The Story Behind "Red Bottom Line"

And how my new novel set in 1991 Moscow explains a bit about Putin

After publishing nine non-fiction books (and writing one that got away), I’m finally publishing a novel…that I started thirty years ago.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I covered the breakup of the Soviet Union for USA Today, traveling to the region often, interviewing people, visiting semi-legal startups, even being on hand for the opening of the first Moscow McDonald’s. It was a crazy, fascinating, we’ll-never-see-this-again slice of time when a superpower nation fell apart and tried to adopt an entirely new system.

I wanted to use it as the setting for a novel – a funny, quirky thriller. I started writing it in 1991, just after my daughter Alison was born.

The finished book is titled Red Bottom Line. The plot revolves around Jeff, an impetuous young American management consultant who thinks he sees an opportunity to make easy money in the just-opened economy in Russia. As soon as he lands in Moscow, he gets caught between two newly-formed and rickety Moscow businesses – one run by ex-KGB agents who still operate like KGB agents, and another represented by two ambitious but naïve young Russians, Maxim and Natasha.

In a reflection of stuff that really happened, Maxim and Natasha cook up a plot to steal Jeff away from the KGB guys – which turns out to be a dangerous miscalculation. Along the way, Jeff falls for Natasha, gets schooled about Russia, and grows up…a little.

Looking back now, the story is a deep-dive into a time that helps explain the rise of Vladimir Putin and his autocratic rule. The details in the novel about life in Moscow around that time may be hard to believe, but they are all things that I personally witnessed or knew about. The story is made up, but the facts are true. It was a period of chaos and deprivation, and of confusion over what the nation would become. Thugs ran the economy. Boris Yeltsin was a disastrous leader. No wonder Russians welcomed a strongman who said he could “fix” everything.

I wrote Red Bottom Line before I’d written any books. I didn’t have an agent. Didn’t know anything about publishing. I sent it cold to a few editors and agents, and none even responded. So, I gave up, printed out a copy, and put the book in a plastic bin that moved with me from house to house for three decades.

Then, a couple of years ago, Alison asked me if she could read the book. But first I had to find it. I poked around my storage bin in the Bronx, and found the printout secured in Tupperware.

I told Alison that I wanted to read it first. I was prepared to find it embarrassing, in which case I was just going to throw the whole thing out. I picked up the pages and started reading. It was as if I was reading a book written by someone else – I remembered so little of it. And to my surprise, I thought it was really good. I felt proud of my young self the writer, and frustrated with my young self who so easily gave up on publishing the work.

I sent it to Alison, who is very well-read and is a journalist and editor. Alison really enjoyed it, but she sent me notes on how to make it better. Her suggestions were good ones, and I took some time to edit the book – but it only needed some light touches.

To test whether I was delusional, I gave the edited version to a handful of smart, worldly friends who I knew would tell me the truth about the book. The reviews that came back were positive, and my friends encouraged me to publish the book. (Mo Rocca, of the Mobituaries podcast and CBS Sunday Morning, even agreed to provide an endorsement.)

So, here we are. Red Bottom Line is two weeks from being released as an e-book. It comes out in print March 15. Amazon is taking pre-orders. The book will also be available on pretty much every book-selling platform.

I have a couple of requests. First, if you find this at all interesting, check out the book on Amazon. Just getting some traffic to the page will tell Amazon to stock more of the books and boost it in its recommendation engine.

Even better, if you’re really interested, please pre-order a print version. That will do even more to convince Amazon to support the book.

And finally, if you read and enjoy Red Bottom Line, please leave a review. That would help a lot.

Oh, and just so I can dream, if you then have some ideas for who might play Jeff, Natasha and Maxim in the movie, I’d love to see it in comments.

(Cover by https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacontre/)