Max J. Pucher - Biography

I was born in Austria in 1954. I completed a college education in electrical power engineering so I should have gone out to design electrical power plants. On the advice of a teacher I rather joined IBM as a computer engineer in 1973 where I stayed to work for 15 years. At IBM I gathered international experience in technical, consulting and sales positions. The most exciting part was a three year assignment to Saudi Arabia where worked and lived with my family from 1981 to 1984. These years strongly shaped my interest and insight into religious conflict.

I co-founded a world-wide operating software business, which I still guide in the role of chief architect. I have lived in the United States, Antigua in the Caribbean, and moved to Switzerland in 2006 shortly after a sports injury involving three compression fractures in my upper spine. I consider myself very lucky to not be paralyzed from the neck down.

I have two grown up children and a grandson.

I have always been a creative person with crazy ideas and took piano lessons for three years, learned to play drums and the guitar, played in a number of bands for fun and recorded two instrumental CD’s with my good friend Andi Klein in the late 80’s. Our style would be called Lounge Music today.

As a teenager I wrote and drew a lot but as both was mostly very erotic my parents told me to stop it. My favorite drawing theme was a female martyred Jesus on the cross. So religion and it’s inconsistensies have been with me from my youth. How our sexuality, as well as politics and religion shape our lives has been the subject of my fiction writing.

I do not write for money and thus not for the masses. My style is direct and blunt, crisp and clear to sometimes cold and too honest. I don’t consider myself a Paulo Coelho, while I would love to be able to write about my subjects in his style. My style is too accurate and detailed … I know, but it is my style.

I read forty to fifty books a year most of which are non-fiction. It is a mix of psychology, biology, quantum physics, information technology, politics and economy. This is why I decided to also put my own book reviews here. I write a lot of reviews on Amazon - my favorite bookstore who also sells my books - but I will rather put them here in the future.