NOT A WORD IN 2004ran the (fictional) San Fransisco Chronicle's headline. By his own public admission, for 18 months Ted Foster “rarely rotated his noggin left or right because there was nothing it wanted to look at”.

But what had put him into this catatonic stupor? Seems we could be about to find out... “On Larry King Live," he writes in chapter one, "I only had about forty-five minutes and he kept changing the subject to keep his ratings up. But now I’ve got a book. I can say whatever I want to say for as long as I want to say it...” And it turns out it’s not his marriage, it’s not that he’s entered his fifties, it’s not insane world events…It's something much smaller...

Jon Ferguson has written a novel rich in character, philosophy and humour, that engages the reader to the extent that you will want Ted Foster to keep on “pecking out” his life story. From page one the book poses a question about “who the loonies are”: Foster’s pretty sure it’s not him...

Like Foster, Jon Ferguson is no stranger to the media; albeit for more positive reasons. He moved from the US to Switzerland in his mid-twenties with no clear plans.Soon he was playing basketball in the top Swiss league, becoming a key player in what fans consider to have been the golden age. Half a century later he is now just as well known for his writing (eighteen books published in French) as for his coaching (thirty years' worth). He won more games than any coach in Swiss basketball history, but he likes to remind people that he lost more than everyone else as well... He has written over twenty novels and a book on Nietzsche, Nietzsche au Petit Déjeuner (“Nietzsche for Breakfast”) and a book on the history of Swiss basketball, Of Hoops and Men. For twenty-five years he also wrote a bi-weekly column in the Lausanne newspaper called “Ainsi Parla Schmaltz”. His novel Farley’s Jewel (Cinco Puntos Press, 1998) won a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers of America” prize.

Find out more about Jon Ferguson at www.jonfergusonbooks.com.

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