Putting a Tale of Red Ink in Print : Bankruptcy: UCI Prof. Philippe Jorion hopes his book will help educate the public about Orange County’s financial travails.

It won’t muscle John Grisham or Danielle Steel off the bestseller list, but come this fall, Orange County residents will be able to read a book about the county’s unprecedented plunge into bankruptcy.

UC Irvine Prof. Philippe Jorion and San Diego-based Academic Press are teaming up on a blow-by-blow account of how the county’s ill-fated investment scheme dissolved into a pool of red ink.

Academic Press is “throwing around a lot of ideas” for the book’s title, said spokeswoman Lynne Karle. “Maybe we’ll devise a new term, like ‘Debtquake.’ ”

Jorion, a UCI finance professor, had hoped to have the book in print in time to influence voters in the June 27 special election on a proposed half-cent sales tax. But because of publishing limitations, the book won’t reach bookstore shelves until October.

“The loss is there and it somehow has to be dealt with,” said Jorion, who supports the tax increase.

“This book will be very different from an outsider’s clinical analysis,” said the Irvine resident who has children in the city’s school system, a pool investor that has been forced to trim programs to balance its budget. “I have really strong feelings about this. . . . I’m going to be paying the price for what has happened.”

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Jorion began toying with the idea of writing about Orange County’s financial crisis in late 1994 right after the county shocked residents and Wall Street by plunging itself and the ill-fated bond pool into bankruptcy.

At the time, Jorion and Academic Press were discussing a possible book about international finance. But as the Orange County’s financial crisis deepened, Jorion and his editors switched gears and went to work on a book about the bond crisis.

Academic Press specializes in scientific and technical books, and Jorion specializes in international finance, but the Orange County book will be aimed at “average people,” Karle said, not financial wizards who already understand the complex blend of investments and leverage that pushed the county into its unprecedented bankruptcy.

Jorion said he’ll need to explain finance to readers, but he promises to find the “fine balance between telling a story and being factual.”

Jorion also will explore the role that derivatives and highly leveraged positions played in other losses, most notably, England’s Barings Bank.

Jorion, who’s written textbooks and professional papers, knows that best-selling books typically have clearly defined heroes and villains. But even though many Orange County residents have cast former county Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron as the villain, Jorion believes there are other candidates who should share that dubious distinction.

“A lot of people have been dumping on Bob Citron, but I have a more mixed view,” Jorion said. “He was trying to benefit the county, and there’s no evidence that he did anything for personal profit.”

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Jorion’s Orange County book marks the first venture for Academic Press outside its normal role as publisher of scientific and professional books. The subsidiary of publishing giant Harcourt Brace & Co. hopes to sell at least 10,000 copies of Jorion’s book.

“Granted, this isn’t Danielle Steel,” Karle said. “But we’re betting that there’s going to be lots of interest because it’s California. We think this is something that the average reader will be interested in.”

Jorion credits his wife, Dominique, with planting the idea for a book. “I spent hours on the telephone talking to reporters,” Jorion said. “And many of their questions were very, very similar. I had to explain things over and over again.”

After answering reporters’ queries, Jorion fielded more questions from his wife, including a very basic question that’s still troubling many Orange County residents. Jorion said: “She couldn’t understand how anyone could lose so much money.”