The Last Finesse by Brian Bloom @BrianB_Aust

From Chapter 37

‘Gramps wasn’t around anymore. Successful industrialists don’t have time for their daughters. My mother had her hands full with the boys. Teenagers crave attention. That’s all I was doing. It turned out I was quite normal. I finally grew up. Sports were helpful.’

He was as intrigued with her as ever. ‘What kind of sports?’

‘Gymkhana horse riding, till I was 15, and then some board surfing, on the odd occasion, and then, more recently, board sailing. I love to be at one with nature.’ She flicked back her hair and looked up at the sun.

‘So,’ he said in response, ‘we both know how to ride a horse – that’s a start isn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ I guess so, she replied, ‘but I’d rather play golf.’

‘I’d be delighted if you’d play with me,’ he stated enthusiastically. ‘What did you do when you were “finished” at that “finishing school” of yours?’

‘I’ve told you,’ she answered: ‘my old man wanted me “barefoot and pregnant” in the kitchen next door – he thought it was time I settled down. We had a hell of a fight, but I had Guido on my side, and my mother finally came to the party and supported me.

‘I enrolled in a journalism course at Texas U, in Austin. I did quite well. My old man finally acknowledged my existence by coming to my graduation ceremony. And then our relationship became an armed truce, when I “informed” him I’d decided to go out on my own.’ Using her index and middle fingers, she drew quotation marks in the air, around the word “informed”.

‘That wasn’t his idea of how a good Italian woman should conduct herself. I basically told him, “Go fuck yourself!”, but I used more diplomatic language – as they taught me at finishing school. He finally came to realise he’d been a failure as a father, and backed off. From time to time, he still dangles my trust fund in my face, in the hope he can make me see reason and live my life according to his paternal script.’

‘Right,’ Luke acknowledged. ‘And your mother?’

‘Mum died when I was 20, a week before my 21st-birthday party. That rug was also pulled out from under me, and it was the last straw, as far as I was concerned. That’s when I moved to San Francisco to start living my own life properly.

‘That’s also why I wanted to know your views about gay marriage. Like Sydney, San Fran’s got a large gay community, and I’m lucky enough to have a lot of gay friends.’

His ‘naughty streak’ surfaced again. ‘And if you come to live in Australia among the “large gays”?’

She smiled, but was clearly fixated on wrapping up her story. ‘Some of them might miss me.’

‘Did you struggle to get a job?’

‘No,’ she answered, ‘not really. A few doors were opened to me because I topped my class and was the daughter of Louis Marchetti.’

Luke imagined the opening doors, and indulged in a quick fantasy about banging his boys up against her open doors . . . ‘So,’ he remarked, ‘he wasn’t entirely a waste of rations . . . Hang on a second: did you just say you topped your class?’

She had a palpable air of relief that she’d finally told her story. ‘Look, Luke, he’s not really a bad guy; it’s just he’s been hanging on to his old values in the modern world. I’m convinced that somewhere deep inside him, he’s just as sad as I am that we don’t have a relationship. I’m his only daughter. Maybe, if you and I finally get together, it’ll serve as an ice breaker.’

‘You topped your class?’ he persisted.

‘Yes,’ she replied, with a trace of impatience. ‘So what?

He considered his next question. ‘Can I ask you something personal?’

‘Sure,’

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Genre - Conspiracy Thriller

Rating – MA (15+)

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10 things you didn’t know about Beyond Neanderthal from #Thriller #Author Brian Bloom @BrianB_Aust

10 things you didn’t know about Beyond Neanderthal.

