The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – A Hundred Honeymoons: A Novel by J.S. Wilson

Episode Date: March 14, 2026

A Hundred Honeymoons: A Novel by J.S. Wilson https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Honeymoons-Novel-J-S-Wilson/dp/1664134204 Women are predators too, only the prey is different? – A.J. Strindberg A Hundred Honeymoons? storyline develops like a carnally driven small town soap opera revolving around two innocent teenagers, Todd and Sally. Drenched in hormonal confusion, Todd?s teenage adventures offer a good number of relatable moments for the reader to quip, ?Yeah, I remember feeling like that.? While Sally?s journey takes her from naive cheerleader to a mature woman. Exploitive and corrupt characters woven throughout, it is a story premeditated with carnal adventures, broken hearts, and true love. Can these infatuated, yet durable teenagers, survive and prove, love does conquer all?

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. In the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready.

Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. This Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. Hello. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends.

As always, the Chris Voss shows, the family that loves you, but doesn't judge you as heart sees the rest of the world. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. Anyway, today, we're going to get into the fine young man that we have, ladies and gentlemen, We're going to talk about his book and some of the different things that he's done.

And yeah, we're going to. So he's the author of the book called A Hundred Honeymoons by J.S. Wilson. He was raised in California, attended CalPol University in San Luis Obispo. Obispo is the setting for much of the story in his book. After graduating, he traveled to Europe on a freighter looking for adventure and experience, and he found both a plenty. He worked in England, Germany, Italy, and visited many countries and towns along the way.

After four years, he returned to San Francisco to the far-out life of counterculture hippies and what's happening. He received a job opportunity to work in Alaska when the oil boom began, which was like Dodge City during the cattle drive. He's married with two children and lives in Alaska. Welcome to the show, Jess. How are you? I'm doing good.

It took a little to get here, but, yeah, I'm happy to be with you. I've looked forward to this for a while. Great. I heard a lot about you and good stuff. Thank you. So give us any dot-coms, websites, any social media, where would you like people to find out more about you on the interwebs? You can go on the internet, and my book is for sale on many different sites, new and used. There's copies of reviews of my book, including a Hollywood book review, one where I got an award for the best romance novel of the year, 2021, and a bunch of others.

and it's all on the website that Bookside Press is set up for me. They're my second publisher and doing much better. I can't say enough good stuff about Bookside Press. They're a very impressive author-focused outfit and in a world of deceit, which is the publishing world, they do a really good job. I can't say enough good stuff about it. So, J.S., give us a third.

30,000 overview of what's inside this book, 100 Honeymoons. What was that again? Give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside your book, 100 honeymonds. I grew up with a lot of pretty wild kids in Northern California on a peninsula near San Francisco. And I wasn't wild myself. I was a very immature kid. But years later, I recognized how wild they really were. And I got to know some of them later and found out about this.

and I thought, and then I read some romance novels myself and realized what trash they were. They never got to the point. I mean, the stuff that drives young people and the sex and the lust and all the other things that confuse us

weren't covered. I thought this would be an interesting story. And I knew all the characters in the book, except one, I knew, I know them all, There are real people in real places, in a real town, real streets and bars and everything. And I thought that was an interesting story. I started writing a long time ago in 1990s. I put it down for about 15 years, and then I got remarried.

My wife encouraged me to write it. I picked up the computer one day, and I couldn't stop. I was just driven. and I completed the story in about 2019, and then it took years of drudgery to get it edited and published. It's a real. Writing is a lot of hard work but fun. But the publishing world and editing and all that is just really difficult. I feel you.

I wrote my own book and the editing, boy, it was really tough because the editor, like, he, he or she reads your stuff and then throws most of it away and hands you back a page and goes start over that that didn't happen to me but i had i had written 700 pages and i had to get it down to 450 so i had to edit out over 200 pages and so that meant i had to go line by line through the whole book until still sell the same story with just 200 less pages actually it made it a better book but it was really drudgery doing that I only had to throw out one chapter that they said they wouldn't publish because it was too wild and I took that out of there

that took out about 25 pages and that's gone but the rest of it was just I remember what I read about and heard about Ernest Hemingway when I was in high school that his books every word every sentence meant something.

And I thought about that when I'm not Ernest Hemingway by any means, but I thought about that when I went through the editing, I said, how to say in a sentence what I had taken before to say in a paragraph, that sort of thing. Also, I found the characters that I knew and built on fascinating, especially the girls that I knew growing up that were wild, and I didn't even know they were, but they were. You have to know them.

