Welcome to DavidLitvin.com

This is the online home of my favorite writer, me.

Actually that’s not quite true or even all that close for that matter. Douglas Adams, Joseph Heller, and the great Kurt Vonnegut Jr. immediately spring to mind. But there are many others.

But I like to think I’m not bad. And one of the reasons for that is that there is a single-mindedness about my stuff that results in a recurring theme in all of my work. Given that my work stretches across numerous genres in much the same way as a rubber swim cap pulls just enough to keep dry even the most straggly and unruly hair.

On this page you will so far find three novels, a musical stage play and a nonfiction work. Lets have a quick and hopefully not too tedious look at each one. Starting from the first to the now.

May 2010

All In: The Poker Musical

In 2010, I was working in a casino poker room as a poker dealer. In fact it’s the same place where I still work. Although I have been the director of poker since 2011. Back then I met a man named Vini Poncia. Vini is a music producer, songwriter and performer and is pretty well known in the record industry. Mostly because he was the co-writer of the very popular song You Make Me Feel Like Dancing with Leo Sayer. Whether you like the song or not, he has made a pretty good living just from writing it. He and Leo Sayer even received a Grammy for their efforts. He also produced two of Ringo Starr’s solo albums, Kiss, Melissa Manchester, and many others. He didn’t produce it. But he was present in the studio while The Beatles created the Abbey Road album.

To me, this made Vini only slightly less than a god. We became friendly over the poker table. This being around the time of the peak of poker popularity. I blithely suggested that someone should create a poker musical. The time was right. I told him that I was something of a writer and I can write the play itself. To this day I think Vini thought I was kidding. Or more likely, full of shit. Yet he said to go ahead and write the play. And if I do, he would write and record the songs that go with it based on the narrative. Vini had access to studio time and a stable of talent that he worked with.

About a month later, Vini and I met in a Dunkin Donuts. Me with a notebook full of chicken scratch. Vini brought along a surprised look. And some money for the coffee. Oddly enough, he liked what he read and quickly returned to New York and his studio.

The result was a campy and (I hope) fun play with about a dozen accompanying songs. Including the classic Blame it on the Dealer. Vini had connections in the industry. But yet the odds of getting a new musical produced are similar to those of Donald Trump telling the truth or skipping a meal. So All In remains but one of a million plays that never made it to the lights of Broadway. Although I had always envisioned it as a Vegas production that might run in conjunction with the World Series of Poker.

It's pretty good, if I don’t say so myself. And especially campy in the way musicals often are. To give you an example: The lead characters are named Ace, Deuce, and Trey. And like most, if not all of my work, the female lead is very strong and competent. She is not hindered by the fragility of the male ego.

In fact, in my more than a quarter century in the poker business, I have noticed that women, though smaller in number, are far superior poker players on average. Solid female players do very well. The best of them find their gender to be an advantage rather than a handicap.

Testosterone flows freely in a poker room. With all of the “old boys club” behavior you might expect. Poker is largely a game of numbers, odds and position. Yet Poker is also a very emotional sport. Bad luck can easily prod a player into what we call being “on tilt”. Where discretion and better judgement are lost to the wind in an effort to sooth battered pride and bankrolls. Women, I have found. Are way less susceptible to the almost always disastrous effects of “tilt”.

It's hard to believe that play was completed more than 13 years ago. Much of it seems just a bit dated now as the game, the world at large, and I have changed quite a bit since then.

I can still remember completing it. It was the first cohesive work I ever did. It was completed in the worlds tiniest cruise cabin. At home, many of you might consider it a closet. We were somewhere off the coast of Madeira, Portugal. My wife at the time was ill for a change. The two of us smoked several hundred cigarettes in about an 80 square feet as I completed what would become All In: The Poker Musical. To this day it is the literal wall of smoke that I remember the most. By the way you can no longer smoke in any cabin on any of the major cruise lines. Apparently if you want to smoke on a cruise ship they set you up on water skis and drag you along behind the ship as you smoke. And the penalty for smoking in your cabin is either a merciful death, or being forced to read All In: The Poker Musical.

If anyone is interested in hearing any of the songs for the play I will do my best to email them to you. Vini published and copyrighted everything so don’t be a smart ass.

Thanks for visiting my page and we’ll get into some of the other books and we will discuss that “overriding theme” that I teased and then utterly failed to follow up on.

Until then…

KEEP YOUR NEEDS SIMPLE AND YOUR MASTERS FEW