World, Writing, Wealth discussion

We would like to know you a little better. Please, introduce yourself and share what made you join. No formal CV/resume or last tax return are required -:)

I have spent the last 30 years running a small private research company, attempting to promote new business ventures. I have used some of my experience to assist in devising plot background in my futuristic novels, which tend to involve economic background, and in one case (my Red Gold) I outlined the basis of one form of fraud. I loved "The Big Short". I hope to find some more inspiration for further novels from the group.

Welcome to the group, Ian!
As we are going to focus here on economic issues and I mean less trivial aspects thereof (we are not Financial times after all), I hope you'll have enough materials and inspiration for your further projects.
I see that you already have 12 distinct works, which is quite an achievement in itself. Well done!
If you have some economic knowledge or observations that you feel like sharing, we'd appreciate

Thanks, Nik. At the moment I am associated with a crowd funding attempt to get a venture off the ground. If it works, there could well be plenty of material. I gave a brief blog background to the venture at https://wordpress.com/post/ianmillerb...

Couldn't follow the link, because it required from me logging in on the wordpress, but I saw your blog on your profile page..
Sounds like an interesting project and good luck with crowd funding for it!
It's quite exciting to have these relatively new options for raising capital like crowd-funding, lending clubs and more.. They represent a viable alternative to the trad banks and venture capital funds and, who knows, may even put some of them out of business one day..

Interesting. Wonder if it is through the way I resented the link. Could you try
http://ianmillerblog.wordpress.com
and see what happens? Thanks.

Tried. Now it works and brings me to cat paradox -:)

Hi, I'm Kat. I know Nik from another group and am curious to see what he'll do with this group. Having a place to discuss money sounds a good idea.

Welcome to the group, Kat and everyone who joined recently!
Glad to greet you here.
I didn't have any specific agenda on my mind, but I also thought that money, money-making, sometimes money-stealing deserved a place of their own at such a popular site. More so, since so many books and movies are dedicated to the same issues and to the heroes and anti-heroes, who made it big time or attempted to.
In order to try to achieve something grandiose, we might as well start from something. We can touch here very serious issues of whether modern societies and global architecture are in good shape and whether anything should be done to improve them, as well as much lighter and humorous aspects of enrichment and super-rich and super-poor, so we won't discriminate.
By the way, anyone who wants to share how to make money, save money, spend it or live without it, is most welcome to share or to bring up any issue or question.
Feel free to invite friends, even if they are billionaires -:) Our gates are open for everyone, including Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Jan Koum, William Gates, Lakshmi Mittal, Jack Ma and others.

Hi I'm Mehreen. I reviewed Nik's book and loved it.

Welcome, Mehreen! Thanks for joining and your kind words about my book.
I should add that Mehreen is a successful author of both fiction and non-fiction, who traveled extensively and looked into different cultures and history

Yes, you may say that. Except, I wish I was as successful as I want to be.

The sky is the limit and wishing more is the best driver for achievements -:) . Per aspera ad astra

I sincerely wish everybody here every bit of success, further progress and not less importantly that the way to new milestones will be enjoyable

Same to you too, Nik. Thanks

Welcome, Denise! Thanks for accepting the invitation.
You contribute a lot by availing fellow authors the opportunity to introduce themselves and their work at your site. It's not necessarily about arguing and debating here although these are welcome too, but rather about making money, about positive and negative sides of it and about literary angle, of course. The best outcome of participating in this group would be, if we all get rich and those who are already rich - richer, but if have some fun, meet people or just exchange useful or interesting info here, it would also be something -:)

I doubt this will get us rich, but I intend to at least enjoy myself. I would like to sell more ebooks, but if I do not, it is hardly the end of the world.

Ian wrote: "I doubt this will get us rich, but I intend to at least enjoy myself. I would like to sell more ebooks, but if I do not, it is hardly the end of the world."

