• Home
  • Member details

John Schwartz

 

Member profile details

First name
John
Last name
Schwartz
 

Personal information (200 word limit for Bio, please)

Pen Name
John Schwartz
 

Website and social media (please include "http://")

Amazon Author Page
amazon.com/author/schwartzjohn
 

Chapter Information

VWC Chapter (if any)
Northern Virginia
 

Speakers' Bureau

Speaker Area(s) of Writing Expertise
  • Fiction (long form)
  • Fiction (short form)
  • Non-fiction (general)
  • Non-fiction (memoir)
Other Topic(s) of Expertise
Writing as a non-career
 

Poems, Novels, Plays, or other Works

Work 1 - Genre
(Fiction & Literature) Short stories/Anthologies
Work 1 - Genre (Other)
Contemporary Love Stories
Finished novel (published in May 2015) "Some Women I Have Known", "Enchanting The Swan"
Work 1 - Cover
Work 1 - Description
Romantic pianist John Van Dorn confuses playing sheet music with playing between the sheets. His strong anchors in life, his grandmother, Lady D, and Audrey Hepburn, with whom he rides on his pony wagon in Holland during World War II, she 13 and he 7, seem unable to prevent him from falling for the “weaker” sex. After learning the basic pitfalls of engaging with girls while growing up in his village, enjoying country life and horses, he plays piano with his first real love, cellist Lucy, during boarding school, shares amour and piano with sensual concert pianist student, Geneviève, in Paris, gets hooked by sneaky Irene in Amsterdam who labors hard to persuade him to marry her, and suffers his most heartbroken love with Viking Ingrid in the Swiss Alps. After rescuing princess Nyira in the middle of Africa from despair in a narrow escape of life and death, he finally finds the Joy of his life in Washington, D.C.
Each tale can be read in one sitting. So, relax and enjoy with a lush glass of wine, a smooth VSOP brandy or a cup of mellow cappuccino, and smile, drop a tear or hold your breath.
Work 2 - Title
Enchanting The Swan
Work 2 - Genre
(Fiction & Literature) Romance
Work 2 - Genre (Other)
Romance
Work 2 - Cover
Work 2 - Description
Paul, a grad student, and classical pianist meets cellist law student Fiona at William & Mary and they fall in love when they perform The Swan by Camille Saint-Saëns on the occasion of William & Mary’s Charter Day. They agree to marry after graduation, but Fiona’s reactionary Belgian godparents object to her marrying Paul and command her to come back home to Brussels to marry within her nobility circle. Her parents, who perished while sailing on the see when Fiona was only 2, had so wished it in their testament.

Paul visits her in Brussels, but Fiona feels obliged to break their relationship, unaware of her godfather’s real intentions. Heartbroken, Paul leaves for Geneva to start his banking career, but gets entangled in a dramatic banking fraud and is forced to return to the USA. There he finds Fiona physically and psychologically abused by her husband and on the verge of utter despair.

Paul endeavors to restore their love but faces a revengeful husband trying to kill him. Will they ever play The Swan again?
Work 3 - Title
Maarten Maartens Rediscovered
Work 3 - Genre
(Nonfiction) Nonfiction
Work 3 - Cover
Work 3 - Description
A lively summary of Maarten Maartens'13 novels written during 1890-1912. The summarizations make full use of the authors own writing to transmit the full flavor of his talent. Maarten Maartens was the penname of Josua M.W. van der Poorten Schwartz, the great-uncle of the author.
Work 4 - Title
Maarten Maartens Rediscovered Part II - His Best Short Stories
Work 4 - Genre
(Nonfiction) Nonfiction
Work 4 - Cover
Work 4 - Description
Summarization of the best of Maarten Maartens' four volumes short stories. These are today still very readable, and a few stories have been reprinted in full for that reason.
Work 5 - Title
Francine - The Coalminers' Dragon
Work 5 - Genre
(Fiction & Literature) Romance
Work 5 - Genre (Other)
A corporate novel chronicles a young woman’s meteoric rise at a coal mining company. A dramatically taut tale propelled by artful characterization and political relevance. Kirkus Reviews
Work 5 - Cover
Work 5 - Description
Francine Boyers, a bright and beautiful young West Virginian with a mining engineering degree and an MBA, is hired by Jim O’Hara, CEO of OHARA Mining in New York. As the CEO’s personal assistant, she proves to be unusually quick on her feet and rises through the ranks with astonishing speed, handling pollution issues with Congress, a protest at a mining conference in Paris, troubles with OHARA’s Caribbean gold and bauxite investments, and the rescue of miners in Sumatra. Her friend Nancy Smith sums up her preternatural talent for solving problems: “And you have that special gift of knowing what to do when nobody else does.” She helps the company battle the Environmental Protection Agency, whose invasive regulations kill the coal miners’ jobs and gets caught in the middle of an internecine tug of war within the company between the CEO and Ted Holler, his environmentalist nemesis on the board. She ultimately finds herself enmeshed in a corporate conspiracy, with the continued existence of the company—and her own reputation—on the line, facing trade issues with China. Will she save the company, and find happiness?
 

Additional Works - Add title, genre, URL, description, and publication year in free form text here.

Additional Works
Shiver Snicker Schmooze, Twelve Short Stories of horror, thriller, suspense, humor, and romance. Published in 2019, https://amzn.to/2Km0Rt0.
Description by Kirkus Reviews: Romantics, killers, and animals populate Schwartz’s (Enchanting the Swan, 2018, etc.) sundry collection of short stories.

This book opens with “The Flatfooters,” in which a Virginia traffic accident involves steel balls smashing through windshields and jellyfish affixed to victims’ faces. Authorities are confused but on high alert when it appears to be a bizarre terrorist attack.

Schwartz opts for variety among his stories, and the remaining 11 dabble in myriad genres. In “Leave Flying to the Birds,” for example, two friends fly home on their private jet to Virginia after a fishing trip and face an unforeseen danger.

A later tale, the Kafka-esque “Mother Centipede,” is full-fledged horror—a gleefully grotesque tale of an insect bite growing orange hairs, seeping orange pus, and more.

There are also murders in these tales, seen from various viewpoints.

A piano player is a murder suspect in “The Medium,” and is determined to clear his name, while in the exhilarating “Killing the Elephant Poacher,” a former French Foreign Legionnaire is now an assassin with a target in the Central African Republic.

The various stories do, however, have some intriguing similarities, as many heavily feature animals. “From the Horse’s Mouth” is from the perspective of a colt who isn’t fond of a tactless horsewoman. The lighthearted “Attic Ghosts Talking,” which concerns chatty squirrels looking for shelter, serves as a sequel to an earlier story.

The author’s prose is sharp but conversational, and the dry humor makes truly strange events seem perfectly normal. “The Heliphone,” for instance, presents a phone that connects the living with people in the afterlife, which is played for comedy.

A diverse set of witty and entertaining tales.
Powered by Wild Apricot Membership Software