad Insurgency

What can we do about the Trump presidency? This novel is a worse-case, very-near-term dystopian chronicle set in a fictional Portland Oregon.

But The SwiftPad Insurgency is a sequel. So if you want to jump into it without first reading The SwiftPad Takeover, here are some survival tips to help you navigate the second book without reading the first.

 

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The SwiftPad eBooks

Get the first book

The SwiftPad Takeover

The story in the first book, The SwiftPad Takeover, takes place about five years ago in 2014. Kip and Jim, childhood friends who grew up in a rural Oregon logging town go their separate ways, only to meet again in Portland. Kip meets a young “Goth Girl” (GG) from the east coast who was once voted “Most Likely to Virtualize” at DefCon, a Black hat computer hacking convention. She has an idea for a social media app that has the potential to blow away Facebook, and all of the other smartphone eye candies on the market. Kip helps GG’s get the app’s business off the ground, and eventually brings Jim in as well. They call the app SwiftPad.

There is a serial killer lurking amongst them all, as well as a vulture-like corporation (GIP - Global Industrial Processors) aiming at taking over both a local energy company and SwiftPad Inc. itself.

The characters: Kip, also called Chubby, aka Cornelius Welles, or as GG calls him - K - is the son of a rapacious capitalistic, hard-assed logger, (Walt Rehain) who takes over all the logging operations west of Philomath Oregon, and is hated by his neighbors. Kip hates (and loves) his father. His best friend is Jim Hunt, the son of a local failed logger who had drunk himself to death. He is raised by his Mom (Alice Hunt) who really discovers herself after her husband's death, and becomes a community and then a national left-wing shadow leader. She and Walt also have a love-hate relationship and she ends up taking over Walt’s empire.

After high school, Jim leaves his logging town, joins the army, and becomes a success in the IT industry. Chubby tries and fails at a number of business ventures, (backed by his father) until he meets GG, a nerdy genius from the Washington suburbs, a “Goth Girl” who comes up with the idea of SwiftPad. They meet, have sex and Chubby gets the initial funding for SwiftPad from his trust, and from others (some parodies of well-known Portlanders) and they start the business in Portland. Some of the other characters, such as Hadley and Archimedes were part of the SwiftPad team. How all this comes about is explained in the first book.

Spence, Kayla, Alison, and Paula are new characters to The SwiftPad Insurgency.

Nate Schuette also shows up. He was the main character in my first novel “Farewell the Dragon”. That novel was set in the mid-80s, so now, of course, Nate is much older.

Buy Farewell the Dragon

Farewell the Dragon reviews!

There were some comments concerning the near-term dates in the book. The action starts about four months after publication, (November 2019). The world is in much worse shape than it is now here in our "real" present.

So the question that begs is, will the novel date itself too soon to be meaningful, and will the story too quickly pass its expiration date? Well - People still read 1984. And really, I don't care because "...Insurgency" was inspired by the current, real emergency, and it is only meant to wake the readers up to what is at stake.

The SwiftPad Trilogy is an alt-history, a speculative tale that could almost be science fiction, and is very political in nature. In this ‘parallel universe”, things have begun to slowly veer away from the history we are living in now. It happened sometime after Nixon. Or did it? Is this world a hidden history of reality, and the world we think we know, of cable news, and Trump rallies, the actual illusion? Both cases are possibilities. But let's keep it simple, and stick to the story that the “now” we all know has gone off the rails.

As The SwiftPad Insurgency is a sequel, (and the second in a trilogy) much is explained in the first novel The SwiftPad Takeover. But the prequel turns out to be (to my honest surprise) my first novel Farewell the Dragon. In that novel, set in Beijing in 1987, we are introduced to Nathan Schuette, a 36-year-old would-be entrepreneur, and sometime English teacher. Now, he is almost an old man, in his late sixties. His journey before and after his time in China is the quintessential tale of the baby boom generation.

The SwiftPad Insurgency, like its predecessors, is filled with hyperbolic catnip for fantasists, conspiracy nuts, paranoids and seriously disturbed cynics. SwiftPad Inc. is now established as the primary source of information for the world at large and is the only institution that the dictatorial Presidential junta can not turn off, and it is centered in Portland Oregon. The @real-Prez appears to have gone totally around the bend and has been overthrown by his own Vice President, or “@temp-Prez”. But natural and manmade disasters, combined with fascistic actions, have made millions homeless. To be homeless is now as criminal as to be an “illegal alien” was in 2019. Millions are either camped around Portland or are on their way. Temp-Prez has sent the reconstituted para-military (V)ICE (V for vagrancy), to overthrown liberal Portland and send the refugees to Haliburton-built camps in the desert.

