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I started writing Braxton's Turn in 2012. And completed the first edition in July 2021. I know. I know. What took so long? Well it goes something like this. I started with strong motivation and then the source of that motivation left town. Since I had a busy schedule operating my company, it was easy to make excuses and stick the manuscript in the drawer. But after retirement in early 2020, I realized I had no more excuses. So the manuscript was pulled from the bottom of the drawer and placed on the top of my inbox. It was time to finish what I started....for a change.
Many months later and after too many rewrites to count, we published 'Jonathon Braxton'. It was a story that I had in my head for 10 years. A story about how the world might find the cure for Type 1 diabetes and how the U.S.A. might find some better politics and governance. Little did I know that 10 years after starting, we would still be without a cure.
I mentioned motivation that I had and then left town. That would be my niece Madison, diagnosed with T1D in 2008 at the age of 3. When she moved back to Thousand Oaks from Reno, NV in 2010, I felt an urge to do something and I involved myself with an organization called JDRF, the world largest private advocacy organization in support of finding the cure for T1D.
We raised a lot of money through my company and I was asked to join the JDRF Los Angeles Board of Directors in 2011. That experience exposed me to many of the efforts being made by advocacy groups, parents, and the medical research community in pursuit of a cure. Yet despite millions of dollars being raised through charitable giving combined with large annual research grants from the U.S. Congress, we had no cure and no preventions in hand or on the horizon.
In 2012 the idea of a story came to me about how the right man, in the right place, at the right time could lead the efforts that would result in the cure. And I started writing. Not long after Madison's parents divorced, no doubt in part caused by the stress and pressures of raising and parenting a child with Type 1 diabetes. Madison moved to Las Vegas with her mother and our once very close relationship became distant. And my writing stopped until retirement provided me the time and motivation to finish.
I hope you have a chance to read and enjoy the journey of Jonathon 'JB' Braxton. A story with lots of comedy and quirky characters in addition to serious discussion of life with T1D and other social commentary. Hopefully to those in the T1D community it will provide a source of hope and inspiration. And hopefully to those who desire our country to have better people seeking public office, a source of hope and inspiration as well.
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