“Powerfully moving…. An extraordinary memoir.”
—George Stephanopoulos, Good Morning America and ABC Sunday News
"A remarkable, true-life story about an American family offering salvation in Spain’s slums."
—Booklife/Publishers Weekly (Editor’s Pick)
1.
What inspired you to write this book?
I wrote Shooting Up because I
realized that the people who shaped my childhood were disappearing, and many of
their stories had never really been told. I grew up in San Blas during the
heroin and AIDS crisis in Spain, surrounded by addicts, recovering addicts,
missionaries, and people living on the absolute margins of society. Some of
them became like older brothers to me. Many died very young. For years I
carried these memories around without knowing what to do with them. Eventually
I understood that this wasn’t just my family’s story. It was a story about
love, grief, addiction, compassion, and what happens when people society has
written off are treated with dignity. Writing the book became a way of
remembering people who deserved not to be forgotten.
2.
What exactly is it about — and who is it written for?
At its heart, Shooting Up is a memoir
about growing up in Madrid’s heroin slums during the AIDS epidemic. My parents
started a drug rehabilitation ministry called Betel, and as a child I spent my
days handing out pamphlets to addicts, sitting in rehab meetings, and watching
people struggle with addiction, recovery, illness, and death. But the book is
really about much more than drugs or religion. It’s about family, loss,
childhood, resilience, and the strange ways people create meaning in difficult
circumstances. I wrote it for anyone interested in memoir, social history,
addiction, coming-of-age stories, or simply trying to understand how people
survive suffering without losing their humanity.
3.
What do you hope readers will get out of reading your
book?
I hope readers come away with more empathy. Addiction
is often discussed in abstract political terms, but the people I knew were not
abstractions. They were funny, intelligent, difficult, generous,
self-destructive, loving, and deeply human. I also hope readers see that even
in terrible circumstances, there can still be humor, friendship, beauty, and
grace. The book deals with death and grief, but it is not hopeless. If
anything, it convinced me that love and human connection matter far more than
success, status, or comfort.
4.
How did you decide on your book’s title and cover
design?
The title Shooting Up obviously
refers to heroin use, which shaped the world I grew up in. But it also carries
a double meaning. It hints at growing up, rising, transforming, and trying to
escape gravity in one form or another. The addicts were trying to escape pain.
My parents were trying to save people. I was trying to understand the world
around me. The cover image came from an actual childhood photograph of my
brothers and me in San Blas. I love that it looks almost ordinary at first
glance. Three blond kids standing in a barren field. But once you know the
story behind it, the image changes completely. That tension felt right for the
book.
5.
What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow
writers – other than run!?
Write honestly, even when it makes you uncomfortable.
Especially then. Readers can sense when something is emotionally true. I also
think writers spend too much time worrying about style before they’ve figured
out what they actually want to say. The real challenge is not sounding clever.
It’s seeing clearly. If you can describe people truthfully and compassionately,
the prose usually takes care of itself.
6.
What trends in the book world do you see -- and where
do you think the book publishing industry is heading?
I think readers are hungry for authenticity. There’s
so much noise, so much performance, and so much content engineered for
algorithms that people increasingly respond to books that feel personal and
real. Memoir continues to resonate because readers want lived experience, not
just opinion. At the same time, publishing is becoming more fragmented.
Communities form around podcasts, Substack newsletters, BookTok, niche reading
groups, and independent media rather than a handful of traditional gatekeepers.
That creates challenges, but it also gives unusual books a better chance to
find the readers who will truly connect with them.
7.
Were there experiences in your personal life or career
that came in handy when writing this book?
Absolutely. The book is deeply autobiographical, so I
drew constantly on memory, journals, family stories, photographs, and
conversations. Growing up between cultures also shaped the way I observe
people. I was always slightly outside of things, which probably made me pay
closer attention. Professionally, my background in history and economics
trained me to think about systems and human behavior, but memoir requires
something very different. It requires emotional honesty. That was harder than
any research project I’ve ever done.
8.
How would you describe your writing style? Which
writers or books is your writing similar to?
I’d describe the style as direct, literary, and
emotionally grounded. I wanted the writing to feel intimate without becoming
sentimental. The world I grew up in was already dramatic enough. I didn’t need
to exaggerate it. Writers who influenced me include George Orwell and Joan
Didion. Orwell especially mattered to me because he combined moral seriousness
with clarity and restraint. I admire writers who can describe extraordinary
situations in plain, human terms.
9.
What challenges did you overcome in the writing of
this book?
The hardest part was revisiting painful memories I had
spent years trying not to think about. Writing about addiction and AIDS was
difficult enough, but writing about the death of my younger brother Timothy was
something else entirely. Some chapters took a tremendous emotional toll. Another
challenge was balance. I wanted to write honestly about faith, addiction, and
suffering without turning the book into a sermon or reducing people to symbols.
The addicts in the book were not props in someone else’s redemption story. They
were individuals with their own dignity and complexity.
10. If people can buy
or read one book this week or month, why should it be yours?
Because I think Shooting Up offers
readers a world they have probably never seen before, but one that speaks to
universal human experiences. Almost everyone has encountered grief, addiction,
loneliness, family conflict, or the search for meaning in some form. The book
is ultimately about how people care for one another in impossible situations.
It asks what it means to love people who are broken, and whether compassion can
survive suffering. Those questions feel just as urgent today as they did when I
was growing up in San Blas.
About The Author: Jonathan Tepper is the chief investment
officer at Prevatt Capital. Jonathan was the founder of Variant Perception,
which provides research to asset managers. Formerly, he was an analyst at SAC
Capital and a vice president on the proprietary trading desk at Bank of
America. Along the way, with his friend Turi Munthe, they founded Demotix, a
citizen-journalism website and photo agency. They sold Demotix in 2012 to
Corbis, a company owned then by Bill Gates. Jonathan is the author of financial
books, the latest of which is The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death
of Competition. He is a Rhodes Scholar and graduated with highest honors in
history and honors in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill and has an MLitt from the University of Oxford. Website - https://jonathan-tepper.com/
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For
the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He
formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the
head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the
director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many
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He
hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and
has spoken at ASJA, three times at BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers
Association, Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod
Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, five
times at Morgan James Publishing Red Carpet, and Connecticut Authors and
Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.
His
letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal,
USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester)
and The Washington Post. His first published book was The
Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook. It
was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.
Born
and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids,
and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.
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