As to what happens, well you are invited to get the novel(s) and find out!

Check out two recent reviews!

Reader Views

Red City Review

The SwiftPad Takeover

Farewell the Dragon Reviews

  Buy Farewell the Dragon here!

 

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Buy the eBook here!

 

 Take a look at the reviews so far!

1. Red City Review

"Farewell the Dragon is a rigorous examination of personal agency and universal morality. It contains all of the toxic glamour of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and a moderate dash of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code...Barckmann’s novel is one that has achieved something rare: It has uncovered a unique corner of twentieth-century culture and delicately sculpted it into a story worth remembering and reading for years to come."

Farewell the Dragon was a finalist for the 2018 "Book of the Year"  award by Red City Review

Red City Finalists

2. US Review

"...Barckmann is reaching for a depiction of time and place and character that rivals more classic tales of flawed individuals struggling with their exotic environments and their own shortcomings...There are similarities also in flaws, introspection, regret ...which echo Graham Greene’s characters, "

3. Foreword Reviews

"A compelling read that will have readers sticking with the book long after bedtime. It’s hard to put down"

4. TL Cooper's Blog

"Both secrets and honesty were used as weapons throughout Farewell the Dragon. Farewell the Dragon brings relationships, sex, international intrigue, religion, politics, and a society in flux to create an examination of human nature that is at once blunt and nuanced."
Poet and author T.L. Cooper

5. This Week in America with Ric Bratton

"A Great Read. Barckmann is a terrific storyteller"
"This Week in America's" Ric Bratton

6. Mark Oulton on Goodreads

This book is a cross between a double murder whodunnit and a fascinating and sexually charged romp in China that can sometimes be found in tight expatriate communities (in this case both from within the group and amongst the few Chinese who could interact with them) ...  the book is a valuable link between post-revolutionary China and the present as seen by a foreign observer. It is also written with a great deal of humor.

7.Lily Andrews for Reader Views (06/2021) 

With twists and turns and surprises unraveling, this book keeps you on edge from the beginning to the end. The author depicts China’s cities and sounds extremely well. He makes all the characters stand out in a unique way which makes them fit perfectly in their role. The text explores the cultural impact of Beijing’s culture on foreigners. I loved the wonderful thoughts shared on this tome. Author Barckmann is well-versed in China’s religion, world politics, and philosophical ideologies. This makes the book not just entertaining to readers but also eye-opening....This novel is a top candidate for pure escapist entertainment. Packed with mystery, thrill, and international history, it will undoubtedly take readers on an emotive and fascinating odyssey. For this reason, I give it 5 stars. The text does not allow historical events to override the fascinating plot but instead grants readers a developing story that takes center stage.

Virginia rated a book it was amazing Farewell the Dragon by S. Lee Barckmann (Goodreads Author)

Read Rate this book 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars

FAREWELL THE DRAGON by Lee Barckmann I recently finished FAREWELL THE DRAGON, the prequel to the SwiftPad Trilogy by Lee Barckmann. I’m giving it high marks. It is an ambitious first book. The time and place of the book: 1986, China. The adventurer, Nate, displays an admittedly modest understanding of the vastness of China. Because of his ability to speak Chinese better than most foreigners, many doors open for him. He lives his dream of being an expatriate: teaching, selling software at the beginning of the boon, falling in and out of love (bedding many women from around the world before the aids virus cooled everyone’s appetite). There’s lots of drinking on the rooftop bar of the Friendship Hotel where the characters in this murder mystery seem to be playing three- dimensional chess with global politics. The gang loves discussing politics. They are a loosely connected characters in time. These were the Reagan years. References to the classic book, 1984 by George Orwell and THE GOOD EARTH by Pearl S. Buck hit the mark. Barckmann introduces us to dozens of characters: Molly, his shapely, flirtatious, and shallow girlfriend. Dexter, his red-haired look alike who was 10 years younger and one dimensional, his beautiful Chinese woman friend who was always identified by waving just the tops of her fingers. My favorite was the Chinese neighbor who Nate drank tea with for an hour each month and who Nate realized was a solid source of high-minded wisdom. All swirled by, the murder is solved, and Nate takes us on a whole other journey in a reflective letter to his father in the last chapter. Perhaps that’s why the stories continue.

From "Eugene Scene” magazine...

