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

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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Beyond Neanderthal by Brian Bloom @BrianB_Aust

From Chapter 12 – Visit to a Blue Amber Mine

As Tara alighted from the vehicle, she found herself facing a ghostly white haze of wispy, low-lying clouds that hung as if suspended in time above the undulating hilltops. The peaks rose from the variegated emerald and olive valley below and stretched into the distance amid a virginal mixture of lush equatorial undergrowth. She drew a deep, involuntary breath.

‘Wow!’ There were no other words to describe the feeling of awe-inspired privilege that washed over her. The vista was about as far removed from Central Park as a New York city skyscraper was from the little pastel coloured huts lining the Carretera Turística.

Aurelio smiled. Intuitively, he seemed to understand that the most appropriate response to this magnificent sight was silence. It was a full two minutes before Tara gathered her thoughts.

‘Let’s get going,’ she said.

They made their way carefully—gingerly climbing over dead logs, negotiating their way around rocky outcrops, and grabbing onto available plant life to steady themselves as they walked and stumbled their way towards the valley below. On either side of the track, a mixture of tall, fronded plants grew in an array of shapes and sizes beside stunted and gnarled old trees with deep green foliage. Tara thought of the trees like friendly bystanders, their leafy branches protectively shading Aurelio and her from much of the glaring sunshine above. They came across a trickling stream, which they followed for a while; Tara ever mindful and vigilant, watching for any sign of wildlife in the undergrowth. Except for the background humming of insects, the occasional noisy squawking of a flock of parrots flying past overhead and, once, the silent imprint of a shoe sole on the muddy banks of the stream, they seemed to be alone.

Then, in a clearing, they came across a group of young men standing seemingly relaxed and chatting. A few feet away, under a lean-to made of branches and palm fronds, one of them squatted while cooking something on a small paraffin or gas stove. Aurelio and Tara had arrived at the mine.

Again, there was a short conversation in Spanish. Again, there was a wrinkling of noses followed by broad smiles of understanding and agreement. There were also some side comments and laughter amongst the men. The word ‘gringa’—foreigner from America—came up a couple of times. Tara thought she also heard the words ‘bonita’, and ‘sexual’, but she couldn’t be sure. She decided to keep a slight distance for the time being. They were in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest civilization.

Aurelio walked back towards her. ‘They will be happy to show you around, but we should remember our time limitations. We cannot spend more that half an hour here if we are to return to Santo Domingo before dark.’

‘Are you trying to protect me from these guys?’ she asked with a smile. Aurelio looked embarrassed.

‘What’s he cooking?’ she asked to change the subject. ‘It smells great.’

‘That is called arroz con abichuelas, a mixture of rice and beans. He is probably cooking some small pieces of beef with it, but it could be any meat.’

‘Can one buy that in a restaurant in Santo Domingo?’

‘Of course, but not exactly the same. This is a local dish for locals. To sell food like this to tourists would be like offering leftovers to your guests. It would not be right. In the restaurants it is much more carefully presented and is usually served with salads.’

The word ‘dignity’ popped into Tara’s mind. Aurelio seemed to have it, and that was what she had seen on the faces of the fruit vendor and the amber polisher and, now, even the miners as she approached them. Other than their initial jocularity, they seemed to consider her as their guest and themselves as hosts who happily welcomed visitors into their world. The men were just being men.

As they approached the entrance to the mine, a happy looking miner wearing a backward facing baseball cap sat with a short-handled pick in one hand, a lump of soft rock in the other.

‘Hola, señorita,’ he said, grinning broadly.

She smiled back at him, lifted her hand in greeting, but continued to follow Aurelio to the mine entrance. It was like standing at the entrance to the burrow of a large animal.

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Rating – MA (15+)

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Brian Bloom & The Hardest Part of #Writing "Beyond Neanderthal" @BrianB_Aust #AmReading

What was the hardest part of writing this book?
Given that both my novels were based on fact, and that the facts were not in my field of expertise, I had to go to enormous lengths to find mentors who could guide me in subjects like religion and science in general and energy and climate change in particular. Relative to actually writing the story, the research was probably 85% of the problem.

I spent 10 years of my life as a member of the Board of Directors of a Muslim family owned company and this was of enormous assistance in allowing me to understand the Muslim way of looking at life. It did not happen by accident. I told the elder statesman of the family when we first became business associates that one of my objectives was to learn about Islamic culture even though this particular family was not religious in the formal sense. He was/is a true gentleman and also a sort of elder statesman in his community. We developed a strong relationship of trust and I believe I helped him significantly in his business. Over the years I came to understand that the “traditional” Muslim values and the “traditional” Jewish values are very similar. But it took over a decade. I already had a personal relationship with a highly respected Catholic priest, who kindly gave me invaluable guidance as to the Christian perspective.

