William Weissinger’s novel, Burning the Banker, combines humor, romance and suspense in a story about two strangers, Bob and JJ, who take justice into their own hands to punish Roger R. Roche, whose predatory loans as CEO of AllBank Mutual Savings and Loan made him rich by cheating millions of people.
Roger R. Roche is fictional but banking CEOs like him increased profits by pushing intentionally deceptive loans that cheated millions and were a leading cause of the mortgage defaults that plunged the nation into a deep recession. When society does nothing to punish them, what are the rest of us to do? The simple answer: get over it and get on with our lives – not an option for Bob, who lost his life savings, or JJ, whose father committed suicide as a result of losing the farm. The only way they can get on with their lives is to seek vengeance. When their paths intersect, they team up and fall in love. As the tension between love and revenge escalates, they must decide what is most important to them.
The nation’s nerves are still raw from the recession and its causes. Readers can’t take revenge against banking CEOs, but Bob and JJ can. The 99% will root for them, creating a broad market for BAD BOB.
The characters from the first book all appear again in a second, outlined, book with the working title, The Goodness Test.
I’ve just returned from a nine-day residency at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts. NILA, which offers a low-residency Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing, allows writers who aren’t part of the Masters degree program to apply to attend the residency sessions. Morning sessions are craft classes in one’s chosen field — either fiction, non-fiction, or poetry. Although I write all three, I chose fiction.
Afternoon sessions are divided into three blocks of time, and three lectures are offered for each block of time. Deciding which to attend was difficult, although happily the topics were so interesting and varied that one couldn’t choose poorly.
Most nights featured readings by either students or faculty. Even though I was admitted for the fiction residency, I read three poems, including one I wrote while at NILA. I came out of it a better writer, and refreshed from nine days of talking about nothing but writing.
My poem “What You Don’t Want to Do” was selected by Elizabeth Austen, a former Poet Laureate of Washington State, as the winner in a poetry contest held by the Town of Friday Harbor on the subject of Witness the Beauty. Here is the poem in full:
What You Don’t Want To Do.
By William Jay Weissinger
When the camas are blooming sapphire or fawn lilies hide in white patches, you don’t want to drive down Bailer Hill to find glacier-clad Mount Baker reaching out for you,
but if you do drive down Bailer Hill, don’t turn right on Little Road and right again on Cattle Point, because that will take you to American Camp,
but if you go to American Camp, don’t smell the shoals of Nootka rose or walk the miles of beach-logged gravel where always you’ll find solitude enough to listen to the whissshhhh of waves washing against that tightness in your chest,
but if you’re gentled by the waves, still ignore across the Salish Sea the white Olympic peaks, tinged pink perhaps by the setting sun,
but if you are unlucky enough to see this mountain range in alpenglow, don’t listen in the faltering light for whale-breath.
If, spiting my best counsel, you’ve heard the whoosh of whales as the dusk tides carry our sunset west, go back from whence you came. You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. Really,
since if next morning you’re still here, you might drive to Whale Watch Park, in which case don’t walk downhill, because that will take you to more eagles, and maybe Orcas breaching, likely schools of porpoise, salmon jumping, seals, or red-beaked pink-legged black-bodied Oystercatchers, and always a lighthouse, it too warning you off.
And don’t walk uphill, because that will take you through quiet paths in private woods with ravens, pileated woodpeckers, chickadees, and Kinglets in the red-trunked madronas and the firs,
and if you know what’s good for you, you won’t just stand in the parking lot, talking to visitors from Germany or China or France or to any locals either for that matter, all having forgotten their aloofness back on the mainland and so are happy to chat,
but if you do go to the Park, on leaving don’t head north to English Camp, with more shore and quiet woods and what the Islanders call a mountain, which you should not climb though it’s an easy hike of only twenty-minutes, because – and now we’re to the nub – from Mount Young’s top you’ll see not only Henry Island, not merely Vancouver Island and Salt Spring, but all the way back home,
and if you can see all the way home, you’ll realize you are seeing in a circle, that home is San Juan Island now. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.