Jerry Rust writing in the "Eugene Scene" eMagazine

The protagonist, a young red-haired American, discovers the bodies of two foreigners in a dorm room at a guest house, which leads to a plot of intrigue: Was it murder or a murder-suicide?  How did they die?  Who killed them?  Now the young American became a suspect. The plot unfolds through his interrogation by police and through flashbacks, and it has something to do with an ancient and mysterious stele, a stone tablet bearing an ancient Chinese script...many characters from various countries who all found themselves in Beijing at the time —  various Europeans, an Australian, American CIA, and others, mixing with various Chinese people,  all desperately seeking and sometimes finding work, love, sex, and the deeper meaning of life. For China watchers, Farewell the Dragon is an intellectual feast, and it delivers an emotional wallop...

More Reviews for “Farewell the Dragon” by Lee Barckmann

AMAZON REVIEWS

Customer Reviews

Jeffrey Kinkley

I found this book to be a good read. One of its attractions is all the odd, intriguing characters from the Chinese expat community in Beijing prior to "Tiananmen" (they're not academic researchers, either--an assortment of Russians, East Germans, Central Europeans, PLO, Mossad, Americans, you name it, and among their Chinese friends, a People's Liberation Army "General's daughter" and a blind erhu player). Advisory: they sleep around with each other relentlessly.
Another attraction is the book's very convincing overview of China in this age when it was beginning to take foreign capital, but before the economy, urban construction, and the destruction of old neighborhoods were set to go full-throttle berserk in the 1990s and after. All the plot threads come together in the end. It reads like a mystery set within a tale of personal exploration in a peculiarly welcoming, and yet rather mysterious foreign environment.

Jake
Great Murder Mystery, Great Read!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I loved the story with its background in the Chinese culture shown through the eyes of an American expatriate, Nathan Shute. I think that anyone who spent time on a college campus could relate to things that happen in this murder mystery. The overlapping intrigue of international spies, cultural treasures,and personal love affairs kept me totally involved. There are some books that you never want to end because you are enjoying them so much. This is one of those books!!!

Carl Warner
Farewell the Dragon definitely held my interest, keeping me awake at night. The murder mystery provides a good expat perspective on China during the period before much of the rampant economic expansion, as well as historical facts and lessons in Chinese culture. The protagonist is entangled in a mix of detective work, political intrigue, and sexual escapades. Highly recommended.

David G. Traeger
This was my "bus book" for a week in January. My constant companion for 3 hours a day amid the hustle and bustle of life on board a Max train and TriMet bus. The book held my attention and kept me quite happy while commuting. And it gave me a quote for my commonplace book: "Serene Hopelessness and tight quarters produce strict rules & nobody breaks the rules or even calls attention to them. Discontent is not allowed, especially discontent based in individualism; the appearance of unfairness must be smothered even if it not "gong ping", not a level playing field, not equal opportunity for everyone. You can not break out; it is the most important rule. You bear it. You mildly complain and listen to the mild complaints, but is repetitive and useless, just empty noise to no end."

Laura B. Raynolds
Farewell the Dragon is a wonderful postmodern work set in China in the 1980's, before the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. With a highly tuned ear for dialogue, Barckmann weaves many strands of different stories and histories into one murder mystery, rather like Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49. Like other postmodern works, Farewell the Dragon embodies ambiguity, complexity, density, and interconnectedness with references to many disciplines. Barckmann uses the coming-to-an-end of Old China along with events in the plot to enable the reader to experience a universal wistfulness and longing for that perfection in memory that is lost and will never come again. His work is a superb piece of fiction that deserves a wide readership. Bravo Barckmann!

J. Charles Kirby
Lee Barckmann has created a world that is inaccessible to most casual visitors to China. Because of his occupation as an English language teacher in the mid to late 80's ,the protagonist, Nathan Schuett is especially suited to understand the nuances of Chinese life. This story, however is about what Nathan does not know or should know but doesn't. This story is about China complicated by murder. Nathan finds himself in the middle of a detective story with misunderstood evidence and unexpected sex.I thought of the movies Chinatown and My Year of Living Dangerously.I can recommend this book

Dave from Oregon

Farewell the Dragon is a very enjoyable look at the Western expatriate community in China leading up to Tiananmen Square. I enjoyed the book as a prologue to China's post-Mao resurgence as well as an interesting set of the interplay between different groups in the expat community that are difficult for an American living in the US to imagine.

Patricia Brown writes:

This story brings chills down my spine! It is a gripping story of a double murder in Beijing and its story line is moving, intriguing and intense!

I find the investigation a very intriguing scene because you will have to guess and think carefully about the killer of the bodies that was found in an apartment by the lead, Nate! Nate is the male lead that provides interesting dynamic to the story. His ability to be clever and mischievous made the case a lot more interesting and a lot longer to solve. I believe though that this scene would have been made shorter to give more emphasis to the life that the he has lived. His life was the most interesting because he had multiple relationships with women, he sold software’s and taught English for a living and also had wonderful inputs about religion and politics. Moreover, I believe that because of the psychological and political impact of this book to the readers, I would have to say that is also educational apart from interesting.

