· Tell us a little bit about your main characters
The Phoenix Year is a love
story set in turbulent economic times where the main characters are forced to
come to terms with the their own past lives – Michael had inadvertently set in
motion the events that lead to the collapse of the global market at the end of
the first book; Natalya had to face the fact that she had been used badly by
her father for his own purposes leaving with a divided loyalty to the America
she loved and the Russia of her birth; Kim had to deal with the damage done
when she was a prostitute in Bangkok as she investigated the links between
kidnapped children of executives providing inside information to some shadowy
conspiracy; Ben and Lilly Masters and their wayward daughter Beth faced the
fact that they did once truly love each other when all the cards were dealt
against them sending them from the heights of the New York society to the
lowest depths which anyone can fall.
· Describe your ideal writing spot.
I write fiction for relaxation. Much
of my work involves building and analyzing large scale multi-product,
multi-country data sets and trying to understand the how they fit together. I
find if I can alternate while I thinking, plot lines and character development
it is relaxing. So I usually keep open several windows on my computer to allow
me to move from sometimes rather difficult economic analyses to the world of
fiction were I can be in control of scene, plot, and character
development.
· How do you keep busy when not writing?
I own and manage a well-regarded
global economic practice involving working with large scale models and data
bases combining information from clients with data developed by international
organizations. QuERIdata.com is a website that allows companies and individuals
to buy this data in an easy to access format. I also work on complex consulting
projects for clients throughout the world.
· If you could have any superhuman ability, what would you choose
and why?
To change and influence minds that
are made up. A superhero who need not fight because he can turn a villain into
a saint would be the most powerful superhero of all times.
· What book are you reading now?
Paul Erdman’s The Crash of
’79 which was published in 1976. I met Paul and his wife Heidi in
England when I was on my honeymoon just after he had managed to get out of a
Swiss jail where he was accused of bank fraud when his Basel based bank failed
under the weight of trying to corner the cocoa market. The earliest version of
my own book started while in Switzerland when I worked for the United Nations
(1974 – 1978). As a read for the first time The Crash of 1979, I
see that my own style is more about character development around a global
conspiracy plot theme. What is interesting is that much of what Erdman wrote
and published in 1976 involving Iranian nuclear weapons is the stuff of
everyday life today. In Erdman’s book it is the Shah of Iran who acquires
nuclear weapons rather than the Revolutionary Government of Iran. Erdman’s book
also involved asking questions about how long capitalism as it existed back in
the 1970’s could long endure.
· What makes The Phoenix Year unique?
It is a love story set in our times.
The events of the past few years—starting with the Dot-com bubble burst and
9/11 through the financial recession to today’s volatile stock market and
collapsing oil prices – are all part of the underlying story of the book. At
the same time it deals with real people who recognize that whatever has
happened in the past few years with the millions made homeless and millions
losing their jobs and homes is nothing compared to what is planned by a group
of wealthy, seemingly altruistic billionaires who set out to change the world
by setting a tsunami to destroy Wall Street oriented managerial capitalism.
What they do to try to stop what will be worse coming and how they must come to
grips with the fact that they alone can’t stop the inevitable but must try to
live with it and use it for food is the heart and soul of the story. In the
end, really, I wrote it as a love story between two people who come from very
different worlds but find redemption in working together.
· Why should readers of thrillers and general fiction pick
up The Phoenix Year?
People relate to thrillers because it
offers escape into a world that is mainly fantasy. But the economic events that
have changed people’s lives since the collapse in 2008 are real events. The
Phoenix Year is a thriller that I believe everyone can understand for the
consequences are often times far more damaging to futures that some global
cataclysm averted. It has all the elements of a thriller – a potent love
story between two different people, secret agents, sexual enslavement, insider
trading, financial manipulations that will lead to damaging global prosperity,
a storyline that races from Thailand to the heights of the Alps, but unlike
most thrillers, the heroes, at least in the first novel of the trilogy, can’t
stop the disaster that was started by the conspirators from unfolding as
planned. Instead they must try to ride the tiger until they can use the
power obtained to try to turn what is a negative – a sudden, total, collapse of
world stock exchanges with the loss of trillions of dollars of wealth -- into a
positive for the world economy.
· Where are you from?
I grew up in Washington, D.C., did
graduate study in economics in New York, worked in Switzerland, and later returned
to Washington where I worked first as the Senior Economist at the Pentagon, and
later as a private consultant in Washington, D.C. I now manage my own
consulting company out of a home in beautiful Santa Fe, New Mexico.
· When did you first start writing The Phoenix Year?
