The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – What Once Was Promised by Louis Trubiano

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

What Once Was Promised by Louis Trubiano Louistrubiano.com https://www.amazon.com/What-Once-Promised-Louis-Trubiano/dp/1963844041 "What Once Was Promised," is a multi-generational family saga packed with action, intrigue, love, and violence. It is a compelling story that is often inspiring and sometimes heartbreaking. Highly recommended." -Len Joy, award winning author of Dry Heat and Everyone Dies Famous. "A moving and well-written saga of an earlier time in America." -Kirkus Reviews "Step into the rich tapestry of early 20th-century Boston where love, friendship, and betrayal intertwine against a backdrop of political intrigue and personal vendettas." -NewInBooks. com He came for a better life, but it didn't turn out to be an easy one. Sixteen-year-old Domenic Bassini sets out alone for America from his small village in Italy in 1914. He falls in love during a brief onboard affair with the beautiful Francesca, the wife of a man with Sicilian Mafia connections. But he loses her and arrives in Boston instead with an orphan stowaway named Ernesto Lentini in tow. Domenic and Ernesto stay at the home of old family friends in Boston's Italian North End neighborhood, sharing a room with their son, Joe. Domenic becomes like a big brother to Joe and Ernesto, who become inseparable friends. As the years and decades pass, youthful rivalries and fateful decisions lead to unpredictable and sometimes unsavory outcomes. Between moments of joy and great tragedy, the three friends' lives take very divergent paths amidst the turbulence of factions vying for power in the early 20th century Boston where the lines between politics, crime and policing are blurred. But after all that has kept them apart, can Domenic, Ernesto, Joe and even Francesca, come together to settle the score with those who have spent a lifetime fighting against them?About the author LOUIS TRUBIANO spent over forty years in the advertising industry, most of it as president of his own firm. Born and raised in Quincy, Massachusetts, he earned his bachelor’s degree from The University of Rochester and a master’s degree from Boston University’s College of Communication. He and his wife live in Canton, Massachusetts and have three daughters, six grandchildren, and one spoiled dog.

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Because you're about to go on a moment. monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. The folks is Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. We just want to see how long as we'll hold that. As always, the Chris Voss shows, man loves you, it doesn't judge you because you're here to learn stuff. You're here to grow.

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on the podcast but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind today's featured author comes to us from books to life marketing dot co dot u.k with expert publishing to strategic marketing They help authors reach their audience and maximize their book's success. Today, my amazing young man on the show with us today. His book is out May 6th, 2024, called What Once Was Promised. Louis Truviano is on the show with us today. We're going to talk to his insights, his experience, and all that good stuff. He spent over 40 years in the advertising industry.

Most of it is president of his own firm, born and raised in Quincy, Massachusetts, here at his bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester and master's degree from Boston University's College of Communication. He and his wife live in Canton, Massachusetts, and have three daughters, six grandchildren, and one spoiled dog, as everyone should have a spoiled dog. Welcome to the show, Lewis. How are you? I'm great since you called me a young man.

I've been called that in a long time. Well, you know, flattery will get us everywhere as our model of the show. So, Lewis, give us their dot-coms. How can people find you on the interwebs? Well, my book is available on Amazon, as most books are, and the website is just lewistrubiano.com. There's all the information about the book, all the reviews, and a list of the awards and things that I've been fortunate enough to win.

Well, congratulations, too, on the awards. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your new book? The book is historical fiction. It's around the turn of the last century, follows the lives over about 50 years span of four Italian immigrants who settled in the north end of Boston and the different directions that they go and the obstacles that they face and the interwoven with real people, real events of the time. And it's partly based on

on experience of my family, but most of it is obviously fictionalized to make it a little more interesting story. Would it be safe to assume that you were also Italian with your last name? Very much Italian. Very much Italian. And so that gives you probably some resonance, some background to develop these characters, the plot lines, scenarios that they're in, etc, et cetera, et cetera. Well, yeah, that's why there's, I never took any writing courses and seminars or writing workshops and things are doing on my own. But someone once said, well, you write about what you know.

