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The Advance Reader Copies of THE LAST GRAND TOUR arrived over the weekend, giving me a chance to hold the fruits of my labor in my hands for the first time.
What an immense joy.
You can pre-order it on Amazon now. It should be available on other sites soon!
On a foggy morning with geese drifting by, a seagull flying overhead, and otters playing just offshore, I’m pleased to announce that my novel, THE LAST GRAND TOUR, will be published on JANUARY 28, 2025.
Here’s a description of the book:
American tour guide Joe Newhouse wants nothing more than to reach Venice. Since moving to Munich after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he’s watched his business fail, his wife leave him, and his love for Europe diminish. Now he faces one last ten-day tour with a surly group that doesn’t want to be there. As he leads them through the mythic lands of Europe’s Romantic past, he finds himself disturbed by their stories of earlier lives, puzzled by their desire to be with a man who doesn’t arrive, and entangled in an illicit affair that promises to either save him or plunge his tour—and his life—into madness.
Soaked in the Romantic atmosphere and dark deeds of old Europe—as well as the freedoms and hopes of a new era—The Last Grand Tour takes us on a perilous journey through Hitler’s Berchtesgaden, Mozart’s Salzburg, and Mad King Ludwig’s Bavarian fantasyland before reaching its stunning climax in the murky waters of Venice. Along the way, it explores the often-shifting lines between fidelity and freedom, illusion and reality, regret and desire.
Looking back through slides of my early travels in Europe, I came across this one from my first time in Venice. I’ve been thinking about Venice a lot lately because it’s the final destination for the group in my upcoming novel, The Last Grand Tour.
We’re working on the cover for the novel now. I’ll post a picture of it when it’s ready for release.
The publication date hasn’t been finalized yet but it will probably be early November. I’ll announce it on this site as soon as it’s set.
The press release for my first novel went out this week! It includes the title reveal: The Last Grand Tour. I’ll be posting more about the book in the weeks ahead.
You can read more about the publisher, Korza Books, on their website.
When it rains, it pours. I’ve signed another contract, this one for a book on solitude to be published by Monkfish Publishing in the spring of 2025. The title is still TBD but the subtitle will be: The Place of Solitude in an Active Life.
The book is centered on my experiences during a month of total solitude on Patmos when I was 27 years old. It was after that month, while I was still on the island, that I met Robert Lax. The rest of the book will feature my later experiences of solitude, some on Patmos, some elsewhere.
The book’s last section will be about a return to Patmos I have planned for next month, during the same time period I was there the first time. I’m going to see how an older man’s experience of solitude today differs from that of a younger man at a time when absolute solitude was less difficult to achieve.
I’m excited to announce that I’ve signed a contract with Korza Books to publish my first novel in the fall of 2024. A press release will be coming in January.
The book follows guide Joe Newhouse, whose marriage and business are failing, as he leads one last tour from Munich to Venice shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Traveling through the heart of Romantic Europe, Joe sorts the stories and mysteries of clients who don’t seem to want to be there while weighing–and acting on–his own desires.
James Delmage (J. D.) Ross shortly after he arrived in Seattle.
When James Delmage Ross died suddenly on March 14, 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt mourned his passing by telling the country it had lost “one of the greatest Americans of our generation,” a man whose “successful career and especially his long service in behalf of the public interest are worthy of study by every American boy.”
Yet “J. D.,” as he was called by everyone who knew him—from the president to senators to children in his neighborhood—is virtually unknown today. Even in Seattle, where he was once the city’s most powerful—and popular—figure, those who recognize his name know it only because a dam and lake on the Upper Skagit River were dedicated to him.
Map of Seattle City Light hydroelectric projects on the Skagit River, including the dam and lake named after J. D. Ross.
In the Depression years, however, as the nation suffered the aftermath of predatory practices by private companies, Ross became known across the land as a tireless advocate for publicly-owned electrical power. FDR held him in such high regard, he chose him to sit on the Securities and Exchange Commission, to keep tabs on the country’s private power companies, and then to serve as the first superintendent of the Bonneville Power Administration, one of the most important strategic positions in the years leading up to World War II.
By then, Ross had built Seattle City Light into one of the world’s model municipally-owned power systems and championed changes to both the production and distribution of electricity that reduced power rates to a fraction of what they had once been. He had also toured the country for years, making the case for public control over the nation’s electrical grid.
FDR quote on J. D. Ross’s tomb.
If the country had listened to him—or he had lived longer—there’s no doubt our power system would be in much better shape than it is today and people everywhere would understand FDR’s words of praise.
A self-taught electrical engineer who rose from humble beginnings to become the ideal civil servant and a close friend of the 20th century’s most powerful president, Ross is the kind of figure whose story—and example—we need today. Which is why I’m pleased to announce that I’m writing the first biography to ever be written of him.
A Seattle newspaper’s report on the tributes and crowds at Ross’s funeral
My work on Ross is being supported, in part, by the Oregon Historical Society’s 2022 Donald J. Sterling Senior Research Award in Pacific Northwest History. In the weeks ahead, I’ll be posting more about my finds in the months of research I’ve already done, as well as updates as the research and writing continue.
If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook or check this site in the coming days, you’ll see images from Ross’s hometown of Chatham, Ontario, once known as the Black Mecca because it served as a terminus for the Underground Railroad. His journey from Chatham to Seattle began in 1897 when he walked—walked!—from Edmonton, Alberta, to the Klondike gold fields after a doctor told him his lungs were failing and he needed more exercise.