1. Beyond Neanderthal  was written and published months before the Global Financial Crisis manifested, but in Chapter 1 it was made clear that a crisis was coming and why.
2. The hilarious scene where Patrick tells Samantha about his experiences on the island of Skiathos actually happened to my wife, Denise and me when we were there on holidays – of course, the way Patrick told it was embellished with author’s license.
3. The story’s insights into Muslim thought processes were partially facilitated by the fact that, for many years, I sat on the Board of Directors of a Muslim family owned business. It was franchisor of kebab stores and it brought me into direct contact with a diverse range of the family’s friends and business associates.
4. The scene with Tara and Patrick flying through the Bermuda triangle describes reported physical results that were claimed to be demonstrated and photographed in laboratory experiments by a Canadian by the name of John Hutchison. Knowing about these experiments I scoured the internet looking for reports regarding the Bermuda Triangle and discovered that every one of Hutchison’s reported experiments had at least one matching story that had been reported by pilots who had flown through the Triangle.
5. The house that Patrick and Tara stayed at in the Samana peninsular actually exists. I wrote to the owner of this holiday home and asked him about terms. The owner – who was an ex airline pilot living in France – was a great help in providing me with details of life in that area.
6. A book called Noah’s Ark and the Ziusudra Epic , by Robert M Best, “presented itself” to me as if synchronously whilst I was writing Beyond Neanderthal. It offered a fascinating view of the Sumerian numbering system that existed at the time of Great Floods that geological research has validated occurred across the planet about 5,000 years ago. Using that numbering system – instead of the decimal system we have today – Best recalculated the ages of all the patriarchs from Noah and before him (including Methuselah) and recalculated the year in which Adam was supposedly born as 3,113 BCE; which happened to coincide exactly with the start date of the Mayan Calendar. I wrote to Best to ask about it and he had never heard of the Mayan Calendar. He said it was “a coincidence”.
7. Speaking of coincidences, Beyond Neanderthal’s original name was “Blue Amber”. A friend and ex-mentor of Denise’s in matters relating to “The Higher Self” had suggested I let my proposed novel be about Blue Amber. I had never heard of Blue Amber and only after I started researching it did the idea of the Bermuda Triangle come to me. As I already had an interest in “alternative energies” I saw how I would be able to craft a story that encompassed both subjects. Philosophical ruminations in my younger years presented me with tangential ideas, and the storyline evolved with other “coincidences” manifesting along the way.
8. Denise was convinced that when I was “in the zone” of writing, I was actually connecting to my Higher Self. I don’t fully understand these things but I mention this because ideas just seemed to flow when I was in the zone. When that happened – which didn’t happen often, but often enough to be remarkable – it was almost as if I was channelling information.
9. I knew that a particular scene was good if it “felt” right. Often I had to rewrite a scene more than once to achieve this outcome. Some parts of the book were written only once whilst others were written and re-written several times.
10. My editor taught me a trick when she was editing the book. When I presented her with the completed manuscript she told me to go through it and highlight the entire manuscript in three colours: “Red” for what had to stay in the storyline on a not negotiable basis, “Orange” for what would be nice to have but not essential, and “Green” for stuff that, if was deleted, I wouldn’t even care. That enabled both me and her to see what was important from a reader’s perspective and made the job of editing much easier. She concentrated on making damned sure that the Red highlighted information was attractive and easy to read and she checked punctuation and sentence structure in the orange colour, often coming up with creative ideas for a scene. Green highlighted wording was treated with less microscopic attention and much of it was deleted.

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Genre – Thriller

Rating – MA (15+)

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Quality Reads UK Book Club Disclosure: Author interview / guest post has been submitted by the author and previously used on other sites.

#Conspiracy #Thriller The Last Finesse by Brian Bloom @BrianB_Aust

In the global corridors of power, a group of faceless men is positioning to usurp control of one of the world’s primary energy resources: uranium. Climate change looms large. Luke Sinclair is a young, Australian-born professor of mineralogy and an expert in the nuclear-fuel cycle. Up to now, he’s led a carefree, hedonistic lifestyle.

But things change: renegade North Korea is about to transfer its illicitly acquired nuclear-weapons technology to Myanmar. The CIA wants to block the development. It enlists the aid of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. ASIS commandeers Luke, who quickly discovers there are wheels within wheels. Who has the real power? Who are his real friends? Is the attempt to corner the nuclear market ‘The last finesse’ of the faceless men who are so fixated on their personal goals they’ll risk a planetary cataclysm? Has ethical behaviour become merely an anachronism in the 21st Century gladiatorial arena?

The Last Finesse is Brian’s second factional novel. Both were written for the simultaneous entertainment and invigoration of the thinking element of society. It is a prequel to Beyond Neanderthal, which takes a visionary view of humanity’s future, provided we can sublimate our Neanderthal drive to entrench pecking orders in society. The Last Finesse is more “now” oriented. Together, these two books reflect a holistic, right brain/left brain view of the challenges faced by humanity; and how we might meet them. All our problems – including the mountain of debt that casts its shadow over the world’s wallowing economy – are soluble.

About the Author:

In 1987, Brian and his young family migrated from South Africa to Australia where he was employed in Citicorp’s Venture Capital division. He was expecting that Natural Gas would become the world’s next energy paradigm but, surprisingly, it was slow in coming. He then became conscious of the raw power of self-serving vested interests to trump what – from an ethical perspective – should have been society’s greater interests.

Eventually, in 2005, with encouragement from his long suffering wife, Denise, he decided to do something about what he was witnessing: Beyond Neanderthal was the result; The Last Finesse is the prequel.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre - Conspiracy Thriller

Rating – MA (15+)

More details about the author

Connect with Brian Bloom on Twitter

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