Yeah. And I know Boston and I know Italians. And I'm kind of a history buff. So I had a leg up on what was going on in Boston at the time. And I said, this is a great story. There's so much happened around the Italian. turn of the century in Boston in the first 20, 30 years of the 1900s. You had a police strike. You had a flu epidemic. You had a great molasses explosion. Oh, yeah. There was a lot

going on that kind of made an interesting backdrop for the book. And the Italians were in the middle of it. There was the north end of Boston became pretty much an Italian ghetto. At one point It was almost 99% Italian, and they had 90,000 Italians living in one square mile and kind of isolated a bit from the rest of Boston. So there are a lot of interesting things going on there. I bet you could get some good spaghetti and lasagna there. Or the north end of Boston? I don't know.

Yeah. Well, all those Italians. Have you ever been to the north end of Boston, Chris? No, no. Oh, for crying out loud. I thought you'd been around. I thought you were a man of the world. Kind of just not Boston.

We're Boston, Massachusetts area. That's my Ted Kennedy impression. Very bad. So tell us about the protagonist in the book. Is there a main character? Yes, there is a main character, and his name is Dominic Basini. And he's kind of the central character, although he's inspired by my own grandfather. I needed a starting point for the book. And I said, well, let's start

with my own grandfather's experience. So the main character, Dominic Puccini, comes from the same town in Italy, the same year, comes over on the same boat that my grandfather did. He ends up working in the shipyard just as my grandfather did. He, more than any other character, it kind of epitomizes the typical Italian experiences. It comes on the same ship with him. There's a young woman named Francesco, who's the wife of a man who has mafia connections. And there's a young storeway named Ernesto,

who he befriends and actually helps smuggle him into Boston, and they become lifelong friends along with another young Italian boy who already lives in. Boston. And the story follows the divergent paths. Ernesto gets into a life of crime. Joseph, who's the young Italian boy that they, whose house they live at, gets into politics. Dominic just wants to go to work, have a family, work hard, assimilate. And Francesca ends up a very successful, wealthy woman in Boston. But along the way, there's a lot of twists and turns. conflicts, tragedy, some happiness.

But it kind of encapsulates the Italian immigrant experience in Boston, wrapped around the times. There's a lot going on. You know, it was an era of Irish dominance when, you know, the Irish went through it first. And then when the Italians got there, the Irish weren't going to relinquish any of the power that they've assimilated by, in politics, in particular, and policing.

And it was a little difficult for the Italians of the North End to make progress for a while. And that conflict comes through. There's a Irish family that parallels Dominic's family, and one is a captain in the police force, and another one over the course of the story is a politician. ends up becoming mayor of Boston at that point. And that's the story. That's it. Would you say it's a, there's any, is there any mob mafia in there? Maybe the early well, yeah, I don't want to, everybody said, well, you wrote another mafia book. No, no, that's part of it. It's part of it because it was part of the experience of the Italians, as was

the anarchists. There were a lot of Italian anarchists at the time. And a lot of that was a result of being discriminated against when they got here and they couldn't succeed within the system. So they went outside the system. The analysts tried to change it. And organized crime was, well, we'll do this our way, you know, where we're going to do it. Boston was late to the party, actually, on as far as you call it the mafia, whatever you want, organized crime. It wasn't until the 18. 1918, 1919,

around there that it began to get organized around the first New England Mafia chief in fellow by name Gaspetta Messino. He's in the book.