Some are still around. Hmm. Those girls. So, were these characters that you grew up with and influence in the characters of your book? Yes. They're real people. The town is real. The streets are real.

The bars are real. The beaches are real. Yeah, you can walk this book. You can pick it up and walk through San Luis Obispo, California, and be in all the places that I covered in the book. Mm. in the book, there's lots of different details in there and the characters. If you were to pick a soundtrack for the story, what songs would you pick from what years? The book is set between about 19, late 1950s and the end of the Vietnam War.

I would have the, I would have the soundtrack of songs like Domino, Blueberry Hill, wake up little Susie, run around Sally, things like that. I'd have a few songs from the Vietnam War. The nasty sonatra, these boots are made for walking. I'd have green onions. One of the things I actually wrote in the book with a few lines from sit right down to write myself a letter, which is actually in the book. Oh, really?

And then, of course, there's letters in the book, the whole part of the book. And that's kind of where I'd come from. The Everly brothers, the righteous brothers, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, people like that. Ah. With the book, it's said in those times and all that good stuff. Let's see. How would you describe this book to someone in an elevator pitch? Yeah.

I'd say it was a cross between West Side Story and 50 shades of gray, only more. Hmm. And there's a line that's in the thing saying, women are predators too, only the prey is different. I think that's a quote from A.J. Strenberg. Yes. So you see that's applicable to your book? Yeah, I think it's mostly about how women compete.

And they can be really great. But I found out from my own wives, my first wife ran a beauty salon, and had grown up in tough circumstances in San Francisco. And I found out from her and her stories just how vicious and, wow, deadly women can compete with other women. Oh, yeah. And so that helped me understand how women compete, especially when we're young, the girls really control our social life, most of the boys, including myself, don't know what's going. We are completely lost, and I was. Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of funny in that age. Yeah, I mean, women's nature is, you know, they're very dark and they, and they, boy, if they, if they had men's penchant or in our nature that, you know, we can kill, boy, I think they'd kill everybody at this space.

No, I've seen women, I've seen women do that catfighty stuff that, that, you know, I've known women that will marry, they will marry a guy who they're not interested in, but, a woman they hate is interested in, and they'll marry that guy and have kids with them, just to keep her from getting that guy. That's crazy. Yep. Yep, and that's the least of it. Oh, yeah, I've seen it all, right? You and me?

Throughout this, you've written a book, and you talk about the sin or flaw to always ignore, and I'm not sure what that's about in the literary sin of it. Tell us what you mean by that. run that by me again. I didn't quite understand you. So in your book, you talk about the literary sin or the details I have or for the literary sin about what sin or flaw to always ignore in the literary sin. Yeah, I found that you ignore all of this advice you get about writing. I found the advice that I got about writing except like I took high school classes in literature

and read books and things. But the advice about how to write I found was just not applied. You have to find your own voice. And by listening to other people trying to tell you what your voice is, is more harm than good. So with the voice you have and just keep writing, I've been told by others that read my book and I think it's true, I was a better writer at the end of my book than at the beginning.

In fact, I'd probably write some of it over again. but listen to your inner voice and just keep writing write like crazy and it'll help you refine your own thoughts and and the and the things that are driving you i don't think you can get any good advice on how to write frankly were there's some authors and inspired you or writers and inspired you i think of course i mean there's about four or five books that just are so good i read them I've read them over again. One would be John Tolens, the Rising Sun, Shiraz, the Killer Angels, Bridges of Madison County, and for whom the bells toll.

Ah. And especially great expectations by Charles Dickens. I mean, a more masterful Ward Smith guy than Dickens has just never been born. Oh, yeah. It's just amazing. It was the best of times. it was the worst of times, yada, yada, yada. Yeah.

Let's ask you this. There's an aha moment in the book, a revelation in the story that changes everything for the characters. What is that? Without telling you a very important part of the story and Sally, who will fall in love, yet have a lot of extracurricular activities

with other people in a book, jealousies and betrayal and whatnot. they're separated by a tragic event and then you might say ability to find each other through that the Vietnam War intercedes here in this book and a part of the book is set in Vietnam for a short part

and I have interviewed people from Vietnam friends of mine who were there in the infantry about what actually happened what it was like to be fighting in a jungle on a rice paddy and just how incredible that is as a life-changing experience. And yeah, pretty life-changing, I'm sure. It was a hell of a time. Now, in the, there's a symbolic object or keepsake that represents Todd and Sally's love

