I want Donald Trump, Volodymir Zelenskyy and Xi Jinping to sell my book. 

The novel, The Umbrella Men, was published in 2019 – nearly 6 years ago. I thought it was about the great Bankers’ Crisis of 2008. Simple arithmetic tells us it was about a decade late for it to catch any sort of wave – of shared revulsion at those venal bankers, for example. By 2019 people were pleased to be able to forget about the huge transfer of wealth from the future taxpayer to the banking system that saw our national debt jump from 40% of GDP to 75%. 

So the book lacked relevance and did not sell well, even though the few people who did buy it really liked it – trust me on that, I’ve spoken to them all. 

My publisher suggested that I should try to ‘have a presence’ on social media. John Maynard Keynes used the image of pushing on a string to describe something important – the asymmetric effectiveness of monetary policy or somesuch. The image comes to my mind when I contemplate the use of social media to promote a book. The fact that X has half a billion monthly users and Facebook 4x that many holds out the prospect of access to the millions of people who would love The Umbrella Men – but I am attached to those platforms by means of the most flaccid of strings. Occasionally I see an opportunity for relevance and reach for my flimsy little string; I did so when Michael Moore’s film revealing the hypocrisy of the ‘green’ movement, Planet Human was released, and wrote a blog (https://theumbrellamen.com/2020/05/27/big-green/) – appropriately interlinked to my social media presence. If there was a bump in sales, I did not notice it. I had another go, with the same result, when the Communist Party of China, with grim predictability, crushed anyone with pretentions of keeping them to their word re democracy. https://theumbrellamen.com/2020/06/07/not-kowtowing/.

So what has this to do with The Umbrella Men and Presidents Trump, Zelenskyy and Xi? Rare earths and China, that’s what. The plot of The Umbrella Men revolves around the geopolitics of rare earths. 

Two of these men have rare earths in abundance (maybe). One of those currently has a global monopoly (clue: it’s not poor old Zelenskyy). The third, a bully, wants rare earths and can only bully the weaker man to get them (clue: not Xi). We all saw it – ‘great TV’ as the bully said.

Relevance at last! 

Agreed, Zelenskyy made a hash of things. But he is president of a country at war, invaded by a bigger neighbour with express imperial aims, the army of which has targeted civilians and committed atrocities. His countrymen are dying in self-defence. These are things Americans used to be against, when they were motivated by defending truth, democracy, liberty – that sort of thing. Now Zelenskyy comes to the Land of the Free and tries to express himself in English (a mistake) and is shouted down – literally – by two overfed (but beautifully besuited) bullies shouting about deals, cards, suits and ingratitude.

If this spectacle made you angry, buy The Umbrella Men! https://bit.ly/41PmCt7 It’s highly relevant…