A lot of people in the book. I threw a lot of real characters into the book and to make it more interesting and keep in touch with the real history of the time. And, you know, it's great that you have the lineage of your family

to take and build on some of the probably stories, you know, that you can encapsulate, maybe, you know, maybe just scenarios and then rewritten them in a different format. But you can have the experience of what many of your relatives went through as these generations passed and, you know, being new immigrants in this country, there was a great melting pot sort of era during that time where America was being turned into America was being shaped. Well, yeah, there's a little anecdotes in there from Sunday,

and other things that are based on real things that happen to people in my family and other times, where Dominic's son, Dominic's son fights in World War II. He's in World War II. And his mother, while his son was fighting, so many young Italians were fighting in World War II, the parents had to actually register as enemy aliens because of, they weren't citizens, they wanted to keep track of all the Italians. And my grandfather worked at a shipyard, and during the war, they were not allowed to speak Italian. We're afraid they might be talking, making secret plans or whatever it was. So despite, you know, being the country for years and being loyal citizens and things, that came to the surface and came back to remind everybody

that, hey, you're still an immigrant in the eyes of Benny. Yeah. So is this your first book? Have you written before? What was your journey through life? And when did you start writing and kind of find that this is your thing? I started writing a long time ago. But unfortunately, Chris, real life got in the way.

Oh, yeah. And I had a business and I had kids and I had a lot of interest in activities and things. and things I was involved with. And I'd write in snippets and put it aside and maybe go a year or two or three and not do anything about it. But when I finally retired, sold the business and retired, I had the time, and I dusted it off

and threw most of it out and started out. And it took a couple of years on and off. It was not easy for me. I'm not a, wasn't a trained writer. I wasn't very disciplined and there always seemed to be better things to do than to go into my office dungeon and and work on the book particularly when there was nothing fresh in my mind to to to put down so um when i finished the book and wrote the end i said that's it i'm not i'm not doing this again because but but uh because it's done so well and

and has got so many great reviews, I have started on another two, actually. One, you could more or less call a prequel because it's going to deal with the Irish experience from around the time of the Civil War to up until the 1890s when the first Irish Mayor of Boston, Irish-Borned Mayor of Boston, was elected, and it kind of follows the Irish ascension to power in Boston. and this one is hard because I don't have the experience with the Irish experience that I did with the Italian experience. So the research is more intense, but hopefully it will lead to a trip to Ireland to look at some of the places I talk about in the book.

And I've also started another book, which is more of a thrill or mystery type of thing. And the great thing is, you know, I'm not a writer. I don't depend on writing to make it. a living. So I'm able to do this when I feel like doing it. Oh, well, that's nice. You know, sometimes not having a gun to your head gives you the best sort of

results. Sometimes it gives you some doing anything sometimes. Yeah, that's true. You might stay outside. The hell with the book, I'm going golfing, you know. As long as you always, you know, what is that, hour or day writing, some authors will do. And so it can make all the difference. But I think with the Irish book, I

I think all the research you have to do is you just have to put a lot of alcohol, vodka, potatoes, and play Danny Boy a lot, like every other chapter or something. I love my Irish friends, by the way. Oh, God. Oh, God. I love the Irish, too. I think I have a little bit of a sinner lineage, so it may explain the vodka drinking, but... I've been called upon at parties with my Irish friends, because I'm Italian, but I'm anyone

knows all the words to Danny Boy. Yeah, yeah. It's such a great song. Such a great song. It just makes Irish, that just completes the whole Irish genre, I think, or something. Yeah. So the thing is, I've been thrilled with the way the book's been received and the reviews that has gotten.

It's been, it's really been fun. You know, it's really been fun to hear from people you don't know who read the book and via my website, they send, how much I'm, it's one. And the people you do know, obviously a lot of people you know will, like, here you wrote the book, go out and read the book. And I just had came from a big family reunion this weekend and half a dozen cousins that I didn't even know that I read the book. And that's kind of cool. I'm getting a kick. I'm enjoying the author thing.

You know, it's pretty nice. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. You end up touching people's lives that you didn't realize. And, you know, sometimes I'll walk up to you one day and they'll be like, hey, you changed my life. And you're like, really? I just wrote a book. I don't know if I want that responsibility.

