Francesco Paola joins the Spotlight this week to discuss his debut novel, Left on Rancho
Author Name: Francesco Paola
Book Title: Left on Rancho
Book Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Release Date: February 11, 2025
Publisher: SparkPress
Welcome, Francesco! How would you describe Left on Rancho?
Left on Rancho is a contemporary noir that follows a burned-out tech entrepreneur to the Mojave Desert to help save his childhood friend’s legal weed company. When he first arrives at his destination he is greeted by a Sheriff’s homicide detective investigating the murder of an escaped migrant from a nearby private prison. What could possibly go wrong?
What sparked the idea for this book?
After a twenty-year career in tech, I spent two years working for a (legal) California cannabis company. I’d commute to the factory every day from Los Angeles, across the Cajon pass into the Mojave Desert, and drive by multiple cannabis grow, extraction, and manufacturing facilities that were interspersed between private, County, and State prisons. In the middle of nowhere. There had to be a story in there somewhere.
How long did it take for you to write the book? Did you do any research?
I completed the first draft in seven months. It took me another fifteen months to iterate multiple drafts and finally submit it to the publisher. It will have been three and a half years from when I first put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard!) to the pub date of February 2025.
I was constantly doing research, on the latest cannabis news and trends, the regulatory challenges, and reading about the (mostly) failures of cannabis legalization in states outside of California. I also spent quite a bit of time researching immigration policy, how private prisons function, and trying to find real stories of non-profits and agencies that were supporting the plight of migrants.
Although I spent two years working in the Mojave Desert and West Hollywood (and I worked in Downtown LA for several years prior to that time), I made several trips back to LA during the writing period to ensure that I captured the essence of the locations and be able to effectively describe the scenery and the feel, like when Ish and Andrew cruise up Laurel Canyon and Mulholland Drive, when they drive down Santa Monica and Melrose from West Hollywood to Downtown LA, and to highlight the contrast between the inland locations and Manhattan Beach, where a critical confrontation occurs between Andrew and Charlie.
What’s your favorite part about writing/being an author? What do you find challenging?
One of the most enjoyable aspects of writing is the discipline required to craft a compelling story. Without discipline, one does not get very far. I spend at least two hours every morning, five days a week, sequestered in my writing area formulating plot, alternative scenarios, characters, and writing at least 800 words per session. Those words may all disappear the next day, but those 800 words must be written.
Challenges: maintaining the discipline; killing the “darlings”; accepting editorial feedback; digesting negative reviews; editing draft number thirty (and getting to the point of editing draft number thirty); knowing when the novel is done; starting the next one.
If you were speaking to someone who hasn’t read your writing before, why should they want to read Left on Rancho? What do you hope readers will take away from this story?
Left on Rancho is a mystery thriller with a protagonist (an outsider) that rides into an isolated town in the Mojave Desert and unknowingly upends the status quo. When I first came up with the concept, I watched films like High Plains Drifter, where a lone horseman rides into an isolated town and wreaks havoc on the lives of the townspeople, and The Third Man, where a down-and-out writer arrives in post-war Vienna to help a childhood friend run his business, only to find out that things are not what they seem.
The novel sets the mystery thriller into the heart of two “ripped from the headlines” contemporary issues: cannabis and immigration. The legalization of cannabis at the state level is a mess, regulators have failed to stem the tide of illegal weed, and it has impacted multiple strata of society, positively and negatively. And, immigration is in the news every day, it is holding government legislation hostage, and it is a major political issue: the border wall, a record number of migrants at the border, and children separated from their families. With dead bodies found in the desert.
Fans of which authors might gravitate toward your book?
Tod Goldberg, author of the Gangster Trilogy including The Low Desert: Gangster Stories; Denis Johnson, for those who appreciated his wonderful California Gothic Already Dead; Tim O’Brien, for all his novels, especially his most recent America Fantastica; Mark Haskell Smith, author of Baked, a novel with a different, and humorous take on the cannabis noir genre; Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy whose noir novels are set in Los Angeles; and Dorothy B. Hughes, an often overlooked author who deserves her place in the pantheon of brilliant American writers, thriller and non.
Any words of wisdom you give your pre-published writer self (or to a new writer)?
I believe that we all have at least one story in us that needs to be told. You’ll never know, however, until you put pen to paper; don’t expect your first drafts to be even close to publishing grade; find friends that are willing to honestly read and edit your work to help you hone your skills; don’t be upset by rejections of your work, or be discouraged by negative reviews and feedback. It comes with the territory, and it will only make you a better and more efficient writer.
What are your interests outside of writing and reading?
I was born in Italy and grew up in Thailand and Australia, where I was exposed to a multitude of cuisines at a young age. Add a grandmother willing to teach me how to cook during the summers I spent in Italy, and voila’, I have a set of tried-and-true recipes that I go to often.
Some of my staples include risotto: saffron, champagne, mushroom; pasta: ragu’ alla Bolognese, carbonara, amatriciana; braised meat: short ribs, lamb shanks, duck; fish: poached, fried, baked; and lots and lots of legumes, vegetables, and fruit.
