AUTHOR INTERVIEW: 'The Investment Club' Doug Cooper
Doug Cooper is the author of
the award-winning novel Outside In and The Investment Club
available October 2016. He has a BS in Mathematics Education from Miami
University and a MA in American Studies from Saint Louis University. Always searching, he has traveled to over twenty
countries on five continents, exploring the contradictions between what we
believe and how we act in the pursuit of truth, beauty, and love. Originally
from Port Clinton, Ohio, he has also called Cleveland, St.
Louis, Detroit, New York, and Oslo, Norway home. He now lives in Cleveland working on his third novel Focus Lost.
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About the Book:
Forty million people visit Vegas every year but most never
get past the strip. What about the people
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.
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Q: Welcome to The Writer's
Life! Now that your book has been
published, we’d love to find out more about the process. Can we begin by having you take us at the
beginning? Where did you come up with
the idea to write your book?
A: The typical Vegas story —
the bachelor party, wedding, or other two to three-day excursion has been
overdone. During a visit and seeing all the tourists and excessive
entertainment, I looked past the extravagance and became interested in the
people who lived there — were they born there, what brought them there, why did
they stay? I wanted to tell the stories of several people from different
backgrounds who had moved there. I rotated the points of view from character to
character but kept the story anchored in the common perspective of a native
blackjack dealer while contrasting the concepts of gambling and investing from
a financial and personal angle.
Q: How hard was it to write a
book like this and do you have any tips that you could pass on which would make
the journey easier for other writers?
A: The main challenge in
telling a story with multiple characters and rotating points of view that I
have recognized in other books is that one or two characters will dominate the
story and the other characters are under-represented. To mitigate this, I
created extensive character psychological profiles and built the stories
separately as rows in a spreadsheet one on top of the other with each chapter
being a column about that character. If one story extended significantly
farther across the worksheet, then I focused on the other characters to develop
their stories more. As the individual stories unfolded, intersection points
emerged that became opportunities for the characters to interact with one
another.
Q: Who is your publisher and
how did you find them or did you self-publish?
A: Rare Bird Books in LA is my
publisher. Their publicity division Rare Bird Lit did the publicity for my
first book Outside In, which I did a hybrid deal for the hardcover with
Greenleaf Book Group and won three literary fiction awards for in 2013-14. When
finished with my second book (this book), The Investment Club, Rare Bird
proffered a contract to publish it along with the paperback of Outside In.
Q: Is there anything that
surprised you about getting your first book published?
A: Each step of the process, I
thought the hard work was behind me from coming up with the idea to writing the
first draft to editing to finding a publisher and on to marketing and selling.
But each step is progressively more difficult rather than easier. The work
always seems to grow.
Q: What other books (if any)
are you working on and when will they be published?
A: My next book, for which I’m
doing the final rewriting, is called Focus Lost about when passion
becomes obsession for nature photographer Gabe Adams, famous actor Levi Combs,
and his agent Eva Florez after Gabe inadvertently captures pictures of Levi
with underage starlet Emily James. It’s set in Los Angeles and is
loosely patterned after Paradise Lost with Levi representing the devil,
Gabe as Adam, and Eva as Eve.
Q: What’s one fact about your
book that would surprise people?
A: In The Investment Club,
every chapter opens with the day and date and the Dow Jones open and it
closes with the Dow Jones close from that date to orient the story since the
timeline moves back and forth through time and place. What people may not
realize is that I did the research to ensure the Dow Jones numbers, weather,
and news referred to in the story are the actual numbers and events from that
day.
Q: Finally, what message (if
any) are you trying to get across with your book?
A: The greatest return in our
lives comes from investing in each others’ lives.
Q: Thank you again for this
interview! Do you have any final words?
A: It’s so easy to get caught
up in what we want or don’t have, but most important is what we can do for each
other.
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