T.P. Jones didn't grow up in Dubuque or come to town for college.
But the math teacher who was raised in Massachusetts chose the city as the setting for the novel he'd always wanted to write.
More than 20 years after deciding to set his American political novel in Dubuque, he will return to sign copies of the self-published book at River Lights Bookstore 2nd Edition Friday, Oct. 2.
Jones, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., with his wife, said he studied writing with Kurt Vonnegut at the Iowa Writers Workshop.
In a phone interview, he explained that his aim was to focus on working people in the American Heartland. He thought a major flood would make for good drama. In 1983, he and his wife drove around the Midwest looking for a likely small city.
"When we drove down Dodge Street to the bluffs, I thought, this is perfect. This is the place."
He got permission from the city council to spend two years in the city as an observer, attending "a million meetings," working and observing city departments.
He was both a "fly
book signing |
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Book: "Jackson: Book One: The Loss of Certainty Series," ISBN 987-0-9821601-8-3 Author: T.P. Jones Time/date: 5:30-7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2 Site: River Lights Bookstore 2nd Edition Cost: $24.95 (hardcover) What it's about: A novel about a city, patterned after Dubuque. A company board, union and employees fight to save a meatpacking company from bankruptcy. |
City officials asked only that he not name Dubuque in the book. He renamed it "Jackson," the title of the novel.
In 1986, he went back to teaching math and spent the next four years figuring out how to write the novel, tossing his first draft. He revisited Dubuque several times, including the early '90s, when the city was rocked by racial incidents.
He finished Volume I -- about the demise of a meatpacking company -- in the mid-'90s, when the dot-com boom seemed to kill interest in such a subject. Finding no literary agents who would take on the project, he set it aside, until the recent recession sparked interest in books about economic struggle.
This time, he got feelers, at least, from agents. He vowed to self-publish and selected the MSB Media group in Austin, Texas.
"It was going to be my dime and not cheap," he said, "but with a vigorous publicity campaign."
His "dime" was $18,000 for 2,500 hardcover copies of "Jackson: Book One: The Loss of Certainty Series," plus fees to MSB's Book Pros and Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists.
The second book, which deals with racial incidents, is ready to go to the printer, and the third book, about a flood, is being edited. Meanwhile, Jones is hoping a major publishing outlet will pick up the series.
