Laidback & Co.

The coach talks to himself a lot. It's how he handles pressure. This historical fiction will reveal how he will help his kids handle pressure. After a crushing defeat in Taipei, a coach's team of international high school volleyball players has to handle the pressure of rebuilding their spirits and their team to win a championship. The twelve rookie teenager players grow into twelve young men with a purpose.  Coming to their international school from seven different countries, they overcome personal and cultural differences to compete as a team.  Then, after a devastating loss, they have to totally change their style of play to succeed in their Bangkok tournament.
The coach has to handle pressures of his own. In this historical fiction, the Indonesian gods see fit to afflict the coach with a case of malaria, a powerful parent in a position to fire him disapproves of his decisions concerning her son, and the school's athletic director, who had wanted another person to coach the team and will bend to any outside pressure to keep his job. This season, the coach would talk to himself this season like never before.

I have lived in and written about Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Haiti, Shanghai and the US.  My novels are The Missionary Position, about Angela Benedetto's adventures in Irian Jaya, My Enemy, My Friend, about a love affair during the Iranian Revolution, Something Came Up about a young man's search for himself hitchhiking across the US, Shanghai'd about a Chinese/Israeli plot originating in 1930's Shanghai, Maiden Shanghai, about Shanghai's Green Gang's covert aid to China's Xinjiang Separatists, Laidback & Co. about an athletic team in Jakarta, Indonesia, The United Hates of America about two rival preachers who join forces against common enemies THE TORAH-The Director's Cut, God, a humorous retranslation of the Torah and Four Guys Gospels about an advertising company hired to promote a Jewish man with a Hispanic name as the Messiah.  I have written published articles for Channel East Magazine, West-East Magazine, Media Magazine, Asian Hotel and Catering Magazine, zingasia.com, chinaOnline.com and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.