It's kind of funny. It's great when you do a, I've done some book signings. And when people are there who have already read the book, and I talk about it. And they come up afterwards and they tell you how much it touched them, it made them cry. Or why did this person have to die or why did that happen? You can see how vested they are in it. And that's kind of rewarding kind of, kind of cool to see. And it's got me, you know, I'm going down in Nashville in a couple of weeks because it's a big

writers conference and dinner down there for writers. And my book is a finalist for out of hundreds. It's a finalist for award in the historical fiction category. It's let me kind of cool to go down there. It's kind of like the Academy Award. You sit out there, wait to see if you want. And I always wanted to see Nashville on my bucket list. I'd never been there, and everybody says it's how great it is.

And I probably wouldn't have gotten around to doing it if I hadn't written the book and hadn't been invited to go to this event. It's really interesting how a book opens up the worlds of people. You know, you do stuff for like 50 years and all your friends witness it and stuff. And then you write a book and talk about some of the insights you have. And people are like, oh, my God, you're really smart. And you're like, you were here the whole time. like I'm smart now because I put it in a book

like you thought all my stories were stupid before there's truth in that it's also because you've written a book people expect you to be smart and eloquent and I hate to disappoint them when they actually meet me but

they put those comments and periods in the place for me so that's not that. the answer was like have you ever heard of a comma i'm like uh uh no anyway i never met a comma i didn't like that's true sometimes i use too many commas like sometimes i go overboard i just comment the shit at everything the first indication i had that this book was actually i had very low expectations for I get Nick Dunn and getting it independently published was my goal.

Anything after that was scary, but the editor who edited the book, who has done a lot of books, indicate to me that I really had something here. And he said, congratulations is quite an achievement. That was before he went through and just killing me on grammar and punctuation and that kind of stuff. But the mystery pretty much stayed intact. There you go. It can be hard in editing. They kind of take a giant dump on everything you're written.

And you like him to 50,000 words and they hand you back. Well, here's five pages we threw away the rest. Now start over, book boy. And he changed a few things around. But the heart of the book kept intact. And then before it was published, they suggested we send it out and get some professional reviews. and one was Kirkus reviews, and I got a great review, and it was a get-it, read-it recommendation, which only about 5, 10% of their reviews are.

And I said, wow, I was scared to death thinking, oh, we're getting a review from Kirkus, maybe they'll see through me, and that's kind of how great. So it's been a fun ride. It's convinced me to do another one. Now, that might take me 10 years, but it's something to do in the winter when you can't go out and watchy or. Some of you, you know, skip a few golf times and focus on that book. But, you know, it's just interesting. Sometimes an hour a day turns into, you know, sometimes a couple hours a day and then off you go.

And, you know, they got a book. Sometimes if you, Chris, you sit down and you're on a roll and you say, this is great. other times I would sit down there I just talk to the dog for an hour and then give up so it's a very weird thing I'm glad I did I'm glad I experienced it

I know a little bit more going into this second book this time I'm going to try to go the traditional publishing route as opposed to the independent route last time I just wanted to get the book out there I was, I didn't send out any inquiries to, I didn't, it's, it's a tough world out there for, for writers, especially first time writers no one ever heard of, but this time we're kind of a track record, I think I'll, I'll, we just, we just had on a couple hours ago, a guy who does military genre books, kind of like, you know, the Jack Ryan sort of stuff, and he published independently his first two books, and then Penguin noticed and, when there's Simon Schuster notice and they came

an offer from a deal. And now he's got multiple deals. That's the dream. That's the dream of millions of authors out there. Someone told me that there's like 19 million books on Amazon. It's like I think that's with AI. I mean AI is making it worse.