characters in your book. What makes it meaningful? What is it? When Todd and Sally first meet, another character in the book, Sally's great. Sally's grandmother who raises her. Her parents have been, have died early. She comes out on a porch on Encentrales Bispos when they first meet and offers Todd a glass of lemonade and this in a, in a mason jar type cup. And he drinks it and puts it down. And then Sally and he part for quite a while, some days, weeks, months. And Sally, who, who,

immediately falls in love with him, takes this a mason jar and keeps it in her room as a keepsake. And later in the book, when they, before the tragedy and so forth, and afterwards, when they move on in life as adults, she keeps this mason jar on the kitchen, a bay window in front of her sink to commemorate that. Oh, wow. And so that's, is that called the Talisman? Is that what that's called? Talisman? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Okay. And then were you any place in the story? Did your years in Europe maybe influence you as well and developing the story with tone, details, and anything get left out?

There's a few questions there. Again, I had part of the story I couldn't tell because they wouldn't let me print it. It was so outrageous. Oh, wow. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of sex in this book. Ah. that frequently. In fact, a couple of people told me it's pornography. But the one part of the book was there was a lot of some real wild stuff. They wouldn't print it. And I left that out.

And that's just the way it goes. You have to make a book that's publishable. Yeah. Well, that, what was that one book? The gray? Yeah, the 50 Shades of Gray, which I didn't find was very wild at all. That's the whole thing. Oh, wow. This is wilder than 50. shades of gray? I didn't think that was well, I just, yeah, just, I tried to tell a real story about what happened to these kids, how they meet and how, I mean, I

remember what it was like being a teenager and just an incredible frustration of trying to figure out what was going on in the world. Yeah, it's a confusing time for people, really, when it comes down to it. And I met all of these people that I met, they're in

the book. I met in on the peninsula near San Francisco. I met him in San Luis Obispo where I went to college at Cal Poly. I was an architect there. And by the way, I got the best education in the world. I couldn't have gotten a better education for any amount of money for any place in the world. And I got at Cal Poly. And then I went to Europe.

I worked in England. I worked in Italy. I worked in Germany. I traveled to Sweden a lot where I still have friends. And I came back to. San Francisco, which was really wild. But none of it compared to being in Alaska during the pipeline boom. I mean, oh, yeah.

Oh, Jesus, it was wild. Just crazy. All of those people, all of the people in the book are from those eras, those places. Hmm. And did England have an effect as well, I guess? What? Now, in the book, there's a mention here of deleted scenes. Was there a deleted scene that maybe it took out?

out of the book? Yeah, that's it. I took a whole chapter out. Okay. It was part of the story where they're in a canteena out in the Carrizo plain, east of St. Louisville, way out in the desert, and the scene was in there. I had to take it out. That's kind of funny because I thought 50 shades of gray was supposed to be pretty saucy. Is that right? I thought it was pretty tame compared to my book. I think you just sold a whole bunch of them, right? right there. I know how well that 50 Shades of Gray sold. What the hell of a book?

Now, tell us about the researching of the story that surprised or fascinated you. What was some of the research that went into it? I did a lot of research on the town and the places so I could describe them accurately, like describing the streets and beaches and bars and restaurants in San Luis Obispo about what a storm was like. in Avala Beach, California, where there was a big scene out on a pier and what the storm was like. I interviewed two good friends of mine who were in Vietnam, who were in combat. One of them was that I drank, believe it or not. And I got the interviews with them and found out of what it was like to be in Vietnam.

and I got maps of the cities and followed all these places on the map. And one of the other things is very hard about writing a book of multiple places and people is keeping track of it all. I had to keep a cheat sheet with me all the time because it's so easy to get dates and time and places and everything mixed up. That was very difficult, I found. Yeah, that'll do it. That'll do it. With the book, you have something about an internal compass. Tell us about what that is, when you get lost in telling the story and things come back to.

Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, I remember that. What I do is just keep writing. If I don't know where I'm going, I'll just write and write and write and write, and it'll come out in the writing. And I'll have to throw out almost all of it or maybe all of it. But it'll lead me to what I really want to say because I'm really searching within myself for the voice for that. Just keep writing like crazy. Keep writing. Sometimes that's the best, that's the best adherence and policy there. So in the book as well, you have the alternate ending. Did you imagine a different ending at any different point? Yes, I did. Without telling you what happens in the book, the tragedy of Vietnam would be, would end the book instead of going on.

