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Author John Blossom Tells All About His IRDA-Winning Book

The Last Football Player was the winner in the Sports/Fitness/Recreation category of the 2024 IndieReader Discovery Awards, where undiscovered talent meets people with the power to make a difference.

Following find an interview with author John Blossom.

It is a great honor to accept this award on behalf of a book that was nothing but pure fun to write. I am humbled that it has been so enthusiastically received and hope it entertains readers for many generations to come. Will football survive the onslaught of technology and greed? Only time will tell, but in the meantime this book is for those who love sports for the right reasons – passion, creativity, teamwork and love.

What is the name of the book and when was it published?

The Last Football Player published July 9, 2023

What’s the book’s first line?

“In the family breakfast nook with a stunning view of Silicon Valley, Dude was trying to explain to his dad how much fun he had playing football despite the risk of getting injured.”

What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.

After contact sports are banned by parental safety fanatics, protagonist Dude McPherson and a team of Silicon Valley teenagers strive hard to save the essence of American football by using AI and a host of cutting edge technologies provided by their corporately-sponsored school. Can robots and a burgeoning love between Dude and a wildly talented female quarterback keep Dude’s interfering and avaricious father at bay and preserve the gridiron dream of the most creative sport ever invented?

What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?

Every American football season for me is a combination of admiration for the complexity, excitement and beauty of the sport, that is, unfortunately, tainted by the gruesome toll of gladiator-like injuries. I imagined a time in the near-future when, despite advances in technology,  football might be banned and how that might affect a young person just learning to love the game. Could technology somehow provide a solution to the dilemma? And how would it react to the forces of corporate greed that already drive the game? What would human creativity and teamwork look like in a future dominated by AI and robots? These questions, and growing up watching  the Green Bay Packers, were the forces that led me to write this novel.

What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?

Like many teenagers today, Dude is awash in forces beyond his control, but he is lucky enough to have a true passion for a sport. When that sport is taken away from him, he discovers the skills and energy he needs to mature. His single-minded purpose, coupled with the ability to compromise and work well with others, human and otherwise, puts him in league with many sci-fi heroes who work in teams. A teenage version of Captain Kirk from Star Trek would fit, only obsessed with football not space.

Tomly is also a distinctive main character being a female athlete using her extraordinary gifts and organizational skills to achieve recognition in a male-dominated sport.

What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?

It’s breezy, accessible and entertaining. It was a delight to discover the characters as they came to me, and they still delight me after many rereads and revisions.  If you love football, these characters will make you think about its future. If you don’t like football, they will make you think about the creativity and human connections required to play a complicated game. The AI character, Master, arrives in the middle of the book and, in my opinion, steals the show.

If they made your book into a movie, who would you like to see play the main character(s)?

Dude: Iain Armitage; Tomly: Mckenna Grace; Master: Lydian Blossom

When did you first decide to become an author?

I began writing poetry at Carleton College in 1978, but Horse Boys in 2017 was my first novel after a long career as an English and art teacher. I was obsessed with reading from an early age, so working with words comes as naturally to me as digging soil in the garden.

Is this the first you’ve written?

Since Horse Boys, I have written four subsequent young adult novels, a memoir, a how-to book on throwing clay on the potter’s wheel, and a full-length guide for teachers wanting to transition from traditional teaching to project-based learning.

What do you do for work when you’re not writing?

I manage a large organic garden on my property that feeds the neighborhood.

How much time do you generally spend on your writing?

I write obsessively when I am hot on a project. Otherwise, I do not set a daily schedule. Instead, I focus on reading as much fiction as I can, not necessarily all in my genre. I typically finish a first draft in three to six months.

What’s the best and the hardest part of being an indie?

The hardest part is realizing that marketing is a skill set that has to be developed and does not develop parallel with the skills of writing.

Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why?

I am very pleased to announce that my most recent novel, Mahina Rises will be published by 12 Willows Press in late 2025. It is a young adult novel about a native Hawaiian teenager who fights climate change through her family’s psychic powers of dreaming. I am thrilled because I feel the recognition within the “established” publishing world will increase interest in previous self-published works, as well as in my future novels.

As for The Last Football Player, I am convinced it would translate well into film. It’s a very visual book with a strong dramatic story line. I am especially curious to see  how a film company would create the technologically rich scenes within the futuristic tech lab and on the football field.  I think the future of football is a topic of great interest to most Americans, especially in regard to injuries and technological advances in robotics and artificial intelligence.

Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)

I started writing because after years of encouraging my students to write, I wanted to show them that I could actually do it myself. Now I write for the excitement of creative ideas that lead to obsession and that delightful and rewarding dance with the collective unconscious. I also like revising quite a bit, although it is a less dream-like process. I look at publishing similarly to how I looked at grades as a teacher – it should be a reflection of the hard work students put into the process of learning and not the primary goal.

Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?

George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Haruki Murakami, Anne Patchett, Richard Powers, Madeleine L’Engle, David Mitchell, Anne Tyler, Roger Zelazny, many others…

Which book do you wish you could have written?

If I had been writing back then, Brave New World, 1984, A Wrinkle in Time, The Lathe of Heaven.  Recently: The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett, Slade House by David Mitchell, The Echo Maker by Richard Powers, and Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami.

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