In 2012, he won a prestigious Norman Mailer Fellowship to complete his most recent historical novel, Road to Delano. His novels Leonardo’s Chair and No Ordinary Man have received critical recognition.
He works with select clients to write stories of inspiration and determination and with those who have a vital message to bring to the marketplace of ideas in well-written books.
website & Social Links
Website → https://www.johndesimone.com/
Twitter → https://twitter.com/JRDeSimone
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/bookwriter718/
Thanks for this interview, John. Congratulations on your new book! Would you
say it’s been a rocky road for you in regards to getting your book written and
published or pretty much smooth sailing?
Can you tell us about your journey?
I had never published a historical novel, but I have always
loved history. Yes, it was rocky. I had 40 some rejections before Rare Bird
took the project. It’s a breakthrough book for me now. It took me five years to
write and rewrite. I probably rewrote it three to five times in places. Then
had to trim it down. It was a lot of work.
If you were to pen your own autobiography, what might the
title be?
Persistence Wins the Day
When not writing, what do you like to do for relaxation
and/or fun?
Read. Exercise. Eat out in interesting restaurants.
What makes your book stand out from the rest?
The combination of history that isn’t centered on a love
affair. But on a friendship, and the moral strength it takes to be heroic.
Can you give us the very first page of your book so that we
can get a glimpse inside?
Sugar
|
|
Sugar Duncan was known
around Lamoille County as a gambler who could farm, but Sugar
called himself a farmer who understood a sure bet. He grew up a plowboy
on a hardscrabble patch of Vermont hill country
and had calluses
before he knew he had brains. It was in the seventh grade, in Pete Colburn’s barn, waiting
out a driving rain that he found his power. While
playing seven-card stud he
could see the patterns, he understood the odds. He lived by the bluff, and he lived well as far as a
child of the Depression could.
Before he reached
high school, they were calling him Sugar because he was sweet about taking
their money.
While his college buddies
baled hay and slopped pigs to pay their
way through Ag school at Vermont U, Sugar found it more profitable
to relieve the hooligans and rumrunners of their easy fortunes at the card
table above Markham’s Grill
over in Providence. After four years of playing cards and a new degree, he left
town to farm where the land hadn’t been
wiped clean of its strength.
Sugar
rode west to California’s Central Valley in
a Pullman with a new pair of tan and white brogues stuffed with
cash packed in the bottom of his steamer. FDR
had just signed the Cullen-Harrison Act ending Prohibition, and a fifth of
whiskey was now as cheap as an acre of California farmland. He hadn’t any
choice. Returning to Vermont would
mean he’d starve. With gasoline a luxury, his father had resorted
to using mules to plow his hundred
acres. Milk and corn prices
had fallen so sharply,
a farmer could live better
by killing his cows than by selling their milk. California was the place he could
make a living. And he intended to make that living as a farmer— eventually.
If your book was put in the holiday section of the store,
what holiday would that be and why?
Easter. Spring is the time of renewal and rebirth. The
resurrection of Christ. Cesar Chavez fasted for nonviolence and broke his 25
day fast on March 10, 1968.
My book will be launched on March 10,
2020. Auspicious.
Would you consider turning your book into a series or has
that already been done?
I would like to see it and its sequel turned into a TV
series.
When you were young, did you ever see writing as a career
or full-time profession?
Always. It caused real problems in my jobs because in my
mind they were always temporary on my way to what I want to be doing.
Did any of your books get rejected by publishers?
This book received over 40 rejections.
What is your view on co-authoring books; have you done
any?
After I left the corporate world, I took up ghostwriting as
a way of making a living while I wrote novels. So yes, I have co-authored over
a dozen self help and memoirs.
What’s next for you?
The sequel to Road to Delano.
Continue the story of Jack and his crew as they deal with the upheaval in their
lives and work.
About The Road to Delano
Jack Duncan is a high school senior whose dream is to play baseball
in college and beyond―as far away from Delano as possible. He longs to
escape the political turmoil surrounding the labor 
With their property on the verge of a tax sale, Jack drives an old combine into town to sell it so he and his mother don’t become homeless. On the road, an old friend of his father’s shows up and hands him the police report indicating Jack’s father was murdered. Jack is compelled to dig deep to discover the entire truth, which throws him into the heart of the corruption endemic in the Central Valley. Everything he has dreamed of is at stake if he can’t control his impulse for revenge.
While Jack’s girlfriend, the intelligent and articulate Ella, warns him not to so anything to jeopardize their plans of moving to L.A., after graduation, Jack turns to his best friend, Adrian, a star player on the team, to help to save his mother’s land. When Jack’s efforts to rescue a stolen piece of farm equipment leaves Adrian―the son of a boycotting fieldworker who works closely with Cesar Chavez―in a catastrophic situation, Jack must bail his friend out of his dilemma before it ruins his future prospects. Jack uses his wits, his acumen at card playing, and his boldness to raise the money to spring his friend, who has been transformed by his jail experience.
The Road to Delano is the path Jack, Ella, and Adrian must take to find their strength, their duty, their destiny.
cLICK BELOw TO ORDER YOUR COPY!
Amazon → https://amzn.to/2Rdrc0G
Barnes & Noble → https://bit.ly/381fQT9
Book Depository → https://bit.ly/2Ld0z82
IndieBound → https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781644280317
No comments:
Post a Comment