No, I'm using my real name. Unfortunately, the book is largely autobiographical, so I expect a few repercussions from my family.

I have two other books that are being read by five different publishing houses. One is about a burned-out VFP programmer going through a midlife crisis, and the other is about the coffee farmers in Colombia, where I spent an extended period of time with my wife. Her father owns a coffee farm in the mountains.

>Hey! Way to go! Writing a book has to be one of the jobs known (except for getting it published). Good luck with it. I'll look for your name in our local booksellers. You arent' writing under a pen name are you? Something like Ezekiel Montgomery III?
>
>>Hi!
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>>After four years of struggling, I finally got my first book deal. My novel, SWISS CHOCOLOTE, is being published by Dailey Swan Publishing out of California, and is due out late 2009. Below is a short synopsis:
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>>This is a story about Drew Smith, a young boy from an upper-middle class family in Rumson, New Jersey, who is sent to a boarding school in Switzerland because of his academic and discipline problems. While there he falls in love with a young Italian girl named Alexandra Cavalletti, from Rome, Italy. Her parents are true “Black Italians” from a long line of aristocracy. Her father’s passion is horses, and he is probably the largest horse trader in Europe. He also owns a famous line of wines.
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>>The relationship is cut short, however, because they are both expelled after being caught in the middle of a sexual encounter during their second year in school. Despite that, they have a lifelong bond; each of their families gets ripped to pieces in different ways. Drew comes from a very dysfunctional family. His mother is a severe alcoholic and his father is abusive and mean. His parents finally split up and he is forced to live with his drunken mother. Alexandra’s father dies during her second year at school. Her mother, not able to deal with her loss and the family business, goes insane and sells the horses to a meat company and burns the vines to the ground. Most of the family fortune is destroyed.
>>Both of them react to their situations in different ways, but they remain in contact and cross paths over the years. Although their paths cross they never really connect because of circumstances in their lives, but their emotional bond grows stronger because of the parallel events that drive them.
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>>They finally do come together again as lovers, but the differences in their upbringing and cultural backgrounds don’t allow them to stay together, and the affair ends unhappily. Although the book is filled with pain and unhappiness, they walk away from each other stronger, and with the realization that they had both been chasing ghosts from their childhood that they could never have.