Sounds good. As the money is just the instrument (except for those who see it as the ultimate goal) to procure other things, enjoyment including, we might skip the instrument and proceed directly towards the pleasures online communities can offer -:).

By the way, as the fan of "The Big Short" and scientist, author and businessman, do you spot other bubbles prone to explode?

Nik wrote: "Ian wrote: "I doubt this will get us rich, but I intend to at least enjoy myself. I would like to sell more ebooks, but if I do not, it is hardly the end of the world."

Sounds good. As the money i..."

My novels form a sort of speculative future history, in which I also explore various forms of governance, buried, of course, in what I hope are entertaining stories. So, to answer your question of bubbles, my novel "Puppeteer" starts with the premise that national debt will collapse society. The concept is that national debt has been good because when used to build infrastructure, the economy grew remarkably, and hence paying off the debt was easy, but now the debt seems to be incurred to pay for military adventures, and to make politicians more electable (reducing tax) and all this has to be paid for. If the economies start to contract, which I argued should happen sooner or later when oil and other resources become scarcer, then that debt becomes so much harder to pay off, and worse, as debt repayment takes on more significance, we get the curse of positive feedback, i.e. the worsening situation makes the next part even worse.

Now some will argue that the proposition that oil will dry up is just wrong because we have never had it so plentiful, but my argument is that we are not making any more, and global warming must also be considered. Also, "Puppeteer" was set at about 2030, although not explicitly stated as such.

In the more immediate future, I still think government and private debt. Look at Greece. Politicians cannot keep spending more than they earn without something coming apart at the seams. They may very well devalue the currency. The Romans tried that in the second and third century, and arguably this led to the end of Rome because the economy simply fell to pieces. The problem with such a devaluation is it steals from savers, and nobody puts any value on the currency. I recall being in Brazil once when the currency was in free fall (I was a millionaire by changing something like $20!) and what happens is, nobody trusts the currency, but that means none of the normal investment or serious business gets done. So, my guess is, a debt bubble.

That sounds like an apocalyptic yet probable scenario. More so, since we have quite few examples of when it happened, Greece being one of them. Other countries coming close. For example EU allocated 100 B to Spain to save its banks, although only about half of the package was utilized for all I know.
Not that long ago the backing of currencies by gold was abolished, but not before the realization came that there was not enough gold already to cover certain currencies...

Hi all. I’m Kolleen. I also met Nik in another group and joined when I received an invite. I read and reviewed his book “Mortal Showdown – Oligarch Series,” which I loved by the way! That led me to find and read “Red Notice” by Bill Browder which gave me a further understanding of Oligarchs. My interest in Russia comes about in a somewhat unique way. When I was 21, I worked for the Dept of Defense in Washington DC – it was there that I met a former KGB agent (also 21) who had defected from the Soviet Union. My book, “A Rose for Sergei” is the story about my real life relationship with Sergei Kourdakov.

Glad to be part of this group! I’ll probably be more of a lurker/follower than a contributor, so if I miss any good stuff please message me…especially if any billionaires suddenly decide to invest in Indie Authors. :)

Hi Kolleen and welcome! Thanks for stepping out of the shadows to introduce yourself here -:) Not sure, we'll let you just lurk in expectation of investments though.

As you can imagine, in USSR the defectors had zero exposure in the media, lest others get funny ideas, so we hadn't heard of Kourdakov's story at the time... But better late than never - I read Kolleen's book with a great deal of interest and really enjoyed it. Sergey must've 'recruited' Kolleen somehow, because she preserved her interest in Russia through all those years -:)

Re billionaires, we'd first check if and who we allow to enter the tender biddings -:) Don't want blood diamonds' proceeds here.

Thanks for the invite, Nik.
Geo-political and global events tend to underpin my novels (I believe that the current migration crisis in Europe is being allowed and encouraged at the highest levels) so this group is a great research tool for me. Hope to make some friends too.
All the best.
DC

Hi D.C. and welcome to the group!