I believe that anyone who loves thrilling books and murder case stories should read this book! It is indeed one of a kind.

Terry Crossman writes:

An engrossing read about a time 8 years before I arrived in Beijing. At times it was a bit slow and plodding and the time jumps and plethora of characters were a bit confusing at times, but the mystery and unsuspected surprises kept me going. I probably know many foreigners who lived in the pre-Tiananmen days in Beijing and I certainly do know many University teachers here and even did a post retirement stint as one myself. His portrayal of undercover missionaries and Taiwanese run joint ventures were so spot on. While I have never liked the drinking culture of expatriate life, I found the depiction of Friendship Hotel life fascinating especially as this has been my home city for over 25 years. I also love the authors appreciation of old culture and realistic portrayal of "drinking tea" with security folks. All in all a good read.

Buy the ebook here!

Moving on From The SwiftPad Takeover

See a recent reviews here!

Reader Views

Kirkus review of "The SwiftPad Takeover"

 

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The SwiftPad Takeover 

The SwiftPad Takeover was written in a pique against my former employer after I was laid off in 2014.  I wanted to expose my impression of the infighting, greed, and incompetence at the company to release the pent up anger and hostility I felt so I could put the experience behind me and move on.

I am better now.  I was able to focus on writing "the revenge story" and at the same time satirizing Portland, as well as other types of corporate IT cultures. I had worked as a consultant at old-style firms with IT departments that had top-down vertical management structures, as well as young social media companies with horizontal structures and The SwiftPad Takeover illustrates both types. The main characters of the novel were two men, childhood friends now in their early forties, who grew up in the coast range of western Oregon. They encounter a young woman who has an idea for social media Facebook-like software, (SwiftPad) and they join up with her to make a company, based in Portland Oregon. One of the men, Jim Hunt has spent most of his career with "Global Industrial Processors", (GIP) but has quit and has returned to work for the local Portland Power Company.

GIP is after "the business" with both the power company and SwiftPad, and we follow the corporate intrigue from the inside.  And, oh yeah - one more thing, as Columbo used to say - a Serial Killer is lurking among cast of characters, leaving bodies in inconvenient places.

The SwiftPad Takeover was written as a literary experiment, an attempt to stretch myself as a writer. I decided to create some rules for myself to follow as I wrote.  I had already written a novel seven years or so previously, and I wrote that with no rules at least at first.  By that I mean, I would sit down and imagine a scene create action and dialogue and see how it fit together later. This time I wanted to plan it and have a product at the end I would recognize as what I intended at the beginning. I made a list of requirements I would follow as I wrote the book, rather than, just writing and seeing where it goes.  I think that next time, I will follow my old method and just let the story flow where it will go. I think you get a more organic product that way.   But nevermind, this is what we have got.

My first novel Farewell the Dragon
Buy Farewell the Dragon
was written in first-person and I wanted to see what I sounded like in third person. I wanted to write about the culture of Portland Oregon.  As I said, I wanted to write a revenge novel against my former employer for laying me off before I was ready to retire.  And I wanted to write an homage to my former profession.  I lucked into the work as an IT roust-about in my mid-thirties and it worked out well.    It required a lot of persistence, a certain amount of analytical ability, and a talent for spotting and spouting bullshit.  I wanted to move on and begin something else, and writing a book about the way it was allowed me to put it all into perspective and the rear view mirror.

I really wrote SwiftPad for myself, not for a particular reader.  With so much 'situation' to write about, well, maybe the characters were short-changed a little.  Jim, Chubby, GG, Macy, Trek, (aka OSWL), Alice, (Jim’s Mom), Walt, (Chubby’s Dad) and others all have somewhat predictable characteristics that weaken the book.  But it is a murder mystery novel, and I know it works on that level because several people who have read it say they were guessing right up to the end as to who was the killer. I learn some new plotting tricks and the futuristic satire of social media technology is pretty clever I think, if a bit goofy.  So it is what it is. Now that that is done, I want to move to the next project.

I am about to take off on a long trip, taking the train from Saigon to St. Petersburg, stopping a lot along the way, then on to Hamburg and then home.  I have a half-assed plan to write a sequel and have an idea that will develop the characters further - Chubby in particular, focusing on the recent election and some nastiness that will require Chubby and Jim’s girl friend Macy to confront the source of the attack on America’s Democracy.  It is still vague, but I am thinking the trip might flesh out the story.  We’ll see.

So really, I see The SwiftPad Takeover as a prequel to the real story, the coming, as yet unwritten real story.   

Check out the sequel here!The SwiftPad Takeover