The earliest draft of what would
later morph into the Phoenix Year. It was written while in
Switzerland in the midst of the first developing country debt crisis (1976-78).
It was written in a period before word processors. Later it was rewritten
around 1986 during the next economic crisis on a word processor, and every few
years, when the global economic system seemed on the verge of collapse, it was
pulled out as a kind of tonic for my own worries and revised. This last version
of the story shifts the time line forward to the 2015-16 period with most
revisions made during the 2012-13 time period prior to
publication.
· Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
I hope the reader takes away aside
from a good story and interesting characters that the book has a message and a
goal. It is the first of two additional parts explaining how it might be
possible to solve some of the pressing problems that come from the style of
capitalism that has been practiced during the second half of the twentieth
century. Capitalism defined by short-term goals to meet profit targets tends to
create the paradox – strong profits combined with weak economic growth, high
rates of unemployment, stagnant wages, and a growing divide between the 1% and
the 99%. If not changed and altered, then it leads to economic stagnation or
worse social revolution. The members of the Society of the Phoenix set out to
destroy Wall Street capitalism because they saw it as the only way to break the
cycle. Michael and Natalya, as the reluctant heirs, must turn their flawed
vision into a reality if only to stop the global economy from totally
collapsing. The last time that happened 50 million people were killed as
nations went to war for social and economic supremacy in 1939.
· You specialize in economics in your day job. Was this the
inspiration for the book?
Yes, economics is the driving force
for the world. It impacts everyone. Explaining what happened starting
really in 2001 with the collapse of the Dot-com bubble and the terrorist
attacks of September 11th in terms that everyone can understand
without being pedantic. There is a serious malaise that is gripping the world
as if all the issues that from global climate change to poverty and stagnation
have become obvious and unsolvable. There are solutions and it provides at
least one possible path that may turn the negatives that end the first volume
into positives that allow the human race to survive and prosper in the 21st century
and beyond.
· Do you feel that the book is prophetic especially with the
crisis in Europe and recently, in China?
The major events of 2015 and likely on into 2016 – from the
collapse of the oil price, the volatility and decline from highs in world stock
exchanges, the rapid slowdown in Asia, especially in China, and the continued
problems in Europe, are part of the story line in the novel. The
story was finalized in 2012-2013 and published in 2014 at the time the price of
crude oil was over $ 100 a barrel.
· What books have most influenced your life most?
Atlas Shrugged was a major influence, not because I liked the principle of
greed and self-interest as the only noble sentiments for rich and poor alike,
but because Ayn Rand was an amazing story teller. She made you feel the
depression and the hopelessness of the main characters. You could even root for
John Galt and the other “industrialists” returning to save the world from their
retreat in Happy Valley.
· If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a
mentor?
I’ve read a number of books by Mark
Helprin and especially loved In Sunlight and Shadow.
If I could learn to craft fiction with the care for dialogue, story and
words, beautiful words, then I would become a far better writer. So If I could
ask for a mentor, it would be him.
The Phoenix Year
David Blond
Genre: thriller
Publisher: Wattle Publishing
Date of Publication: 2014
Number of pages: 332
Word Count: approx. 125,000
Book Description:
“… from out of the fire, would rise a new order, like the legend of the phoenix.
There would emerge a new world, a new super economy…”
So starts a sequence of events destined to rock world economies to their very core. On the 50th anniversary of their induction into the Society of the Phoenix, a group of billionaires is about to change the world dramatically, with devastating effect.
Overseen by the reclusive Heinrich Von Kleise, the Society has hatched an audacious plan to subvert world economies, by using and abusing some of the world’s wealthiest businessmen and their families; in some cases, holding them literally to ransom, or worse.
Michael Ross, an economic advisor to the US President, Ben Masters, a disgraced property tycoon, Natalya Avramowitz, a Russian economist and spy, and “Kim” a CIA Agent, find themselves at the center of this plot, involving inside trading, sex slavery, and political corruption.
As the world careens towards financial Armageddon, can Michael, Natalya and Kim prevent global disintegration, or are the world’s financial institutions fated to implode?
The Phoenix Year by David L. Blond is a gripping novel, encompassing many of the financial crises that have hit the headlines in the past decade. The author has skillfully woven these together to create an action-packed conspiracy thriller.
About the Author:
Dr. David L. Blond works as a private economic consultant specializing in quantitative analysis of economic data. He began his career working for the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. During the period of 1978 – 1985, he was a Senior Economist in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in Washington, and after leaving that position worked for various major global economic forecasting and consulting firms in senior positions. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Twitter: @davidblond2000
Publisher Twitter: @wattlepub
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