Not quite lost the plot

Still here. Still writing. Writer’s block? Sort of.

Me and my Mac

I spent most of the end of the previous week and the beginning of last week with a sick Mac. I don’t know about you but it’s my equivalent of being up with a sick child except that it costs more. It seems Microsoft Office doesn’t like the Mac or the Mac doesn’t like it and anyway the uphot is I lost my email addresses (though yours are on the web). Of course I couldn’t write and I will admit it was very disruptive.

So anyway we are here. It’s Saturday and I’m back to work, having realised that I want the novel to take on more of the tone of the semi-thriller it is. I’m wondering if my agent made a huge mistake in taking me away from that which was my original intent. In any case she is useless. They all are. Tell your daughters to become engineers. Meanwhile I return to the novel and thank you muchly for your support.

Writing on the fly: questions of pace

For the past two days we’ve been working on the next chapter. It’s one of the pivotal ones where the strands pull together – several of them. It also steps up the pace. During the process we wondered if we could’ve paced the last chapter better, i.e faster. It may not have been so necessary to have it as detailed.

 But that is what happens when you’re writing on the fly and not doing fifteen iterations and then having an editor look over it. Mind you we’re pretty critical. So anyway, right now the third chapter is being edited and emails/acts of god permitting it will be out for Saturday. 

We have a couple of publishers interested but will keep you in the loop as and when on that one. 

Ms R.

Ch:2 A taster. Bonus Day

The gym was never really crowded except for two weeks before the
firm’s Christmas party. That was when the young single women in the firm
decided they’d better be at their best if they were going to pull themselves
a star banker. The dealing room dollies had been assiduously  working on
their campaigns all year. Their job description was muddy: these were pretty
girls hired to fetch and carry and keep the morale of the trading room up,
and a few other things besides. American investment banks were particularly
partial to them and the girls themselves were happy to be there. In fact the
job was much sought after since it brought them one step closer to their aim
of shagging and bagging a man who could increase the limit on their credit
card to platinum, maybe even titanium levels.

These were not stupid females. Their single-minded ruthlessness in tempting
and taming their prey was truly a wonder to behold and, depending on which
way you looked at it, a great leap forward for feminism or a slap in its confused
face.

David had never really been inclined towards supping from the office
smorgasbord but that was par for the course where his colleague, Drew
Pierson was concerned. David had been on the running machine for ten
minutes at a highly respectable 14.5 kph, steadily running up an imaginary
incline to nowhere when he saw Drew stumble through the door, looking
somewhat deshabille. Drew worked alongside him as Head of Sales for Rates
and Commodities for EMEA; a job that, amongst other things, allowed him
to indulge his passion for eating and talking, preferably for several hours at
a time. He was an exuberant character who knew how to make food, wine
and conversation flow easily, and his love of a good night out was legendary
both among his colleagues and clients.

“What the hell is he doing in the gym,” wondered David. “He’s probably taken on
some stupid bet with some of the guys.” Bankers love to bet on things: it’s an
extension of what they do all day anyway and it alleviates the boredom of looking
at screens all day. It also plays to their competitive instincts.

Four weeks ago a group of traders on David’s desk had staked money on who
could lose the most weight in a week. The objective wasn’t weight loss; that was merely a side issue. No the point was to win the bet and to that end they each
resorted to every trick in the book – diuretics, laxatives, steam baths – all of which
left a few of them barely able to function. But anything was worth it to win. One of
them, the  youngest of the group, was found semi-conscious on the floor in the
toilets  by a fellow competitor who’d gone in to throw up, but otherwise they
seemed to carry on with their work without missing a beat.

The challenge was eventually won by a German stalking horse who,
having been in fourth place for most of the week, mysteriously posted a
stupendous 2kg loss in the last two days. Turned out he’d visited a Harley St
Clinic for one of those instant lunchtime liposuction sessions. Drastic? No,
this was banking remember. Nothing was too extreme if you wanted to win.

Two chapters instead of one

Hello, after a struggle with email you should have all received a chapter on the weekend. And we’re aiming for another one by the end of this week.

Thank you for reading.  We hope to continue in timely fashion as the plot thickens.

Ms R

Taster: Chapter 1 and what comes next

Here are some excerpts from Chapter 1 which has just been sent out. It has a lot more background to the character of course but here’s a taster for you.

