Word: A Novel

by Coerte V.W. Felske

The Author's Cut!: WITH 80 PAGES OF SUPPLEMENTARY author interviews, magazine reviews, press items and releases, done in scrapbook format ... On the front and back Adriana Lima photographed by Ellen von Unwerth. “Chandler for the 90 (*****) Word is pure 40s cool and paragraphs swing with voiceover rhythms that put Harrison Ford’s Blade Runner monologues to shame. Beautiful babes, New York wasps and sleazy zillionaires flit through Word, larger than life and twice as interesting. — Carrie O’Grady, The Guardian (England) “A torrent of L.A. buzzwords and insider cynicism unmatched since Odets and Lehman’s Sweet Smell of Success took on Manhattan. The Hell-A hypechat will flick all of your fuses.” — Kirkus Reviews “Flashy and dark, this energetic Nathanael West retake offers a rich Hollywood menu of pandering, ambition, power, and retribution.” — Publishers Weekly “Magnificent Word, the book Bret Ellis didn’t write, is Felske’s satire of Hollywood, i.e., ‘Star Camp,’ and he does a great job with female movie colony characters.” — Playboy “The Shallow Man turned fashion on its head bringing the term ‘modelizer’ into the collective conscious. With tough-talking Word, Felske is back, red-eyeing it over Tinseltown’s turf.” — Detour “By page 3 of this sharp send-up of all things Hollywood, you’ll be patting yourself on the back for having discovered Word before Variety announces its arrival at a theater near you.” — Marie Claire “If We Gave Out Book Edgiest Boy, Word.. Felske’s anti-hero hilariously manages to find some beating hearts inside the hippest Hollywood hyphenates.” — Glamour “Word belongs to the growing genre of Hollywood novels in which idealistic filmmakers experience disillusionment and con artists and charlatans occupy the positions of power.” — USA Today “Word is winningly told, with often ferocious humor, including a fresh, funny argot. Recommended for fiction collections.” — Library Journal “A vicious story of the movie-driven anathema of depth that is L.A, Felske’s tale about aching for success and the price of achieving it will remind you why you live in Northern California.” — San Francisco Metropolitan “Word, is a jazzy, ironic appreciation of writing, filmmaking, and chasing skirt. In two of those arts, at least, downtown novelist Coerte V.W. Felske seems more than passingly adept.” — New York Magazine “The word on Word is all good.” — “Page Six,” The New York Post

399 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 1999

About the author

Coerte V.W. Felske was born in New York City and grew up in Manhattan
and Quogue, Long Island. He attended Bronxville High School and received
his Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College. He did his graduate
work in film directing and screenwriting at Columbia University. The Shallow
Man, originally published in 1995, was his first novel. His second novel, Word,
came out in 1998 followed by The Millennium Girl in 2000 and Scandalocity in 2010. (For in-depth biography go to coertefelske.com) In 2008, the author established his independent online literary imprint, The Dolce Vita Press, founded in conjunction with Amazon.com, to publish and distribute his books. The imprint's inaugural publication was The Shallow Man: 15th Anniversary Edition released in September, 2009 followed by the author's first new novel in eight years, Scandalocity, released in May, 2010. Both are now available on Kindle.

Scandalocity (defined as "the speed at which scandal measured in velocity can turn you into a star,") is a sexy psychological thriller for the social network generation. With Scandalocity Felske, known for his Zeitgeist fiction, takes on the Information Age, scandal sheets, and our tech-driven, media-consumed and celebrity-obsessed culture. His protagonist, Harry Starslinger, is an ADHD-addled online gossip reporter who gets embroiled in the investigation of his girlfriend's murder. There more passion and murder and Harry becomes the hunted one. The book has been termed "The Sweet Smell of Success" meets "Body Heat," and is a dramatic, twisting and turning, page-turner which includes all the new and fresh language, a veritable lexicon's worth, which have been the hallmarks of the author's inimitable life-in-the-fast-lane literature (like "scandalocity," he coined and brought the term "modelizer" into the daily vernacular). Scandalocity is the author's second Dolce Vita Press release. The Ivory Stretch, Felske's fifth novel, a blazing, fastastical road book which takes place in the American southwest, will be released by the DVP in May, 2011.

Though Felske had been writing extensively in the years since his last original publication he held off going to marketplace with the new material. The Dolce Vita Press was the reason. The author launched the DVP to have significant contact with readership, exercise creative control over his work, and to have the freedom to incorporate the talents of top photographers, graphic artists, and book jacket designers. (World renowned photographers and artists Peter Beard and Ellen von Unwerth shoot Felske's memorable covers, featuring supermodels Adriana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Irina Shayk.)

The Dolce Vita Press label derives from the Italian term "dolce vita," which translates to the "sweet life." Felske was influenced by Federico Fellini's cinematic masterwork, La Dolce Vita, which tells the tale of a carefree, decadent group of seemingly glamorous partiers, nightclubbers, and exotic women as they navigate their way through Rome's high society, all pursued by a dashing playboy paparazzo. The author has often referred to his literature as "dolce vita fiction," stories about nightclub impresarios, serial womanizers, fashionistas, fortunehunting women, entertainment business hopefuls, and scandal sheet writers, entrenched in a similar dolce vita circuitry; in essence, characters living modern versions of that illusory sweet life depicted in Fellini's film.

Felske has three more new works completed and coming soon from the DVP. His next, The Ivory Stretch, will be released in May, 2011, followed by Chemical/Animal, his second written in first person as a woman, in the spring of 2012, and the A Touch of Noir in 2013 (go to coertefelske.com for details). All Coerte V.W. Felske titles for The Dolce Vita Press are available at the author's Web site coertefelske.com, thedolcevitapress.com, as well as Amazon.com. To contact the DVP, request a review copy, or write to the author, pleas