Similarly, it took around four years under tutelage of my world-class scientific mentor for me to finally get to grips with the issues surrounding nuclear energy, over-unity electromagnetic energy and climate change.

As I had spent over 30 years in and around the finance industry, the central banking and economic issues were “my meat” so to speak, but it had taken a huge amount of research over a period of 20 years to finally understand what really drives the global economy; and it was quite frightening to discover that the central bankers don’t really understand the implications of what they have been doing. Effectively, their actions have been blocking the arrival of (meaningful) new energy paradigms. By analogy, we are travelling in dangerously shallow economic waters which are hiding exceptionally sharp rocks from view; and largely without either a compass or sonar.

Ultimately, the fact is that “energy” is what drives the world economy and that’s why both my novels focus on alternative energies to fossil fuels. Writing the fictional stories was the fun part. But even that took me a couple of years to master under the tutelage of Beyond Neanderthal’s editor/publisher. The big challenge in writing the books (the other 15% of the work) was how to communicate all the facts without boring the reader to tears. That’s why my stories lean heavily on humour and on the very human interactions and adventures of the attractive characters. I also rely a lot on travelogue type writing, where I take the reader to exotic places. If the books are ever made into movies, those movies will be visually unusually compelling in those scenes.

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
Abso-defi-lutely-nitely yes! The whole point of writing those novels was to communicate a primary message of hope, flowing from the subsidiary messages which define the seven “core” problems facing 21^st century humanity and present some potential solutions to those problems. To find out what those seven core problems are, you will have to read the novels.

Will you write others in this same genre?
My books fall within various genres and it depends on who is the potential reader as to what genre I choose to emphasise. “Conspiracy Thriller” is the main genre of both books – because the largest selling novel of all time (The Da Vinci Code) fell into that category with around 80 million books sold.

Another main genre is “Sci-Fi Thriller”, and I have tried to model my work loosely on Michael Crichton’s work, because he sold around 100 million copies of all his books combined during his career. However, given the intent of the third (as yet unwritten book) these two genres will be inappropriate. Other genres that I have focused on in my first two books are “Science Fiction” , “Adventure”, “Spiritual”, all of which will be appropriate for my third book. I may have to read Jules Verne’s various books again because his work was oriented towards what the future might look like; but I will be emphasising the value hierarchy of society that I believe will exist in the future, after the dust has settled following the next – and final – down leg of the Global Financial Crisis.

Did you learn anything from writing this book and what was in it?
Again, abso-defe-lutely-nitely yes! We have talked about the “hardest” part of writing the books. Well, overcoming those obstacles required me to climb a steep learning curve on all fronts.

How much of the book is realistic?
Where the science is concerned, all of it as far as I have been able to validate it.

Ditto where the modern day central banking/economic situation is concerned
Ditto where the subject of religion is concerned.

I have used author’s license in interpreting the meaning of some of the biblical passages to which I referred, but even that is within the bounds of reasonable probability. For example, by cross referencing selected information in the ancient tomes of the various religions across the planet, I was able to arrive at a startling conclusion that is objectively defensible and, to my knowledge, no one else has arrived at this same conclusion – yet.

The stories are totally fictional but, again, they are based on carefully researched fact. For example, the little town in the Dominican Republic is just as I have described it in Beyond Neanderthal, right down to the names of the owners of the various retail outlets. It is a matter of fact that the experiences of the two main characters as they flew through the Bermuda Triangle were capable of replication in a laboratory. Indeed, what I described was drawn from those laboratory experiments as augmented by actually reported Bermuda Triangle incidents. For another example, the intentions of the military Junta in Myanmar (in The Last Finesse) were deduced from carefully researched fact as provided by the Democratic Voice of Burma, amongst other sources. This begs the question as to whether the military Junta has genuinely let go of the reins of power when they allowed democracy to prevail, or whether they have just changed tactics.

There is an energy force in the world—known to the Ancients—that has largely escaped the interest of the modern day world. Why? There are allusions to this energy in the Chinese I-Ching, in the Hebrew Torah, in the Christian Bible, in the Hindu Sanskrit Ramayana and in the Muslim Holy Qur’an. Its force is strongest within the Earth’s magnetic triangles. 

Near one of these–the Bermuda Triangle–circumstances bring together four very different people. Patrick Gallagher is a mining engineer searching for a viable alternative to fossil fuels; Tara Geoffrey, an airline pilot on holidays in the Caribbean; Yehuda Rosenberg, a physicist preoccupied with ancient history; and Mehmet Kuhl, a minerals broker, a Sufi Muslim with an unusual past. Can they unravel the secrets of the Ancients that may also hold the answer to the future of civilization? 

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. 

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. 

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Genre – Thriller

Rating – MA (15+)

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