“Raef had assumed they’d put him on the trading desk but Sherman
Stein immediately parachuted him into sales where they knew his father’s
connections would come in very useful to them. It was 1984, Raef was 22
and the world’s financial markets were responding to deregulation, a word
that twenty-five years later would take on almost sinister meaning and put
the banks in the same public mindset as serial killers.

Though it didn’t demand someone with Raef’s academic record to handle sales,
it did require someone with the skill to instinctively read clients, understand
them and manipulate them. A salesman’s job was to gain trust, to make his
clients feel loved, so that they believed they were being offered the
opportunity of a lifetime. This was Raef’s rightful domain: he was a natural
who could easily persuade a client they had all the information they needed
to buy a piece of shit they really didn’t have a clue about.

From here on in, Raef couldn’t put a foot wrong, not least when he
advised his clients that it might be a good idea to sell their stocks right before
the market crashed in late 1987. It was a move that would guarantee their
loyalty for several years to come and one that made Raef one of the golden
boys at Sherman Stein. In 1989 The Wall St Journal featured him in an article
on New York’s hottest bachelors entitled “Rare Breeds: They’re Sexy, Smart
and Loaded.”

Raef was now the head marketer in Sherman Stein’s Fixed Income
operation and a major player. Working with traders who traded the bank’s
own money and not just that of its clients, he realised this was his chance to
make serious money for the bank’s stockholders but more importantly for himself.

In 1993, he heard about something potentially very exciting. It was called Long Term
Capital Management and it was a hedge fund being set up by a group of
mainly ex-Salomon Brothers bankers. Headed by famed Salomon Bond
Trader, John Meriwether, Long Term Capital Management had an all star
board including Nobel prize-winning economists Myron Scholes and Robert
Merton. This was big news. Meriwether had been forced to resign from
Salomon after his head of trading was found guilty of falsifying bids for US
government Treasury bonds.

Hedge funds were still relatively new. They were being set up by
entrepreneurial bankers who felt shackled by the constraints of working in
traditional investment banking structures and who resented the steep
regulations that governed banking.

Hedge funds were free to invest without many of those restrictions and
the bankers who went into them saw themselves as mavericks, loners and
frequently, geeks who saw themselves as pioneers of a new American
dream. Raef had thought about it and the freedom appealed to him. On the
other hand he felt comfortable in corporate life: he knew how to operate and
he got a thrill from manipulating the structures, processes and people in a
massive operation and making them work to his advantage.”

Those who’ve forgone the calorie laden Frothyfrippylatte or two (remember chubby is not fashionable and Beth Ditto is not a role model) and signed up will have met Raef. He’s the privileged son of a Wall St grandee whose path to Harvard and then to top tier bank Sherman Stein was pretty much assured. And of course he’s Jewish enough to make it count. Raef is damaged goods emotionally though and when you mix that with a certain brilliance and make him head of Prime Brokerage anything can happen.

And it will. 

Next you’ll meet our chief protagonist, Eton educated prop trader, David Taylor.  After that we’ll be setting the scene with Raef’s trophy wife Flick and David’s mercenary NY lawyer girlfriend Sarah. And of course the PA who ends up working for Raef because she has a double First in Modern Languages but wants to be in Arts Administration. She ends up next to him. But she wishes she was closer.

Anyway, back to work. The hedgie was supposed to have updated the donatometer but he’s probably snorting coke off the body of some barely legal girl. I must find him.

The experiment explained

I think it’s worth clarifying the serialisation on the net. This novel is with an agent, however like all novels it is going back and forth. Anyone who knows anything about publishing will know that it’s very much decided by genre. Most novels are read by women and publishing wisdom dictates that they ideally  require women characters to be in the forefront, chick lit style. The subject matter here means that the women don’t take an obvious leading role  but do play a big part as trophy wife, mistress/girlfriend and twisted marketing girl. This has led to some discussions with my agent about whether the women play a big enough part and whether the financial story is too much for them rather than say a book called Hedge Fund Handbags. So we are here now.

If you want highly researched non-fiction accounts of the credit crunch or banker confessions that ramble on about CDO’s in lecture 101 style, I believe they’re out there. And if you want city boy style bravado it’s there too. As for this,  it’s populist entertainment but with the advantage of being informed by real stories and real players in the hedge fund business, so that those in the know can nod while those who aren’t can just enjoy a story.