There are quite few of us here concerned with different near-apocalyptic eventualities, be it because of shortage of certain raw materials, economic collapse, internal conflicts or religious/ethnic confrontation. We discuss here actuality, more from economic PoV, but any other angle: political, geo-political or conspirational is appreciated.
Judging by the description of what you write you might indeed find some new perspectives for your work and share and contribute your own vision of the global/continental processes.

It seems the attitude towards migration differs among the European leaders, ranging from Robert Fico - a Slovakian Prime-Minister denying acceptance of any immigrants, for, as he put it, they won't feel comfy in a Mosque-less country to Angela Merkel, working hard to accommodate refugees. All in all, looks like 'encouraging' stage is pretty much over.

Thanks, Nik.
Look forward to joining the debates.
All the best,
DC

Hi! I'm George Eccles. I worked for many years in Russia and Central Asia (basically, all the 'Stans'), working with a number of oligarchs who had acquired massive State assets for a song and who were looking to maximise their investment. More recently I was on the board of two mining companies - one in Eastern Russia, the other in Kazakhstan. Throughout the period I had to deal with the bureaucracy and corruption of Russian and ex-Soviet officials at all levels.

I now write thrillers based in Russia and Central Asia, featuring a British-born business troubleshooter called Alex Leksin. The first was The Oligarch: A Thriller, self-published in 2012, which won awards at both the Global Ebook Awards and the Independent Publishers Book Awards. The second, Corruption of Power, was published by Peach Publishing three months ago.

If you would like to know more about me, my website is http://www.gweccles.com

Hi George and welcome to the group!

With your unique and very relevant to the issues we discuss here experience I'm sure you'd be able to contribute a lot to the discussions from your perspective, on the one hand, and to gain a great deal of exposure, on the other.
Feel free to chime in on any thread and maybe to cast light on some of the Central Asian oligarchs...
With my own experience in Ukraine, Moldova, Russia and Lithuania, I think geographically we complement each other perfectly to cover most of CIS -:)

@George... You seem to have had such an interesting life so far!

I guess I never introduced myself on here? I thought I had, but nope.
I'm Yelena. Born in Belarus, brought to USA when I was 3. Lived here ever since.
I love to travel, read, wright, and enjoy a glass of wine. Coffee is my drug of choice.
I graduated from UGA with a B.S. in Ecology. Now I am back in school to get a Pharm.D. I have two more years left of the program.
My favorite books are fantasies... I like to escape into fantasy worlds.

Hi Yelena,

Enjoy the group! If I figured out how, I'd be pouring glasses of wine around, but at this stage, I guess, we can only clink them through computer screens -:)
Belarus is said to remain the only preservation of Soviet times now.... Haven't been there for 30 years, I think
Something like Cuba, still using all those cars from the 50s

Well the cars are old and different and most people don't own them. But I don't think they are all from the 50s... At least I don't remember thinking wow these cars look like classics! When I visited several years ago.

Belarus isn't really a free place, the way they try to make it seem. A few years ago I wanted to go back to visit and my parents strongly discouraged it due to the crazy things that were going on during "elections" and all the protesting. You literally were not aloud to clap because that's what the protestors did. Then they began protesting by gathering and just standing in silence. So new rule, you were not aloud to stand in silence or you might get confused for a protestor... And that's not good.

Yelena wrote: "Well the cars are old and different and most people don't own them. But I don't think they are all from the 50s... At least I don't remember thinking wow these cars look like classics! When I visit..."

Sorry, it's my English probably: I meant in Cuba the cars are from 50-s. In Belarus, I guess, they have a newer stuff, but probably still lots of Lada, Volga and Moskvich-:)
'Not free' is just one of the distinctive features from back then. After your account I feel almost nostalgic now -:)

Missed doing the intro - late to the party as usual

See my profile if you want to know more, but I write a bit, not particularly successfully. I read more successfully, mainly thrillers and sci-fi but anything that perks my interest - just like writing. Read too much on Goodreads and occasionally comment. Shout if you need me!

