Coerte V.W. Felske

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