2017 Silver Medalist for Best West-Mountain Regional Novel
Winner of the 2017 International Book Award for Best Literary Fiction
Finalist for Best NewFiction at the Best Book Awards
Finalist for the Red City Review Best Literary Fiction Award
Forty million people visit Vegas every year but most never get past the strip. What about the people who live there? What brought them there? What keeps them there?
Told from the perspective of a seasoned blackjack dealer, The Investment Club tells the stories of a self-destructive, dwarf entrepreneur, a drug-addicted musical performer-turned-stripper, a retired, widowed New Jersey policeman, a bereaved, divorced female sportscaster, and a card-counting, former Catholic priest before and after their fateful meeting at the El Cortez Casino in downtown Vegas.
As the five learn the greatest return comes from investing in one another, their lives stabilize and take on new, positive directions. But their love and support for each other can take them only so far before they must determine the meaning and value of their own lives.
The Investment Club won a silver medal for best regional fiction in the West – Mountain category in the 21st annual Independent Book Publisher awards announced on Wednesday, April 13th. The IPPY Awards were launched in 1996 and are conducted each year to honor the year’s best independently published books, offering an alternative to “the big five” conglomerated media publishers. These small presses, university presses, and self-publishing services give experimental and entrepreneurial authors a platform.
Out of the 5,000 total entries, 419 medals went to books from 43 U.S. states, 7 Canadian provinces, and 15 countries overseas (led by Australia with 18 medalists). All of the medal-winning books will be celebrated on Tuesday, May 30th, from 6:00-9:30 pm at the 21st Annual IPPY Awards in New York City at the Copacabana (268 W 47th St).
Oh we think we’re so smart. We make so many choices in the course of our days. The positive is the product of our good decisions, and the negative, the result of the bad. But it’s the uncontrollable flow of energy that guides, attracts, and repels us from and to each other to learn what is in us all along.
Passion becomes obsession for a nature photographer, a famous actor, and his agent in modern-day Los Angeles after the photographer inadvertently captures pictures of the actor with an underage starlet.
Focus Lost, scheduled to be published in early 2019, will be Doug’s third book.
We all take probing looks into the mirror, expecting to find life’s elusive truths. We peer deep into the eyes of the person across from us wanting answers. But while the reflection is usually a pronounced part of the plaguing problem, the mirror casts more delusion than truth, creating the deception that we each are a separate existence, isolated and unconnected to others and our surroundings. To bring verity to this self-indulgent fantasy of staring into such a specious speculum, we should strive to see those that anger, frustrate, and are less fortunate than us. We are them, and they are us.
Just little bit farther; wait a little bit longer; one more time, and it’ll happen. Isn’t that what we tell ourselves? Grit, determination, perseverance. That’s the foundation of all success stories, right? But it’s also the script of most abject failures, too. We get so locked in on an idea, a direction, a destination, that we lose all perspective. Stopping would mean that we were misguided or wrong. But in the moments we admit how lost we are is when we may have the most clarity. To go any farther only moves us further away from what we really need.
Life is tough. People, places, experiences, seemingly stack up against us, conspiring to keep us from what we are meant to do. We fight, scratch, and grind, but at every turn, someone or something is ready to foil our progress. It doesn’t matter what we do. The world is against us. But maybe as we toil in the rubble of our attenuate aspiration, we should notice what is common in all these tales of contrived sabotage. Protagonist, antagonist, or supporting character, we are in there somewhere. We may play the victim, but the only thread in all the drama is us.
We want space — to be free and encumbered — to pursue whatever we want and become whomever we desire. But the experience is rife with change, uncertainty, and never-ending challenge. A moment of clarity and achievement quickly becomes despair and failure before we even have time to appreciate what has happened. It is this oscillation between aimless wandering and firm grounding that produces the sense of self we seek. We must rest in all experiences and learn what they have to teach us. In an instant, they’ll be gone, and the chains of responsibility will become our wings of freedom.
Being in front is often mistaken with leadership. But just because a person is ahead of others does not mean one is being a strong leader. So many motivations drive people to leadership positions, unfortunately, the least of which is the wisdom and benevolence needed to guide and direct others. True leaders knows how to achieve individual and group goals from any position. The more leaders are interconnected with their teams, the better they can assess and act in the appropriate way. To feel pressure to be in front is the greatest indication one is not deserving of the position.