I still have to work for a living (currently in IT) so both activities take a back seat to earning a living.

Hello, I am Marie. I live in the USA and love to travel. I watch currencies as well as performance of precious metals. I have visited a couple dozen countries over 5 continents and it is my goal to see everywhere in the world. I have just returned from Denmark and Iceland where I could not believe how expensive it was just to eat. It was the first time I was relieved to return to USA prices. I wish that I knew more languages. I have tried learning Spanish and Swahili, but they do not stick with me unless I am in the places that use them.

I have always written for fun, usually plays and satire or comedy. I recently self-published 3 books in a series with 3 more on the way (historical fiction U.S. 1915). I originally hoped to be a screenwriter, but I appreciate being able to see results with self-publish instead of my screenplay sitting on someone's desk til kingdom come.

I like to read history, psychology, culture, religion, war, biography, aliens, astrology, supernatural. The range is pretty wide. I do not usually put my opinion in when politics are concerned (keeps me out of trouble) but I read pretty much everything on this group with interest. :) I joined because Nik added me and I like to hear what others have to say about the course of world governments.

Philip wrote: "Missed doing the intro - late to the party as usual

See my profile if you want to know more, but I write a bit, not particularly successfully. I read more successfully, mainly thrillers and sci-fi..."

Hi Philip and welcome to the group and the party!
The night (and the group) is still young, so I hope the best parts are still ahead.
It looks like you manage to combine well work for the living with writing and your literary accomplishments are quite impressive, more so - within a relatively short period. Well done!
Hope you'll enjoy and contribute!

Marie wrote: "Hello, I am Marie. I live in the USA and love to travel. I watch currencies as well as performance of precious metals. I have visited a couple dozen countries over 5 continents and it is my goal to..."

Hi Marie and thanks for this opportunity to greet you officially!
It looks like we share the same hobby of traveling and I too try to cover as much of the globe as possible (and hopefully even beyond, if Richard Branson facilitates that with reasonable pricing for space travel, desirably not borrowed from Denmark-:)). Continent wise, I'm currently missing South America and Antartic's and hope to have an opportunity to accomplish the 'full house'.
Swahili? Yeah, it's pretty hard to master any language without the appropriate practice. They say 'vodka's connecting people' and I find that alcoholic beverages do help to bridge the language gap. I remember experiencing the dramatic improvement in my non-existent Italian after just a few grappas with an Italian couple that didn't speak English. And they reported back similar improvement of their English. Won't recommend it as the substitute for language courses though -:)
After having 6 books out, writing a screenplay doesn't sound like something unachievable.
Hope you keep enjoying and contributing to the discussions!

Hi, I'm Dora. I just received an invite from Nik. I read through some of the discussions and it looks like a very interesting group, so I decided to join. I'll try to contribute whenever I have the time.

Hi Dora, thanks for joining and welcome to the group!
Hope you'll enjoy and contribute. With your combined European & North American experience, I'm sure you can offer an interesting input and angles

Thanks, Nik.

Nik wrote: "We would like to know you a little better. Please, introduce yourself and share what made you join. No formal CV or last tax return are required -:)"

You sound so serious, sir ;)

Hiiii *waves* Ann here. Totally have to be at a meeting 10 minutes away in 5 1/2 minutes. Haha. No, seriously. Be back later. TTFN *scampers off*

EDIT: Forgot to say, I joined because you invited me. And I'm not a rude butthead :)

Annie wrote: "Nik wrote: "We would like to know you a little better. Please, introduce yourself and share what made you join. No formal CV or last tax return are required -:)"

You sound so serious, sir ;)

Hiii..."

Hi Annie & welcome to the group! Hope you'll have and make some fun.
Serious? Some topics are serious, but I'm much less so -:)
I see you have a CV on your profile page, good that I waived asking for one.
I have an impression I might need an interpreter for internet abbreviations now -:)

Hello everyone - I wanted to join the group after seeing an interesting post in it by Nik, who's already a Goodreads friend. I've been a journalist, traveller, development worker and climate-change researcher. I'm the author of two books of travel memoirs and three books of fiction, all of which I published myself; and a scientific book on climate change, which was published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis in 2011.

