Author Stephen Douglass describes his work experience as taking him from two of the largest oil companies in the world to “one of the smallest oil companies in the world: his own.” In this interview, the former oil executive talks about his first novel, “The Bridge to Caracas,” and the events that inspired him to write about one of the largest and most audacious thefts in US and Canadian history.
The real-life story he used as the launching pad for his first novel was what Douglass calls, “An amazing story, one that needed to be told.”
“During the years of managing my own independent retail gasoline company in Canada,” said Douglass, “I spent a great deal of time negotiating and purchasing gasoline supply from refiners, both domestic and US, and with brokers, both domestic and US. One of the brokers was owned by the man who would become the antagonist in ‘The Bridge To Caracas.’ I was unaware that the man was a criminal until I received a shocking telephone call from a senior official of C.S.I.S., (Canada’s Security Intelligence Service). He stunned me with the news that my company was doing business with ‘a person of extreme interest,’ one who was using his private Cessna to transport vast amounts of money from the country to Cayman Island. He went on to say that the vast amount ‘makes The New York State Lottery look like a Sunday school collection.’
“The Bridge To Caracas” is Volume One of The King Trilogy, an epic story, spanning four tumultuous decades, of an inconvenient fortune and its catastrophic affect on a loving family. Douglass has woven his knowledge of the oil and gas industry into the trilogy. That story is one he describes as unveiling “the dark side of money making.”
Even though he dealt with issues of greed and fraud, Douglass said, “I can honestly say that I have never consciously attempted to make an argument or to address an issue while writing. I did, however, in writing ‘The Tainted Trust,’ attempt to reach out to my daughter from my first marriage. I haven’t seen her since she was nine years of age.”
Often, writers describe their foray into the field as being one of happenstance and Douglass is no different. “When in Florida in the early nineties, I was given a manuscript by Frank Cashen, the former General Manager of The New York Mets. . . He told me that Nelson Doubleday, the Mets‘ owner and publishing mogul, had asked him to evaluate it. I was stunned and honored that the great Frank Cashen was interested in my opinion, on anything. I read the manuscript, then told Frank Cashen that I loved it, so much that I thought it should be made into a movie.”
Douglass added, “The title of the manuscript, written by Steven Pressfield, was, ‘The Legend of Bagger Vance.’ Alas, my name didn’t appear in the movie credits, but it was then that I knew I wanted to be a writer.”
Now that he’s retired from his career in the oil and gas industry, Douglass is trying to keep his focus on his writing and “playing horrifying golf.” He said, “Retirement is, quite literally, another plunge, a leap of faith loaded with emotional baggage. For me, most of the fears and trepidations accompanying the first plunge [of starting his own business] were present in this one: Do we have enough money? Will it last? How do we manage it? Will I regret selling my company, my pride and joy?”
Retired and writing full time, Douglass described his latest transition as follows. “I discovered that retirement is fun, so enjoyable that I began to wonder how I ever got anything done when I worked.” He also said, “If readers have half as much fun reading The King Trilogy as I did writing it, they will be enriched.”
Stephen Douglass maintains an author page at http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/stephen-douglass.html. The second and third books in the series,”The Tainted Trust,” which is the story of what happened to the $325,000,000 stolen from the Canadian and US governments, and “Kerri’s War,” the third volume in series that describes the continuing saga of the inconvenient fortune are available on Amazon.com.
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