Like Larry Lazard, the fictional CEO of hackoff.com, Tom Evslin founded a company during the dotcom era, took it public, saw the company's stock soar and plunge, and fought a hostile takeover. Unlike Lazard, who is discovered in his office dead of a gunshot wound, Evslin lived to tell the story and give us a boardroom view.

Besides being a serial CEO, an inventor with five granted patents, a licensed pilot, a failed candidate for the US Senate, the former Transportation Secretary of the State of Vermont, and a nerd, Evslin is well-known to web cognoscenti who enjoy his war stories about the Internet bubble and the years before and after on blog.tomevslin.com.

Super-blogger Jeff Jarvis wrote: "Tom did, indeed, have that [ringside] seat. Put him on the short list of the people who made the internet the internet. When he headed up AT&T's internet services, he introduced flat-rate pricing and brought on the masses. He went on to see the power of VOIP before the industry did. And as you'd expect, he's not publishing the old-fashioned way..."

Tom's short novel "The Interpreter's tale" is now available for download as an Amazon Short.

Tom and his wife Mary live in Vermont when not visiting their three peripatetic children around the world.