I'm very interested in the way the publishing "biz" is going to develop. It's in a really dynamic phase right now, and there are a lot of unknowns. I suspect there are some interesting exchanges about that going on in this group.

Welcome, Mike!
There are quite many authors here on the group, so publishing biz, its different aspects and tendencies are frequent and recurrent 'guest' on a number of threads in 'Writing as business' folder

Nik wrote: "We would like to know you a little better. Please, introduce yourself and share what made you join. No formal CV or last tax return are required -:)"

Hi, I'm Ginger. I joined because Mehreen sent me an invitation and I noticed that Tara (whose wonderful book, Beyond Good Manners, I enjoyed so much) was a contributing member. I've been traveling so I haven't had a chance to contribute much but have been engaged by the discussions. I'm looking forward to being part of the conversation.

Hi Ginger and welcome!
Traveling is a valid excuse, but now that you are back, hopefully with lots of new positive experiences, we look forward to your input -:)

Hope you'll enjoy and contribute and thanks to Mehreen for inviting and to Tara for playing an important role!

Hi, kim here. I lurk a lot and I love researching things. I have a wide spectrum of genres I like reading, (despite my profile - to keep things simplified). I'm a jill of all trades, master of some and know a little about a lot lolz.
Currently a programmer who writes on the side for fun and profit would be nice, har. :-3

Hi Kim and welcome!
It's always a pleasure to have an opportunity to greet someone formally and we appreciate your input in between the lurking -:)
Hope you'll have fun from participating and profit from writing. Fantasy/action/sorcery that you offer should have a broad appeal

Hi all, Eldon here. I'm a newly published author but it's my career as an accountant that pays the bills. Married, with one six month old baby at home. I love reading (though have less time for it these days lol). I was invited to join by Nik and look forward to participating :)

Nik wrote: "I have an impression I might need an interpreter for internet abbreviations now -:)"

LOL No one ever knows what TTFN means. I might've just made it up myself (happens often). This group sounds so "intellectual". I'll try to dial down the hyperactive weirdness a few notches :)

Ta ta for now,
Ann

Eldon wrote: "Hi all, Eldon here. I'm a newly published author but it's my career as an accountant that pays the bills. Married, with one six month old baby at home. I love reading (though have less time for it ..."

Hi Eldon and welcome to the group!
Good luck with 'Stillness' and further writing. How come you ended up with two different covers for ebook and PoD?
Hope you'll enjoy and contribute

Annie wrote: "This group sounds so "intellectual"."

Probably not the worst description of the group -:)
Don't know how intellectually high we go here, but I at least hope we approach subjects a bit different from most others

My name is Kevin Kinnen, and I recently began publishing science fiction as an indie, on Amazon. I have over forty years of deep reading experience in the genre, specifically. I have published seven titles since December 2015, a double length novel, and six military science fiction shorts. The novel, while apocalyptic in nature at first, slowly explores the influences of the super-rich and powerful from before the beginning of known history, and their current influence in our modern society. The Wardriven season of shorts is set just into the twenty-second century, and pictures a world driven to professional corporate-sponsored war, in the effort to develop technology even more quickly. There is an upcoming novella to close the season out for the year.

I have deep ties to the military industrial complex, and familial relations who have worked on both the Manhattan Project, and Cold War era weapons materials. My writing displays both technical science, and humanism.

Personally, I have always believed that the power of the wealthy controls most aspects of daily life for the individual, regardless of nationality. It was obvious to me, even as a child, that scarcity was artificial, and that life wasn't fair. That doesn't mean it must be that way, however. And so I write to change minds, from the inside. As was mine, when I first found the written word, libraries, and the true wisdom that can be found there.

Thank you for the invitation.

Kevin Kinnen