author : Norb VonnegutA NOTE FROM AUTHOR NORB VONNEGUT A funny thing happened during my 60-hour weeks as a wealth advisor. I discovered the joy of writing. For years my partners and I wrote our clients about investment decisions, why we bought this stock or sold that one. I loved the wordplay and believe our letters woke an inner beast. They never quite sated my appetite, though. I longed to write stories about Wall Street's people, the crazy things that percolate through trading floors and broker bullpens. My people, characters that is, hail from the trenches of finance. Brokers. Traders. Sales assistants. There is the occasional CEO, or the bigger than life hedgie. But I am not trying to pluck some legend from the business press and fictionalize that person. My characters find themselves thrust into uncomfortable worlds by forces far beyond their control. Working on Wall Street's front lines prepped me to write this fiction. I was a Managing Director at Silvercrest Asset Management, a money management firm where I had the great fortune to work. I spent the previous 14 years on the "sell-side," industry jargon for brokerages and investment banks, including stints at Morgan Stanley's Private Wealth Management division, Paine Webber, and Chase Manhattan in Melbourne, Australia. Ten of those years were with a white-shoe brokerage, the place where I began writing Top Producer.