Interview With Author Turner Grant
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
A country boy originally from Tennessee, I’m a Harvard-educated architect in Washington DC. Thirty years ago, I married into a dynastic Washington DC family, heady stuff for an almost redneck kid of modest means from the sticks outside Nashville. Now, I’m a widowed father of twin boys, one of whom is disabled. I gave up my architectural career in what would have been my most productive years to be a stay-at-home dad. It was the toughest and best job I’ve ever had. Becoming a successful Wall Street investor on my home computer during my at-home-dad years, I was able to retire early. I’m now a disability advocate at the state and federal levels and serve on numerous boards related to disability advocacy and architecture and urban planning. I also explore visionary architecture and urban design that would benefit my community and the country at large (basically I design fun stuff while exploring unique and original design ideas).
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
“To Venus and Back, One Man’s Quest to Rediscover Love,” is my recently published memoir. It is my one and only book and took six years from the first words to publication. Adventurous, intimate, voyeuristic, shocking, and funny like most dating memoirs, my book stands apart because of its heartbreakingly tragic back-story: at age fifty-three, two years after the loss of my wife by suicide, I dared to re-engage in life and search for love.
My book is a very personal story about dating, relationships, sex, and looking to find love again when I—a Harvard-educated architect in Washington, D.C., onetime congressional candidate, and father of twin boys—never expected to be doing any such thing. It’s a front-row seat to one man’s interactions with twenty-six—out of a total of fifty-four—middle-aged women in three years. Interwoven throughout is also a profound story about life, loss, and a quest to heal.
After taking tentative steps into the shallow dating waters, I was quickly immersed in a deep ocean filled with unexpected riptides and crosscurrents within a digital-dating universe that didn’t exist when I last dated decades earlier.
In three years, the fifty-four women I met took me to a totally different world—Venus. It was a journey—a journey that’s, well … complicated.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Other than becoming obsessed with writing once I began, I’m not sure how I worked was unusual in any way. I did however tap into the “charrette” mindset of the architectural studio and worked late into the night. The creative process took hold and time stood still whenever I got into “the zone.”
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe were big writing influences for me, with a little bit of comedic observations thrown in along the lines of George Carlin and Jerry Seinfeld.
What are you working on now?
I’m learning and working on all that is necessary to market one’s book, a mind-boggling amount of work. I’m also in the final stages for selecting the voice actor to make my audiobook. Very exciting.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Facebook ads have been the best promotional method so far. I’m working to get a TikTok video ready to roll. It will be interesting to see how that does.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
“Just write” was the best advice given to me. All else flows from there.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
If you can dream it, you can do it.
What are you reading now?
Just finished Don Quixote. Now listening to Tina Fey’s book, “Bossy Pants.” My reading interests are all over the place.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Good question. It’s unknown, but I wrote a book when I never planned to do any such thing, wo we will see.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Three or four books on how to survive on a desert island.
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