Oh, that's not fair. Yeah, it's not fair at all. And I think my understanding is Amazon's clamping down on the AI books. I saw, I can't remember the journalist gal's name, but she's I can't remember her name, but she's

very popular and very smart. And she was coming out with a biography and like all these, I don't know what you call them, AI hacker, pseudo dudes, whatever, I don't know what you call these people, but they had literally invented eight different versions through AI of her biography that you could buy right away

instead of the pending real one that was coming out from her yeah and i was like and i remember looking i'm like which book is yours because there's like it's like all these biography and they're all landing at the same time with different covers and it was just extraordinary and they just had a i just punch it out like nothing so i guess we're doing something about that i can't i can't do that because i don't i don't i i don't understand it so i can't i can't use it i can't do it right I mean, it has some formats. Like, I've actually, I've actually written stuff and put it into chat GPT and said, help me clean this up.

Or, you know, I remember having it, having it do summaries and stuff or abouts on for websites. And, you know, so I'd write it up and then I'd give it to chat GPT. And I mean, I don't like the way this sounds. I don't, for some reason, I just cannot get this to click right in my head. And then chat GPT would kind of rejigger and reformat, you know, the sentences like the spell trickers to you know and you come up with a wisdom way better and I'm like yeah that makes I'm actually communicating effectively now yeah it's it's it's the idea of of saying I need to have a a a man meets a woman to buy one a witty conversation and he's yeah and thrown it at

AI and have them do that have AI do the heavy lifting yeah something about that doesn't Yeah, I mean, it's great, you know, telling me where to put the commas, you know, that sort of thing. Commas are tricky. I never knew there were so many rules about comments. Oh, my God, this, I don't even know. I just kind of threw, I actually pay for, what is it that I pay for, for my online writing, I pay for grammarly.

I don't know why I'm going to plug to them for free, but I pay for grammarly in it. Sometimes it'll tell you, hey, you know, put the sentence over here and flip that. On your character in the book, do you anticipate, maybe this becoming a series, this book? No, the way the way the book goes, it really doesn't lead into a series. Well, you know, Hollywood can always fix that. Well, I hope someone Hollywood's listening to you.

That'd be great. The way the book was going, it was going to extend another 23rd years beyond where it ended. Oh, really? And I would have been an old man, and it would have been 800 pages. So I kind of truncated it, and I think it's more powerful this way, instead of dragging it out a little longer over a whole other generation.

But the way that I ended, it kind of precludes bringing some of these characters back. So the Irish thing is kind of a prequel. There will actually be some characters in it at the... end there in the beginning of my book including the uh uh a police captain and his backstory on how he became a police captain and things like that but it it doesn't have any of the italian characters in it okay but the time frame is a prequel it was the irish moved out of the north end to boston and the italians moved in but kept the power and uh because the the the big thing the italians Tans had to go against them was the language, not speaking the language, and a lot of the

tans were stubborn. I don't know if you've noticed that about the Tans, but we're pretty stubborn. Didn't go out of the way to try to learn the language, and they wanted to have their own, you've heard, you know, literally a little Italy. Yeah, a little Italy, yeah. With their own families and friends and their own culture and their own Sunday dinners, but you can't really, you can't really do that. And to this day, you know, now the North End has changed quite a bit. It's really been gentrified and some of the old warehouses along the waterfront are now high-rise condos.

And the population, I don't know what the percentage is of Italians now. It's, you know, probably about 30%. But most of the businesses are still owned by Italians in the North Carolina. Oh, really? Wonderful story. And we'll look forward to the future works that you're doing. Give people a final pitch on and where they can. get to know you better on your website

again it's just louis trubiano.com and there's more in there about one book than you'd ever want to know but you can go to louis trubiano dot com and read the reviews and get the plot summary and look at the awards

and hopefully it'll resonate and I'll sell more books although selling the books is just it's just the frosting on the cape Chris writing book was the great and the experience that it's broad has been wonderful too well we'll look more we'll look for more to come from you and all that good stuff so write another one i'll give you a call

try to get on here again sounds good lewis sounds good thank you very much for coming the show louis we really appreciate it well thank you very much for for having me chris thank you and thanks for on it's for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Christchrist, Chris Foss. Pick up his book, What Once was promised out May 6th, 2024. You can find it wherever.

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