Take a little risk …

Introducing Fred Schäfer

Fred was born Paul Friedrich Schäfer in a village in the south of Germany. In his twenties and thirties he lived in Berlin and Düsseldorf. He travelled extensively in America, India, Sri Lanka and Australia. Today he lives with his family in Western Australia.

Fred published his first books – fiction, poetry and travel experiences – in Germany in the 1970s. His most recent non-fiction books, The Solution Within Yourself and Success, Money and You, have sold successfully during public speaking engagements and seminars and have helped thousands of people to reassess their lives.

He is the author of six books and an experienced seminar presenter and keynote speaker. His clients comprise private industry, universities, colleges and government agencies including the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Western Australia.

His latest book, The Short and Wonderful Life of Henry Hemingway, is a reflective, humorous and at times provocative memoir of an extraordinary period in his life, the 1960s, when reality and fiction sometimes collided, sometimes merged.

Fred himself says the following about The Short and Wonderful Life of Henry Hemingway:

This is the story of Henry Hemingway. It is also my story. Everything about Mona, the girls, the toolmakers, IBM, boxing, Schopenhauer, sex and all the stuff that happened in Berlin, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and in the Canadian woods is true – as true as these things can be.

Somewhere along the way Henry Hemingway joined me. Sometimes we travelled together, sometimes he was nowhere to be found. In Bon Echo we met Merrill Denison. He told us about Ernest Hemingway with whom he had worked at the Toronto Star. In Los Angeles we stayed with Anita Alma and her daughters Rosa and Martha. Without Anita’s hospitality things would have looked pretty bleak. We met Henry Miller’s son Tony in Pacific Palisades. This was a fateful meeting. Henry Hemingway had initiated it. In the background I could hear Tony’s father hammering away on a typewriter. Without Tony, who knows, Henry Hemingway may still be around today. He would probably be an alcoholic or a famous writer. Maybe both.

I have recorded the conversations with these people exactly the way I remember them. All other names in this story are invented. For those who think they recognize themselves, may I suggest that you pretend everything is fiction. That worked for me. It still works for me and is also pretty true.

At present Fred is working, on and off, on four more books: Travelling with Maria, The Acting Guru and, in German, Der Mann im Spiegel and Einmal wie Henry Miller.

The publication of Travelling with Maria is scheduled for 2008, probably towards the middle of 2008. It is about a two-year journey Fred and Maria did through India, Sri Lanka and Australia. There were many humorous events: like about running away from wild elephants, meeting a goddess in a Hindu temple, exhausting negotiations with an extraordinarily helpful Indian customs bureaucrat, about love and friendships, a fortune in a biscuit tin, lunchtime striptease shows in Perth, crossing the Nullarbor Plain with a baby in an old Holden HR, about perfect peace and happiness in the middle of nowhere, an amazing man with a slightly damaged brain and two Land Rovers and a lot, lot more.