I didn't do that. I kept the Vietnam War going. The war went on, but my book... Okay. They kept going. Let's see. If this book were a movie, who would you cast as the key characters? Yeah, I'd have Young Eastwood as Todd. I'd have Terry Moore as Sally. I'd have Demi Moore as Miss Lady. I'd have Betty Davis as Mrs. B., the villain in the book. And I got an award for that, by the way, for having the best villain, a woman. Oh, really? Yeah, and John Hamm as coach, and probably somebody like Jane Mansfield as Brenda. Oh, wow.

That's really interesting. Now, you have something that's hidden in plain sight within the book. Can you tell us what that is? Yes, the amount of actual sexual stuff that goes on behind the scene in small towns, that there's just a whole raft of things that go on in small towns, that people just look the other way, and that is something that's just part of our culture. There's a lot of stuff that goes on in high schools and junior highs and behind the scenes with married couples and stuff like that

that we don't hear about, and maybe it's better we don't hear about it, but it goes on. And it's a lot of it. Yeah. That's what I covered in the book, I think. There's a lot of that that does go on. You know, we see it in the dating markets and different places. I mean, there's some states where I know they have an active city capital

where they're the swingers, all that stuff. Yeah, I read a, just recently, within the last few months, I read a autobiography of Blaze Star, the famous strip teaser from Baltimore, and she was raised in West Virginia, and she said in her community, any girl that was not married by 16 was considered an old maid. Yeah. That tells you something about what's going on. Yeah, it definitely does.

You know, I mean, and I wonder if it's still the same now where yada, yada, It's a, it's a thing where, you know, they still do that. I mean, that's a pretty early age to get pregnant. Yeah. Well, my second wife who just passed away, a wonderful woman, was raised in the south in a small town in Arkansas, and she was able to kind of fill me in on some of that. If you found a dusty bookstore, if your book, this book, was found in a dusty book, story years from now or just anybody who reads the book what do you hope they come away with when

they read it the pictures of the characters i put the pictures in there of characters and they come away with a breader appreciation how people can go through some really difficult times growing up and yet come out good people huh some people come bad people though oh yeah and this is me in this book because I got a note from somebody here recently who read the book and asked me, how did I actually find somebody that evil? Wow. And I did. I found that.

That's a real person that really did those things. Whoa. Really, yeah. So I would love to have found such an evil villain in my book. Do you ever get worried? Is it potentially that person could figure that out? that they were in you wrote a book covering them she was much older at the time of the book so I oh she's gone now

oh probably safe there if you could send a copy of the book back to your teenage self what would how would you react to it I'd be really shocked that all of the carnal knowledge was spreading around in my junior high school and high school because I didn't know anything I was a complete immature kid emotionally intellectually and physically so I I was very surprised at that. Ah, there are things that will surprise you. Let's see, what else do we have about the book?

Another, which events at L-A-F-F-O-B do you expect to inspire you? I'm not sure what that means, the festival spark. What do I expect to inspire me? From events at L-A-F-F-O-B. I don't know what that is. Oh, yeah, that's the, I'm going to be in the Los Angeles Times. book fair at USC, April 18th and 19th with the bookside press out of Toronto and their leader, Robert Smith. He's a really sharp guy. And I want to meet other authors, and I want to meet some

producers because getting this movie or a series is my real goal. And I've had interviews with other producers, but nobody taking it up yet. That'd be good. Hopefully we can get this on the big screen. Let's see here. What other questions that I have for you? How would you describe your book signing style when you sign your books at these events? I want to connect the people in the book with the people I'm talking to at the book fair. I want to connect them up with me personally and with them personally and with a character in the book that they might identify with or against. And as we go out, tell us, give us people a final pitch out to pick up the book to order it up,

and any dot-coms or websites they can go to and find out more. They can go online and it's just look, just type in 100 honeymoons and it'll bring it up. And there's dozens of things in there about it and reviews. And I got a list of awards on there that I won. I run 19 awards. And that. There is one thing I want to say before we go, and that is I know that this video that I'm on is kind of jumping around because I'm hand holding it. I'm sorry for that for your viewers because it's probably a little disconcerting.

I apologize for that. Thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. I very appreciate being on it. Good luck to you. I like your style. Thank you. Thank you very much and good luck to you as well.

We'll look forward to future books. Is there anything coming out in the future? Not right now. All right. Thank you, J.S. for being on the show. Thanks for our answer for tuning in. Go to Goodrease.com, Fortress, ChrisCris, Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortess, Chris Foss, 1 on the TikTok, any and all those crazy places in it. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning, consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts.

Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed. All right, Jeffrey, thanks for coming.