Publishing a populist book is about getting media attention and and the net is as good a way as any of doing so.

So far around 100 people have donated, some very generously. Thank you all and also for your ideas and stories. As I said, it’s an experiment.

Lunch with Ms R

That’s what the hedgefunder suggested. I replied that he was trying to pimp me. These banking types have no morals which is why I’m writing a novel based on them. Of course with every banker comes a trophy wife who is a writer’s dream. Flick Savage is a melange of all the stupid, conniving, blonde, white jean wearing women you see in West London or on the Upper East Side. She dabbles in a children’s wear shop and at some point will probably have an op to get her vagina tightened after having two children. The fact that she had caesarians is of course irrelevant.  She’s everything I hate to love and you’ll meet her soon.

Anyway back to lunch. I’m not sure if that’s fair for my American readers who are in the majority. (I really think I should move to NY). Meanwhile thank you to everyone who’s joined in. Someone asked what happens if the book gets published. It may well do in which case you will all get a free copy. That is only fair. But publishing takes time and this is turning out to be lots of fun.

If you like what you’re reading please email me  theladyrobinsonatyahoo.com and let me know. Or if you have any other questions or thoughts.

Ms Robinson

The story begins

We are up. We have written. We have edited. We have agonised over proofing. And we are in your inbox. Everyone who has subscribed should now have the first chapter. If not please drop me an email theladyrobinson@yahoo.com and I will fix. Many thanks to everyone who has bought in and to those who’ve donated extra, I hope you enjoy it as much as my occasional rude dinner partner and barrister from hell,  Geeklawyer, who said

“Brilliant. Short, compelling.” He offered to say more but only if I slept with him unfortunately.

The prologue is up. Meanwhile here is an excerpt from the first chapter. To get the whole thing you’ll have to subscribe.

Same price as a frothy latte frappilatte but no calories and far more satisfying.

“From here on in, he couldn’t put a foot wrong, not least when he advised his clients that it might be a good idea to sell their stocks right before the market crashed in late 1987. It was a move that would guarantee their loyalty for several years to come and one that made him one of the golden boys at Sherman Stein. In 1989 The Wall St Journal featured him in an article on New York’s hottest bachelors entitled “Rare Breeds: They’re Sexy, Smart and Loaded.”

At college Raef had never chased women. However since women chased him it was a moot point. He dated a slew of Ivy League girls, young women who came stamped with a Triple A rating, each more brilliant and gorgeous than the last. They never lasted long because he dumped them when they got too close and he felt himself crossing the dangerous line from lust into really liking them. Without questioning why, he knew that he had no desire to put his heart on the table so a woman could shred it to pieces. Although he preferred the company of women who could match him intellectually, he found them problematic since they would never settle for what they just saw; they would always want to know more. When he found it all too much he sought sex with hookers. They didn’t ask questions and they didn’t try and tweak his emotions out of him. You just got what you wanted and left.

If you could put up with the histrionics and the odd bit of stupidity, then New York socialites were much the same way. And with the lovelies of New York throwing themselves at him, it would have been silly of him not to take advantage of the Muffys, Samanthas, Tinsleys, Torys and Blaires (and the odd Aurelia) who planted themselves in his eyeline.

“God that man is SO the best fuck in New York” said Aerin Winslow, heiress to the Winslow pharmaceutical fortune.

“And the Hamptons” added a pal. “Do you think anyone gets to sleep with him twice?”

They rarely did of course. But this didn’t affect his reputation, only enhanced it. One of his former female colleagues observed that only he was capable of casting a girl adrift and making her believe it was a good thing.”

A very modern novel

No it’s not just that Toxic People is about people that many of you hate and some of you wish you were. Not at all. It’s this: Because it’s available via online subscription and in neat little chunks it is the novel for our modern time poor age. Our thoughtful delivery of chapters to your inbox means you have lots of time to read and need never get that feeling of “Oh my god, this book is beyond me” and begin resenting it as it gathers dust begging you to finish it. No, that will never happen with Toxic People.

Instead, you have this nice neat PDF waiting for you when say, you are having a break from writing inane things on Twitter or playing World of Warcraft.

See, Toxic People fits into your very modern life. The fact that it’s about very modern, rich, greedy people, lots of modern sex and a terribly modern credit crunch is almost irrelevant. Sign up now or be left in the dark.

See donations page for details.