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01/19/2011 11:00 PMIdrian N. Resnick began a new chapter in his life 20 years ago when he started seriously writing fiction-something he approaches with the same infectious enthusiasm as everything else described on his most impressive résumé.
An economist with a Ph.D specializing in trade and development, Resnick has worked for the past 40 years as a program director and educator (and is currently a consultant) in non-profit, governmental, academic, domestic, and international settings, including 16 African countries, South America, and Asia.
Resnick moved to Branford from Manhattan in 1996 when he married his wife Louise LaMontagne, a native of the town whose family goes back generations.
"I've had a wonderful life," says the soft-spoken but self-assured man of many skills and passions. "I never had a job that I didn't love. I almost never got up thinking, 'I don't want to go to work.' I always had jobs I felt were worth doing and benefited other people, which is what I aimed to do."
Over the past two years, Resnick has published a novel, four short stories, and six of what he calls "life" stories, as well as poetry and essays, in a most unconventional way. You won't find his fiction between the covers of a book, but you will find it easily accessible and free for reading online on his website, www.idriann.com.
The reason Resnick went the e-route with his fiction is simple: Although he's published three non-fiction books and dozens of articles and reports related to his work as an economist, it's become increasingly challenging and time-consuming to get the required agent, let alone find a publisher to say "Yes" to a manuscript by an unknown novelist in today's publishing industry.
"You don't get to write when you're spending all your time marketing [your book]. It drives you nuts," Resnick says. "I'm not in this for the money or for fame; I want to write. I have something to say, to communicate, and I seem to have developed a readership [on the Internet]. I get lots of feedback."
How it All Came Online
Resnick was born and bred in Wichita, Kansas, where, at seven years of age, his first fictional story-about a horse-was published. After years of publishing non-fiction, in 1990 he began writing his first novel, a thriller titled Triangles.
He attended a writing seminar at which he met a writing coach who loved the first chapter, but didn't like what followed.
"She said when I was in my brain, it was garbage, but when I was in my gut, it was really good," Resnick recalls. "She [told me], 'Every man has a woman living inside him-go find her.' I did, and it changed my life and changed my writing."
In 1994 Resnick began his second novel, The Invisible Hand, which underwent many incarnations and rewrites over the years.
"It's a financial thriller-not [in the genre of] Steven King-about a U.S. senator who organized an assault on U.S. currency markets in order to bring down liberal governments," Resnick explains. "The antagonist/protagonist is a socialist ex-ball player recruited to save capitalism.
"On a literary level," he continues, "it's a clash between two men who have had extraordinary personal losses in their lives which they haven't been able to resolve and find it's easier to try and change the world than it is to try and save their loved ones."
While initially trying to get a publisher for the novel, Resnick passed it out to friends and relatives all over the world and says he got fabulous responses.
"My main objective was to get people to read this book. It has an important political message in it-we've now lived it since the financial markets crashed in 2007-'08."
And so the idea of publishing the book online was born.
Resnick says it took him four months to get the website up with the support of Yahoo's free help line.
"With their help and coaching and walking me through [the process], I put it together," he says. "I started putting up short stories and personal essays right away. Yahoo gives you a way to track unique visitors [a unit of traffic to a website that counts each visitor only once in the time frame of the report in order to measure a site's true audience size] to the site. I've had over 1,000 since December of 2009."
Although his novel has a serious sociopolitical message, Resnick's writing has a playful, fun side, too. He was recently awarded first prize in the national YourWritersWorkshop.com short story contest for Swimming for Seniors, a humorous piece in which he pokes fun at himself. And at the holidays he posted Christmas Dog, a charming real-life story filled with joy and hope.
Resnick has lots of new work in the hopper that he describes as alternating between light and heavy.
"I have time to write now and I write all the time," he says. "I love it."
Read and comment on Resnick's fiction on his website, www.idriann.com. The Invisible Hand can also now be purchased through Amazon.com for $5.95 as an e-book for Kindles, iPads, iphones, Blackberries, and other devices that display books.