With in-season fruit and vegetables purchased at the Union Square Green Market in New York City I pickle vegetables: red onion, daikon radish, sauerkraut; tomato preserve, making enough to last all year; jam: apricot, blueberry, raspberry, cherry. Apple sauce too.
And every year I make fresh pasta dough for ravioli: pumpkin, meat, lemon, or simply make tagliatelle and cook them with ragu’. The dough, however, does not always turn out perfect. It has to do with the eggs, and it’s a challenge to find eggs with bright red and orange yolks in the US, that taste like. . . well, eggs. Like those I ate growing up in Italy and Thailand. But we adapt.
Are you working on a new project? Please tell us about it.
I completed the first draft of a second novel in early November. It’s about a retired New York homicide detective who sets up a private investigative practice in Tucson, Arizona. He’s been dealing primarily with divorce and missing pet cases (there are a lot of critters in the desert) until he lands a kidnapping case that spins out of control. I’m letting it sit for a while before I return to it. In the meantime, I’ve been writing short stories and short-film scripts to stay busy. Writing short stories helps develop the writing craft, and I use them to experiment with various styles, themes, and with character development. You can find some of them at francescopaola.com/stories.
What was the last book you read? What did you think of it?
I recently read Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, in English, and while on a recent trip to Italy, I purchased a copy in Italian (I was born in Turin, Italy). I was curious; would my Italian cognitive abilities be up to the task?
I was surprised at how different the original read and flowed. It was more alive, more intense, more passionate. Now, I am not saying that the translation is poor, after all, if it were, the novel would not have been named the best book of the twenty-first century by the New York Times.
I believe there are a few things at play here. First, let me say that I am no expert. I just happen to be an Italian who grew up in Italy with a Neapolitan grandfather who regaled me with stories of his childhood, stories in settings similar to those of Lila and Lenù; an Italian who grew up in an apartment complex in Italy that had a shared courtyard, a dank, dark, and scary cellar, and Maurizio and Andrea, two brothers slightly older than me who I hung out with, played games with, and who would occasionally pick on me.
Second, the Italian language has words that are not directly translatable into English. Take the title: L’Amica Geniale—My Brilliant Friend. Geniale has a much deeper, broader, complex meaning than Brilliant. Brilliant is one-dimensional. A brilliant light; a brilliant mind; a brilliant pupil. We know it can only mean one thing. But Geniale? It is multi-dimensional. Street-smart. Intelligent. Prescient. Deductive. Innovative. Able to think laterally—solving problems by going the indirect route, like how Lina went about refusing the hand of Marcello. She bided her time, absorbing the punishment of his presence, daily, at the dinner table, until she co-opted Lenù and together they pursued Stefano, or rather, Lila pursued Stefano through Lenù. Only after Lila had agreed to marry Stefano did she refuse the hand of Marcello. Directly. Bravely. Threateningly. I wouldn’t call that just brilliant. Regardless, it’s still a wonderful story, no matter what language it’s written in.
Where can readers find you?
Web: francescopaola.com
Blog: francescopaola.com/blog
Short Stories: francescopaola.com/stories
Instagram: fpaola01
Facebook: francesco.paola.52
Upcoming Events:
Book launch and reading at Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA; Tuesday February 11, 7 P.M.
Book launch party at the National Arts Club, New York, NY; Thursday February 20, 6:30 P.M.
Thank you, Francesco! Left on Rancho is out TODAY.
Left on Rancho
For fans of Tod Goldberg and Tim O’Brien, this debut contemporary noir follows a burned-out tech entrepreneur into the Wild West of California cannabis and the converging worlds of contraband weed and illegal immigration.
There are only two reasons to take a left on Rancho: cannabis and immigration.
October 2019. Adelanto, a desolate outpost in the Mojave Desert. Andrew Eastman, a tech entrepreneur with a bank account running on fumes, rides into town to help an old friend. The ask: turn around a fledgling legal weed operation in the California High Desert, where a dead “desert walker” is just another day in Adelanto, according to the local sheriff. Where coyotes “help” migrants escape from the ICE detention center nearby as protests ignite around it. Where no one cares about illegal marijuana because the pie’s big enough for everyone.
Andrew, the outsider, asks too many questions–the viability of the legal market, cannabis’s social impact, inoperative surveillance cameras in the factory, and the dominance of the illegal trade. An illegal trade run by unscrupulous actors.
On a hunt for contraband that’s based on a stolen formulation, Andrew journeys from Adelanto to West Hollywood to the underbelly of Los Angeles, until he lands at the intersection of cannabis and immigration. Bodies pile up around him. And when tragedy strikes, Andrew’s left with one last decision, one that will forever change him.
Author Bio:
Born in Turin, Italy, and raised in Italy, Thailand, and Australia, I eventually made my way to the U.S. where I earned an engineering degree from MIT and an MBA from U.C. Berkeley (Haas). I am an accomplished technology entrepreneur and from 2019 to 2021 I worked at a (legal) cannabis startup in California while on a sabbatical from tech. I have written technical blogs, white papers and articles for over twenty-five years as an executive in the technology startup ecosystem. My experiences in tech and cannabis led to the ideas, themes, and the story in Left on Rancho. My wife Jackie and I have called New York City home for the past twenty-five years.